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KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread


Leonov

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So I've just been informed that my 2011 HP Pavilion dv6 is well past its planned obsolescence of 4 years. Besides the fact that the battery is doing what any old battery does, I've only had one BSoD in May of last year. I do not need a new computer, I run KSP just fine, as long as I don't load in a bunch of ships, but I'm starting to wonder if I should start looking for a new computer. I have very little knowledge on computers, and I don't know if I want to upgrade to Windows 10.

 

Any recommendations or advice? 

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Just now, TheKosanianMethod said:

So I've just been informed that my 2011 HP Pavilion dv6 is well past its planned obsolescence of 4 years. Besides the fact that the battery is doing what any old battery does, I've only had one BSoD in May of last year. I do not need a new computer, I run KSP just fine, as long as I don't load in a bunch of ships, but I'm starting to wonder if I should start looking for a new computer. I have very little knowledge on computers, and I don't know if I want to upgrade to Windows 10.

 

Any recommendations or advice? 

Build a PC. What would your budget be? I assume you'll need a keyboard, mouse, and monitor as well.

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10 minutes ago, legoclone09 said:

Build a PC. What would your budget be? I assume you'll need a keyboard, mouse, and monitor as well.

I have no idea on budget, I'll have to check, but i've heard PC building is a good option.

 

... this would be a good time to put the the joke about the kid who bought the "gaming computer", but actually bought a monitor,  keyboard, and mouse, no tower.

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1 hour ago, TheKosanianMethod said:

I have no idea on budget, I'll have to check, but i've heard PC building is a good option.

 

... this would be a good time to put the the joke about the kid who bought the "gaming computer", but actually bought a monitor,  keyboard, and mouse, no tower.

If I remember right, there was a story like that on r/pcmasterrace. Here's a good price/perf PC that looks nice too. I threw an aftermarket CPU cooler in to keep temperatures low. You don't need one, though. Should run KSP nicely, but if you can spare another $70 or so you can get a Z270 chipset motherboard and an overclockable i5 to run KSP a lot better. If you overclock the i5 you should be able to hit 4.2GHz or so on the M9i, with a Cryorig H7 you can likely hit 4.4GHz.

Edited by legoclone09
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On 17/03/2017 at 3:59 PM, Elthy said:

Have they? From what i know they want to fix some issues with Ryzen-2, which wont come for at least a year.

Yes. They will release the update in the HEDT and server platforms, but the improvements will be deployed across the range.

19 hours ago, TheKosanianMethod said:

So I've just been informed that my 2011 HP Pavilion dv6 is well past its planned obsolescence of 4 years. Besides the fact that the battery is doing what any old battery does, I've only had one BSoD in May of last year. I do not need a new computer, I run KSP just fine, as long as I don't load in a bunch of ships, but I'm starting to wonder if I should start looking for a new computer. I have very little knowledge on computers, and I don't know if I want to upgrade to Windows 10.

Any recommendations or advice? 

This planned obsolescence thing is blown way out of proportions and should not be taken as a rule. Stuff gets designed to last a certain amount of key presses, run hours etcetera, yes, but that is what engineers do and always have done. Because of this, consumer pressure on price ensures that these machines will not last decades. However, few, if any devices have an actual built in kill switch. Some examples will inevitably pop up, but in the overwhelming majority of the cases, it is simply a matter of designing a product to a price. You get what you pay for.

Long story short: it sounds like you have no reason to upgrade. You are happy, so be happy :) Maybe get a battery replacement and, as always, make sure you you have proper backups, which means having at least two copies on two separate hard drives.

Edited by Camacha
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3 hours ago, Camacha said:

*snip*

Thanks, I'm not planning on replacing my laptop just yet. I have a whole bunch of stuff on there, and it works, so I plan to at least use it for another year or two, if not more. I'm just planning ahead, just in case it does fail early or something. So this takes a bit of worry off.

 

Thanks, @legoclone09, I'll check it out. Hopefully my computer doesn't go for a while,  but it seems like it should last. And yes, the story about how to not buy computers was from Reddit. 

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1 minute ago, TheKosanianMethod said:

@legoclone09Thanks, I'm not planning on replacing my laptop just yet. I have a whole bunch of stuff on there, and it works, so I plan to at least use it for another year or two, if not more. I'm just planning ahead, just in case it does fail early or something. So this takes a bit of worry off.

Planning ahead pretty much never works out in hardware land. Always look at and buy hardware at the moment you need it. The only exception might be a new series coming up, but that is holding out, rather than planning ahead.

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24 minutes ago, Camacha said:

Planning ahead pretty much never works out in hardware land. Always look at and buy hardware at the moment you need it. The only exception might be a new series coming up, but that is holding out, rather than planning ahead.

By  planning ahead I guess I meant "seeing if I really need a new computer right now. "

Edited by TheKosanianMethod
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Hi folks

I'm looking for a new laptop but I'm a bit confused by the modern computer specs so I'm hopping someone here can help me out in narrowing down the spec for a suitable machine for KSP.

I don't want something that can handle a 2000+ part ship at 60 fps on the highest settings, just a reasonable sized ship on the low to mid settings. I don't have a budget in mind but I'm probably going to be looking at a refurbished computer.

Many thanks.

 

Mods, I don't know if this is the right place for this thread if it's not could you please move it? 

 

Edited by Star-Eagle
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It's been a while since I looked at laptop specs, but KSP likes fast cores rather than lots of cores, so I'd go for an intel i5 CPU, but make sure it is a  non- "u" model as the u series are the low power, low clock speed models, especially on laptops a few years old. I'd also recommend a basic dedicated graphics card like an Nvidia 540/640/740/940/ rather than built in intel /AMD graphics. 8GB of RAM will be plenty.

I play KSP flawlessly at high settings on my i5 3xxxx (we're on 7xxx now, so a good few years old!) 2.8GHz CPU, Nvidia 650m, 8GB RAM.

Edited by Stewcumber
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16 hours ago, Star-Eagle said:

Thanks gargamel, I think one of those computers could just about handle a larger ship in KSP.

Heh... misread your post, I thought you were messing around saying you did want a 2000 part ship at max fps...

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16 hours ago, Star-Eagle said:

Thanks gargamel, I think one of those computers could just about handle a larger ship in KSP.

Heh... misread your post, I thought you were messing around saying you did want a 2000 part ship at max fps...

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hey guys, did some preliminary gameplay on ryzen and it seems that it is slower than haswell I've got before (i7 3.8GHz single/all core turbo)

asus c6h, newest bios 1002, 1700 @ 4 GHz, windows 7, crappy memory 2133 CL15

first of all stock overclocking via ryzen master utility and all else on auto = 16 fps with test craft (haswell had about 27).
then after disabling some power saving options and overclocking via bios provided better fps (23-24) but it's still slower than haswell @ 3.8. Same with cores disabled (4+0 etc). I guess that windows 7 or slow memory
might be the problem here, however won't have an occasion to test it soon.
I believe that faster memory might fill the gap (since in some games it gives + 15% fps, that would mean that physics in unity is memory sensitive in regard to ryzen). Hopefully someone else with faster memory could confirm that.

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Remember: higher RAM speeds improves performance for Ryzen, AFAIK. It increases the speed the two CCXs exchange data at, a test comparing Haswell and Ryzen with 3600MHz RAM might be different (I've only been told about this, haven't tested it).

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20 hours ago, legoclone09 said:

Remember: higher RAM speeds improves performance for Ryzen, AFAIK. It increases the speed the two CCXs exchange data at, a test comparing Haswell and Ryzen with 3600MHz RAM might be different (I've only been told about this, haven't tested it).

well yah, I've managed to increase ram speed to 2666 (probably max with my old 4 x 2 rank sticks), anyway testing with 4+0 (which uses only one CCX) yielded similar results so I don't think it has a big impact on fps. Having said that cpu with higher ram speed feels more snappy and loading times (including ksp) feel shorter. It also gave additional 30 points in cinebench (going from 2133 cl15 to 2666 cl16).

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I've done quite a bit of search around the forum and specially in this topic and I cannot find benchmarks of KSP in Windows 7 vs 10.

It's my understanding that KSP has no support for Directx 12, so I'm expecting an equal or worse performance on Windows 10.

Has anyone tested it?

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53 minutes ago, JeeF said:

I've done quite a bit of search around the forum and specially in this topic and I cannot find benchmarks of KSP in Windows 7 vs 10.

It's my understanding that KSP has no support for Directx 12, so I'm expecting an equal or worse performance on Windows 10.

Has anyone tested it?

It's very likely the same. I could install Windows 7 and try it on that but I don't have time for that and wouldn't like to reinstall a bunch of stuff.

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On 03/04/2017 at 0:19 AM, Stewcumber said:

It's been a while since I looked at laptop specs, but KSP likes fast cores rather than lots of cores, so I'd go for an intel i5 CPU, but make sure it is a  non- "u" model as the u series are the low power, low clock speed models, especially on laptops a few years old. I'd also recommend a basic dedicated graphics card like an Nvidia 540/640/740/940/ rather than built in intel /AMD graphics. 8GB of RAM will be plenty.

I play KSP flawlessly at high settings on my i5 3xxxx (we're on 7xxx now, so a good few years old!) 2.8GHz CPU, Nvidia 650m, 8GB RAM.

I've been getting a bit confused with which Nvidia cards you where referring to, any chance you could elaborate on the full model name please?

 

Thanks

 

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Just now, Star-Eagle said:

I've been getting a bit confused with which Nvidia cards you where referring to, any chance you could elaborate on the full model name please?

 

Thanks

 

It would be GTX 540/640/740/940, but the -40 ones are laptop-only. Desktops start at -50.

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1 minute ago, legoclone09 said:

It would be GTX 540/640/740/940, but the -40 ones are laptop-only. Desktops start at -50.

Carefull with your recommendation. Anything below a 9XX card of Nvidia isnt worth buying, they are totaly outdated. Also the current generation Pascal (10XX) doesnt have a low-end GPU at all, they start with the GTX 1050. The 1050 is allready quite fast, it will play most games decently with lowered settings, KSP should run even with Mods (as long as they dont fill the tiny VRAM) perfectly. Also its worth noting that in the current generation the differences between mobile and desktop GPUs of the same name got very small.

So, buy a laptop with a 1050 maybe the ti version. Anything better is overkill and there is nothing cheaper thats still viable...

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