KSP1 Computer Building/Buying Megathread

[sammoe]

Depends very much on what the projected tasks are

Gaming mostly and just surfing the web.

[Leonov]

Gaming mostly and just surfing the web.

Personally, I like having a good Chipset so maybe a good ASUS Z87 motherboard would be in order?, What kind of games do you play?

Maybe bump up to a Nividia GTX 760, they are very cheap lately and should only get cheaper towards the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales.

I wouldn't bother getting a Nividia GTX 6XX at this point as the 760's on the market are only a couple dollars more than say a 660/670/680.

What is your budget for your upgrade?

[Camacha]

Personally, I like having a good Chipset so maybe a good ASUS Z87 motherboard would be in order?, What kind of games do you play?

Maybe bump up to a Nividia GTX 760, they are very cheap lately and should only get cheaper towards the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales.

I wouldn't bother getting a Nividia GTX 6XX at this point as the 760's on the market are only a couple dollars more than say a 660/670/680.

Do not forget the new AMD's (Volcanic Islands) are coming out in a couple of days. Those are traditionally a lot of bang for your buck.

But whether a video card upgrade is worth it very much depends on the games, resolutions and frame rates/settings you want to play. With most games, 1920x1080 is easily achieved with even very modest cards nowadays, depending on settings.

Edited October 3, 2013 by Camacha

[sammoe]

I was hoping to get battlefield 4 when it comes out but that calls for a core i5 not an i3...Seems like a have 2 upgrades in order.

[Leonov]

Make up a budget, I am sure it can be done.

[briansun1]

If there's a will there's a way

(you could also ask this guy

[qreepii]

So Im running into to very low frame rates playing kerbal with too many parts based on craft files from many of our youtube people like pixelstache and Scott Manley.

I'd like to improve on my current machine and I'm looking for some suggestions.

Currently I have...

Nvidia 9800GTX BFG

AMD Phenom II X4 920

8GB DDR2 RAM

Obviously any change I make has to be drastic, I'd like to know opinions on what I could accomplish for less than $200. Last time I build a computer was when the above hardware was brand new like 7 years ago, and i haven't followed the desktop industry that closely since. So super geeks heres your chance to let me know what I should to upgrade.

Thanks for the help

[nine_iron]

Pretty Boring OLD OLD rig mine.

MSI X58 Plat SLI (tho never actually used crossfire or SLI yet, might do when I get some spare cash and get bored)

i7 920 (C0 stepping so I bought too early for mega 4GHz OC) I squeeze just a hair over 3.8 out of it and its VERY stable, I can get above 4 but its not stable.

16GB of RAM (I had 8 but I got more for free so slapped it in and boosed my Novabench scores if nothing else)- I few times a year I get above 7 used as I sometimes have to run multiple bulky programs when doing some game modding projects.

The old Asetek LCLC liquid cooler, before someone bought it or something, anyway you never see them now! Its got an awesome powerful but quiet fan on it and keeps my temps quite low. ( CPU Idle 34, load under 50) It can be lower but needs a clean out soon!

MSI 6870 hawk, I had this OCed but it caused artifacts on GTA4 so turned it off, never turn if on except for benchmarking now, might do as I still have the optimal FPS settings saved. Its happy at stock, runs pretty much any recent game on max. The only lacking part is the 1GB RAM, I notice that most but no idea how to mitigate it!

SSDs, got two actually, and a platter for dumping stuff. One SSD is for boot, other is for Flight sims and KSP. Very impressed with SSDs though my mods on KSP still take ages to load (Its the ONLY game on my SSDs I do any waiting).

All in a crappy but made to work case, I bought one not knowing what I needed and bought cheap. Wish I had not but I have bodged it to work. Got a big ole 250mm blue lit fan on the side and a few smaller 140s also blue lit around the back and front. (Next time I will do a bottom to top airflow but those cases were not popular when I bought mine)

Standard G15 keyboard and RAT 5 mouse on a Roccat Sota pad, also have a nice Cyborg dual throttle joystick for my flight sims.

Roccat Kave headset, sublime!

Overall it can be an noisy beast when the graphics card is under heavy load for a long period, AMD cards like the old ATIs seem to love cooking themselves. I have it under control with a decent profile and good airflow around the card.

My father in law recently got one of these http://www.quietpc.com/sys-a480, Its perfectly silent and plays CIV 5 on high res well, not tried it on other games but they are impressive systems up close, worth it if you are willing to take the performance hit for noise. He was of course, playing games like CIV 5, but I wouldnt take the risk!

Edited October 5, 2013 by Leonov

[Leonov]

-snip-

Honestly, you will see a drastic change in KSP with any set of modern hardware. To do that will require a New Motherboard, CPU and RAM. Are you Partial to AMD or Intel?

Asuming that you can transfer everything you use onto a new Mobo, and sticking to a ~$200USD Budget.

AMD Option.

Intel Option.

[sammoe]

Make up a budget, I am sure it can be done.

I followed your advice! Looks like I'm going to pay about $500 for a new power supply, gtx 760, and i5. Prices will probably drop as new things come out though.

[Leonov]

I followed your advice! Looks like I'm going to pay about $500 for a new power supply, gtx 760, and i5. Prices will probably drop as new things come out though.

Nividia may drop the prices of their cards when AMD releases their new cards so i would wait around that time.

[KD3]

So I just got myself an SSD and I take back all the things I said in the first few pages of this thread. It is so fast. I cannot believe how much faster it is

[briansun1]

welcome to the world of SSD you may come in but you can't leave

[Moustachauve]

We have SSD in my school computer room with windows 7, and I can't believe how slow it is to actually start up!

[briansun1]

it's a school computer nuff said

[Moustachauve]

it still have 16gb ram and Xeon processor with 250gb ssd and a gb/s internet speed (1gb/s, not 1GB/s !! )

[briansun1]

how old is it ?

(1gb/s, not 1GB/s !! )

there's a difference?

[Moustachauve]

1GB/s is 1 gigabits (Bits are one and zero) and 1gb/s is one gigabytes (bytes are packets of 8 bits), so when your internet provider says something like 20MB/s and in your download you only get 3mb/s, thats why

[Rassa Farlander]

So Ive begun some research on what it will take to build my own computer. There is a ton of options out there and it seems to be quite overwhelming really. No I intend this to be a thread where a healthy discussion can take place to help me and others find some answers in regard to building a decent computer that will of good quality last, and not go bad in the first 6 months.

Ive decided to do this after my Toshiba laptop from 2009 took a dive on me, hence we I havent been on the forums for a little bit, playing KSP or much else internet wise.

Ive wondered about the AMD vs Intel debate for processors and the Nvidia vs AMD debate for video cards. Figuring out what processor will help narrow down the motherboard selection, ASUS and Gigabyte motherboards have been recommended by friends, but I still have very little knowledge with any of this.

I just want a reliable system thats gonna work for me. I like video games, KSP being a favorite, so Im trying to keep that in mind while trying to decide on the components. Ive got about $1200 to spend over the next couple of months that Im willing to put towards this endeavor. Ive been looking through some reviews on Newegg and nothing seems to stand out as "awesome". Everything there, Motherboards and processors in particular, all seem to have quite a few negative comments made about them, which make me very hesitant to commit to anything. Also a little hesitant to buy stuff that so expensive online, but there are a couple places in my area that sell computer components. Luckily I have time so there isnt much of a rush other than the impending KSP withdrawal

So to summarize:

Budget: $1200

Processor: ?

Motherboard: ?

Graphic Card: ?

Case: ?

Power supply: ?

RAM: ?

Disk Drive: ?

Cooling: ?

Anything Im forgetting: ?

Ive never done this before, but I think Im up for the task, so who can help me? Id rather not just throw my money away as I work very hard for it Ill be back in a day or two to check up on this post to see whats up

Thanks in advance for the help everyone.

[Leonov]

-snip-

My side of the AMD v. Intel would be that it all depends on what you are going to do with your rig, Modern CPUs are so Fast/Powerful that telling the difference between them from machine to machine can be difficult. If anything the GPU is becoming the defining area of computers.

Here is a Stupid Fast Intel Haswell Mini ITX Rig.

Im not the biggest fan of Watercooling, I personally like High End Air Cooling.

The 760 is a Very Nice Card for the money, The CPU you can drop it to a 4670 non-K and not mess with overclocking and drop then Aftermarket cooler to save a little cash.

This build is assuming that you have a separate budget for peripherals, such as monitors/keyboard/mouse.

At your budget, there is no reason not to go for an Intel Solution. UNLESS you are going to be doing a lot of Streaming using programs like X-split or OBS and need the extra power to encode video on the fly, for some reasons those programs love the high-end AMD FX Processors.

The OP of this post has some great info for a first time builder, If you can operate a Screwdriver you can assemble a computer.

This list is pretty good at sorting out parts to a level of performance.

Edited October 6, 2013 by Leonov

[Rassa Farlander]

That was quick! The i5 3570K seemed good when I looked at that, so whats the difference between that and the i5 4670K?

Also Ive been reading through this thread for awhile now so Ive been educated a bit in what some of all this means, so I can define what I think I would want lol.

So I would like to have future upgrade ability, SLI or Crossfire(whats the difference?) to link graphics cards, also Ive never seen an ITX anything until just now. I had been leaning ATX but Im not sure the advantages of that over a micro-atx or ITX. I dont think Ill be multitasking much, I usually just surf the web and would like to play some better PC games, as consoles are getting a bit outdated, IMO. Playing KSP would be one of the formost in mind, I also have tried Civilization and a couple others.

Im gonna need a monitor, keyboard and all that, this will be my first build so Im kinda starting from scratch, Ive got time so some of those things can wait for now Ill have a look through your links and the ones in the OP Cant watch vids at the moment so that limits me a bit for now.

Thanks for the quick feedback! I look forward to talking with you, Leonov and others, to get this sorted out

[jfx]

The 4670k in the same class as the 3570k - just this years iteration which is slightly faster and has a better integrated GPU part. SLI/crossfire won't be of much use to you until you go full enthusiast.

Since intel does not drop the price for old parts when its successor is released there is not much point in going for the 3570k

[briansun1]

On amd vs intel there really is slight but next to no difference at the mid range level (think i5 in terms of preformance) though at the upper range level intel pulls ahead (think i7/E chips) and at lower range levels amd wins due to price(think i3 and lower) and amd wins with there APU's in integrated graphics.

Now for Nvidia Vs AMD basicly the same thing except Nvidia is intel and Amd has a lot of good game bundles and is the maker of all the next gen console chips so will probably have better drivers for them.

tl;dr

Intel and Nvidia = Extremely powerful but at a price

Amd = good price to preformance.

onto the other things

Processor: (talked about)

Motherboard: based on Cpu

Graphic Card: (talked about)

Case: really personal preference you can go really big really tiny or in between

Power supply: Based on Cpu and Gpu

RAM: unless you make youtube videos and do encoding you only need 8gb for gaming(preferably at 1600mhz) the price on these will go up even more in the next few days (due to This) so something like This

Disk Drive: How much do you need? and with your budget you could go with a SSD + HDD combo

Cooling: I would say stay away from wannabe water cooling(all AIO)

Anything I'm forgetting: do you have keyboard, mouse and monitor ? oh and do you need a cd/dvd drive? and so you need windows?

Edited October 6, 2013 by briansun1

[Camacha]

there's a difference?

A factor 8 One byte ( is eight bits (.

On amd vs intel there really is no difference at the mid range level (think i5)

There is, the architecture is quite different and the power consumption too. AMD's are a lot less frugal when it comes to power and it really depends on what tasks you want to do which brand has the better propositions.

[briansun1]

fixed... your argument is invaled becuase I say so ...