Gaming Rig Question

[Expwnential]

Hello Fellow Space Enthusiasts,

I am looking into buying a gaming rig soon (solely for KSP) and I wanted to ask y'all a question about the configuration. Given the circumstance that KSP is not necessarily a graphic-intensive game, but rather a calculation-intensive game, should I invest extra $$$ into a higher-end graphics card or will a decent one + a high end processor fare well? I'm looking to run everything at max settings, etc.

Specifics:

Processor:

(correct this if its wrong, but...) I'm going to wait until Intel releases their new processors later this year. If not, the current i7 model.

GPU:

AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB vs AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB

Also, going back to the fact that KSP is a calculation-intensive game... would overclocking the system be more noticable than, say, overclocking it for an MMO or FPS?

[Lysergic]

The 7770 should be fine for just KSP. Get a nice CPU - intel is better for lightly threaded apps like KSP, so nice choice, but if dont spend more than $200 on it. Also, if you want to OC it will be more noticeable in KSP than most games. Just make sure you get a K series CPU (so you actually can OC) and an aftermarket air cooler, since the stock intel one isn't great. I think is a coolermaster 212 and is awesome.

[SteevyT]

If you aren't also rendering, just get an i5 series processor, it's the same thing as the i7 just without hyperthreading, which in every game out right now means it will perform exactly the same. Get a k series if you want to overclock (make sure the motherboard supports overclocking too). Although the AMD 6300 is a decent comparison to the i5 in the current generation. As for the graphics cards, you are comparing two cards that are something like $200 apart. Of course the the 7970 is going to be just insane compared to the 7770. I have a 7850 (kind of a happy medium between the two) and it works great in KSP while letting me also plow through more intensive games without issues.

[pa1983]

You want the best per core performance possible so thats an i5 or i7. You dont need Hyper Threading and the extra cache on the i7 wont do much either in games. i7 usually comes at a slightly high clock but its marginal at best. So from a price performance view an i5 will give 99.9% identical performance to an i7.

Rigth now the i5 4670K is your best option. Any modern i5 or i7 is fast out of the box even none K versions due to Turboboost giving them speeds up to 3.8-4Ghz depending on model.

I tested an i7 3770 3.4Ghz with max turbo of 3.9Ghz and it was as fast in KSP as an i7 3930K overclocked to 4Ghz on all cores. KSP just dont use more then 1 core plus 20-80% of another core at the most so turbo boost should kick in pretty well and give very good performance on none overclocked i5 or i7 to. An overclocked i5 or i7 will be faster but not that much since most overclock all the cores to the same speed so KSP dont realy benefit from that since turbo boost can go almost as high stock on few active cores.

But yea a i5 4670K is a good start, should give you the best possible stock performance in KSP and if you want to overclock it will give you good overclocked performance to.

And dont be cheap on the ram. 8Gb is bare minimum this days. 16Gb is well normal now. Ram is used by to OS to speed up a lot more then just allocate ram for your programs. Windows tends to show this as free ram but theres no such thing as free ram in a modern OS this days. More is better.

I ran my CPU at 4.4Ghz in KSP instead of 4Ghz but realy didnt make much difference. Im CPU limited with my i7 3930K and I have tweaked the game. But the way I figure it if physics runs at half real time at 4Ghz well one would basically have to run the CPU at twice the speed to get back up to real time. So well 10% overclocking when your pushing part count wont realy do that much. Basically need double the CPU performance to speed up physics twice as much so if your running 0.5x real time a 10% OC at best would give you 0.55x real time. Not realy worth the trouble.

Not saying your should not overclock but its easy to overclock all cores to say 4Ghz or something but the CPU might run at 3.7Ghz minimum with all cores in turbo boost mode any way stock with out overclocking. I know the i7 3770 that runs 3.4Ghz stock can all 4 cores at 3.7Ghz under prime95 and intel linpack continuously since it was within its TDP still and it can hit 3.9Ghz with 1-2 cores if I recall and the KSP test I ran seems to indicate high turboo boost frequency's.

If the rig is Purely for KSP you could try disabling two cores in the UEFI/BIOS and see if that increases overclocking potential. Should make KSP run faster since more then two cores dont do any good any way.

Edited September 13, 2013 by pa1983

[Dangerous_Beans]

i noticed a difference with a core i5-3570k going from stock to 4.4, and from there to 4.8. if you are fine with overclocking i would recommend it.

I tested an i7 3770 3.4Ghz with max turbo of 3.9Ghz and it was as fast in KSP as an i7 3930K overclocked to 4Ghz on all cores. KSP just dont use more then 1 core plus 20-80% of another core at the most so turbo boost should kick in pretty well and give very good performance on none overclocked i5 or i7 to. An overclocked i5 or i7 will be faster but not that much since most overclock all the cores to the same speed so KSP dont realy benefit from that since turbo boost can go almost as high stock on few active cores.

i can't speak about haswell, but my ivy bridge CPU is 3.8ghz turbo and i am able to get it to 4.4ghz at stock voltages, so 16% faster than turbo. at 1.2v i can push 4.8ghz.

turbo is a good feature, but it doesn't make overclocking irrelevant.

[leax256]

I run a 7770 and a 3.8 ghz phenom II(965) and I get semi anoying frame drop around 350-400 parts.

wish I could push it further but I don't have the money right now to cover getting a new cpu if I mess this one up, I'm new to overclocking.

[SRV Ron]

You don't need a dedicated gaming rig for KSP, just a custom built mid range computer with its own separate graphic processor, at least 8G of ram, and no crap ware installed. Save the gaming systems and overclocking, which equals overheating with possible expensive damage, for the latest graphic intensive FPS games.

The lag currently experience in KSP is caused by the way parts are handled individually in calculating their state using complex floating point calculations. Expect that lag, plus the excessive amount of memory currently being used to load duplicate complex textures for parts, to be resolved in future updates.

[_Aramchek_]

Save the gaming systems and overclocking, which equals overheating with possible expensive damage, for the latest graphic intensive FPS games.

Only if you don't know what you're doing, my volted, air cooled oc'd 15 runs nice and cool.

You want an I5 cpu Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge/Haswel it doesn't matter that much which really, with whatever halfway decent mid-high end video card you feel like buying that is at least AMD 58xx/ Nvidia GTX 460 level and you're good too go.

[pa1983]

Heat is not the main killer, not voltage either but its probably second place. Current is the killer and pretty much NO enthusiast considers current as the killer. Temperature dont kill as long as its with in specifications. 80C is not a problem, most CPU's can take that 24/7. Even higher temperatures with out permanent damage. Most intel processors have a limit between 95 and 105C before thermal protection even kicks in.

Higher voltage is dangerous but as long as its with in specifications and not exceeding max limits its not the main killer either. Temperature will increase leakage and increase current but just a bit. Voltage will increase current a lot especially if you increase voltage a lot since current goes up exponentially with voltage. Thats why one can use a bit higher voltage but excessive voltage will have consequences and no cooling in the world will stop the current from increasing to any significant degree.

Current is the killer and what high currents causes is "Electromigration". It basicly means atoms of other materials emigrate with the electrons and the higher the current the faster they emigrate.

Current in a modern CPU is about 75 to a 100 Amps. How fast materials emigrate depends on the current and the square area of the conductor/conductors and the material there made off.

But in the long run soder points and components inside a IC will be destroyed from electro-migration when connections break due to material like copper or thin emigrates.

So ANY overclocking is by this very definition not risk free. Not even a stock CPU will last for ever. Electro emigration is a real world problem and has been known for 100 years.

When a CPU is designed its given a life span by the manufacturer trough the design and lithography process that should be enough for its intended use and life span.

One side effect of electro-migration that all IC's like a CPU suffers from is that its stable frequency decreases over time due to electro-migration so thats why many new processors can be under volted. All processors have a slightly higher voltage then needed when new to offset the negative effect of electro-migration. Sure the higher voltage causes higher current and more electro-migration but a balance between voltage and frequency gives the best life span.

So no there is no such thing as "safe" overclocking. There is always a risk and one have to know those risk to make a good desiccation. So just increasing the frequency is not safe. Assuming you increased a 2Ghz CPU to 3Ghz on stock voltage. Thats is at least 50% increase in current and probably as much or more in degradation due to electro migration. How long it will last, how knows only the manufacturer would know and they wont tell you.

Electromigration is a real problem for manufacturers. I know because my relative designs IC's from 3Com and now Ericsson so we have talked about this subject.

Voltage or temperature with in spec wont kill a CPU, Electro-migration will and "extra" cooling wont save you if you love high frequency's and voltages. Might by you a tad bit of time but what doce that matter when 99% of the killing is done by electro-migration? Not much.

I have been in to overclocking since 1998 and I have long ago abandoned uber low temperatures. They might give a better OC since many but not all cpu's etc overclock some what better with lower temperatures, was more evident with some old processors I had even on air cooling unlike more modern processors. instead a very stable medium overclocking with little increase in voltage and current kept in check is what I prefer. A good cooler like the NH-D14 and a handpicked 140mm fan will give good performance and dead silent PC and it wont cost you a fortune like water cooling.

I would say the more you know about overclocking and I mean know like real facts not myths and crap the safer it is. But its not risk free like some say.

Its quite common to here that its safe as long as you just increase frequency and not voltage for example. Not true. As stated above current goes up continuously with frequency so electro-migration increases to so life span will be reduced. More relevant question is, will it die before I retire the CPU? Probably not.

But crap do happen. 9800GTX cards died because of electro-migration where the thin moved with the current. Baking it in the oven repaid the soder points.

Intels 6 series chipset with IVY-Bridge suffered from early degradation due to electro migration where some old transistors effected the current and degraded the sata portion of the controller.

My relative at Ericsson sad that mistake like this has happened many times before so its not uncommon. But overclocking will push the chip beyond what it was designed for.

Old Pentium 4 northwood could pretty easily be killed by increasing voltage close ore above 1.6V and frequency close to 4Ghz and that usually resulted in an unstable and soon unless and broken CPU due to electro-migration with in 6 months. It was Called Northwood Sudden Death Syndrome.

I do recommend that people overclock IF they have the patience to read up, learn and stability test properly. Lot of people dont tough. But if done properly its relatively safe and the computer will last longer then you want to keep it around but theres no such thing as no RISK. Biggest risk is not knowing what your doing.

You can read more about electromigration here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration

Edited September 13, 2013 by pa1983

[SteevyT]

As far as RAM goes, get the cheapest 2x4GB kit out there, brand-wise, RAM is RAM and speed above 1333MHz doesn't do a thing unless you are using an APU. Even recording while playing KSP with an insane amount of mods isn't using close to my 8GB. (I have enough mods that KSP alone is over 1 GB) It's easy enough to add more if you find you need it since most motherboards will support 4 sticks.

[Diazo]

I have to nit-pick a bit here.

In terms of "killing" a CPU and breaking it in hardware terms, I generally agree with your post.

However, in terms of "killing" an overclock and resulting in an unstable system, temperature is the main culprit.

To overclock up to a frequency requires two things, a high enough CPU voltage for that frequency for that specific chip design, and sufficient cooling to prevent the chip from overheating at that voltage.

Electromigration is not going to cause an overlock to fail. Insufficient voltage for the frequency being attempted, and insufficient cooling will.

Electromigration is a factor once the overclock is established and it determines how the chip's life span is affected. The higher the overclock, the more you are taking off the chip's lifespan.

With settings achievable on consumer level hardware, I don't think even a heavy overclock will shave more then a year off the designed life span. (I have no links to back this up however.)

Typically, the design life span is 7 years. If my overclock reduces my life span to 6 years, that's perfectly fine by me.

D.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Diazo

[nhnifong]

In case you don't know, KSP is currently only released as the 32 bit application and so cannot load more than about 4 Gb of memory.

[roosterr]

I just upgraded to a quad core i7 3.2 with 3.9 boost with a 1600MHz FSB mobo. My latest ship just hit 350 parts and it still smooth as silk. I used my same graphics card from my old PC, NVidia GT 260, several generations old now. With that card and my new CPU, I am running a 23" monitor and in native reoslution with 4X Anti-Aliasing and high level graphics quality.

SO, yeah, its a CPU thing.

[nhnifong]

These seem like rather low numbers. I'm running a 4-core i7 OCed to 4.5 Ghz and It's definitely possible to get playable framerates at 1500 parts. You can even get up to 2500 parts and the game won't crash, but at that point, it's 1 frame per second or less.

[Cartz]

To the OP: I don't think you should wait for Intel to introduce a new line of processors if your only interest is KSP. According to all rumors, Intel is having a hell of a time with 14nm Broadwell chips and will likely be releasing a Haswell Refresh to run on the 9 series chipsets currently coming down the pipe. This likely won't happen till Q2 2014 (so 6 months or more away)... Older (current) Haswell chips won't run on the refreshed 9 chipset, so you will be locking yourself out of an upgrade path, however the %age performance increase from one series to the next is fairly insignificant anyways, and the chip you buy today will likely only be bested in the 5-10% range by the offerings out next year. I think the most powerful i5 is likely where you'll want to be going (4760k I think?), get a nice big air cooler that isn't too intrusive like the Noctua NH-U14S and at least 8gb of ram. Pair it with a decent graphics card like a radeon 5850 for now. With the new consoles dropping soon, I'm willing to bet we're going to see a monstrous improvement in GFX cards like we did with the 8800s after the 360 and ps3 launched. Doesn't make sense to buy a high roller offering now when whats coming down the pipe will be a class ahead. I speak from experience here, as I bought a 7900GTX and regretted it within 6 months. EDIT: WHY IS THE FORUM REMOVING ALL OF MY PARAGRAPHS AND FORMATTING?

[Captain Sierra]

RAM is currently irrelivent given that KSP is, to my knowledge, still a 32 bit executable. The devs are probably going to Unity 4.2 with .22 and that Unity is 64 bit so we can expect KSP to go 64 bit as of version .22. basically, anything over 4GB is more than KSP can ever use until next update, which lets it use up to either 8 or 16 (not 100% sure). I have 8GB and my comp was a dedicated gaming laptop (ironic right?).

[pa1983]

Its pretty irrelevant that KSP is 32bit and by it self limited to 2Gb. The fact that the OS will use ram for other stuff. You dont put 2Gb of ram in a machine because your program dont use more then 2Gb. First off you have a ton of processes running all requiring ram.

In a modern OS the ram serves as a Level 4 cache more or less under the OS control. If the the hard drive was the ram instead then the Ram would be the equivalent of the processors cache. What all modern OS will do and have done for some time is caching pages in ram. Be it disk space or ram memory is divided in to pages. If you access a file on your hard drive if there is space the OS will cache it in ram even if you close it. Next time you open it if its still in ram the OS will retrieve it from there and not the hard drive. Thats whey programs and files open quicker on machines with a ton of ram compared to low end machines with 4-6Gb of ram that more often have to flush pages to the hard drive.

I have 32Gb of ram, I can open a program the next day and it starts quicker to day then yesterday because its still cached in ram.

Even the new build I made for my parents have 16Gb of ram, 1Gb dedicated to the HD4000 GPU in the i7 3770 processor.

On could argue 8Gb would be enough but they will have that PC for 5 years at least and well 8Gb is minimum this days and easy to use up editing photos or doing anything medium heavy.

But that machine is extremely responsive with its SSD and RAM combo.

Advantage of disk cache or page cache, what ever you want to call it is to speed up the machine and hide the slow hard drives, network attached storage, optical media, usb drives etc etc as much as possible.

If you dont have ram for this and you dont have an OS for this you would basically be back at windows 95 days of computer responsiveness with the hour glass staring you in the face. Doing anything be it starting a program, opening a file would take ages EVERY time you did it just because the CPU sits around waiting for that slow hard drive with a access time of 15 000 000 CPU clock cycles. Even an SSD cant compare with RAM in access time so an SSD wont make ram irrelevant as page cache.

There is a big misconception that if you have enough ram for your program more ram wont make the computer faster. Well thats not true. Your program can load that file faster your working on or make changes to it faster and continue on with out delay.

Any modern OS will in many cases do the changes in ram to a file first then write the changes in the background. If the user requests the file before its written to the hard drive etc the copy will be retrieved from ram from the disk cache/page cache.

A big reasons for this misconception is windows. Windows shows ALL ram that is not used by programs but as page cache as free ram. Well its free in the sens that page cache dont have priority over programs when it comes to reserving ram. If a program needs ram it needs it so it can accentually run. But still that page cache needs to be flushed to the hard drive and that takes some time and will happen more often if you have little free ram so more ram is better or you just end up swapping and we all know how fun disk swap is right?

Can read more about it here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_cache

Edited September 13, 2013 by pa1983

[pa1983]

I have to nit-pick a bit here.

In terms of "killing" a CPU and breaking it in hardware terms, I generally agree with your post.

However, in terms of "killing" an overclock and resulting in an unstable system, temperature is the main culprit.

To overclock up to a frequency requires two things, a high enough CPU voltage for that frequency for that specific chip design, and sufficient cooling to prevent the chip from overheating at that voltage.

Electromigration is not going to cause an overlock to fail. Insufficient voltage for the frequency being attempted, and insufficient cooling will.

Electromigration is a factor once the overclock is established and it determines how the chip's life span is affected. The higher the overclock, the more you are taking off the chip's lifespan.

With settings achievable on consumer level hardware, I don't think even a heavy overclock will shave more then a year off the designed life span. (I have no links to back this up however.)

Typically, the design life span is 7 years. If my overclock reduces my life span to 6 years, that's perfectly fine by me.

D.

I think I just sad that didn't I?

Well running in to high temperatures before overclocking potential is reached is not the same problem and the ship was not designed with overclocking in mind either.

Either you get a processor with soder IHS or you remove the IHS and apply some real liquid metal.

http://www.liontech.se/PartDetail.aspx?q=p:4610247

That metal will solve that problem.

I have seen two test of it and I have also done the numbers, thermal past VS a liquid metal with conductivity similar to aluminum and well a stock i7 3770K would run about 10.5C cooler if I recall stock and running at about 150W overclock about 20C cooler.

There tests and my math matched 99%. Can find all the information needed on wikipedia for thermodynamics and specification for common thermal pasts on many web pages selling it. Some manufacturers of thermal past even have calculators where you can add say the die area of a CPU and get the estimated Delta T between CPU and heatsink or what ever else is interfacing with it.

But any way I dont use IVY or Haswell for overclocking. All my processors are soderd and those that where not back in the day I removed the IHS from. Was quite common practice to do on AMD K6-2 processors back in the day.

I also do very extensive testing and so fare no processor I have owned in the last 10 years or so have run in to temperature problems before the silicon hit its limits.

I usually run 24-32h prime95, two instances of intel linpack for at least two hours sense I use Hyper Threading that will stress the CPU a LOT more thats the reason an i5 clocks better then an i7 because an i7 can use its resources simultaneously more efficiently and as a results more transistors are working requiring more power so there is a bigger chance of instability with Hyper Threading on. But the gains with hyper threading is in the order of 10-60% in multi threaded programs so an extra 10% power use and a little lower overclocking potential is worth it if your using it for multi threaded programs. I also run 24h memtest86+. On should also run those test before overclocking. No point on overclocking if the stock system is unstable and that do happen. Crap motherboard, psu or ram.

Most people I speak with that overlcock dont test nearly good enough. many just plays a game and then will say there system is stable. Well how can they know? I would say 9 out of 10 rigs overclocked are unstable at least and it would not be hard to make them fail. I have made a lot of rigs fail even with little overclocking. Its not hard. My goal is Factory stability when overclocked so I run extensive tests and re run them.

The reason many but not all people hit 4.5Ghz etc is because they just dont test good enough. I run my processor at 4Ghz. 4.2Ghz it will require a lot more voltage to past intel linpack and its not worth it. But I can run it at 4.2 and run prime95 for as long as I want or one instant of intel linpack. But two and it will spit out errors randomly. And theres nothing like its stable if you can run your programs on it. If a test program fails its not stable, theres no in-between. Either a system will computer correctly or it wont. The question is not if its unstable but how unstable if it fails a test. A bit error can go unnoticed or it could crash the howl system. All depends on where it happens.

I have had it up to 4.4Ghz playing KSP no problems. Just wont pass stability tests for a longer period. Thing is eventually even KSP would cause it to fail. Just statistics.

[Expwnential]

Going back to the topic, I ordered my rig last night.

i7-4820K (I believe this was released this week)

128GB ADATA SP900 SATA-III 6.0Gb/s (Added a 500gb HDD too)

MSI X79A-GD45 Plus Intel X79 Chipset Quad Channel DDR3 ATX Mainboard w/ Winki 3, OC Genie II, 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, 3 Gen3 PCIe X16 & 4 PCIe X1

800 watt Power Supply

16 GB RAM 1333mhz

And I actually went for neither of the video cards I posted: AMD Radeon 7870

Topped it off with a liquid cooling system

Paid 1500 total, including 24" 1080p 2ms response monitor and a couple of other accessories under 50 bucks.

Was it worth it?

Edited September 14, 2013 by Expwnential

[pa1983]

i5 4670K would still be as fast in KSP, maybe a bit faster but theres nothing wrong with the i7 4820K. I dont know how it overclocks but it has a soder IHS from what I know so should be easy to cool. But make sure the Motherboard supports it out of the box. My ASUS board can be flashed from a USB memory stick even with out CPU, memory etc, only requires a PSU to flash it. MSI im not sure but if that motherboard was out before the new IVY-E well then its more then likely not to support it and even post. So one must make sure to either have a SB-E CPU available to flash or get a motherboard that supports it out of the box or can be flashed even if the board wont post.

The advantages of the i7 4820K for overclockers is the Soder IHS. Easier to keep temperatures down at high power outputs.

For power users the 4820K makes sens if you need a ton of ram or high memory bandwidth or a lot of PCI-E lains but not that much CPU performance so the LGA2011 is a platform for the I/O intensive user.

Im no real fan of the LGA1150 or older platforms mainly because the lack of PCI-E lanes but still for most users its enough and the processors are as fast per core performance or even a bit faster so unless you need more I/O, memory or cores LGA1150 will be good enough.

For a pure KSP PC an i5 4670K is the ultimate CPU. i7 4820K makes sense if you can overclock it a lot more.

2ms on a screen is usually gray to gray so its useless number and theres no standard to measure it. You only know if you have a good screen by looking at it and comparing it to other screens.

I prefer IPS panel and CCFL is actually better then LED in terms of spectrum.

800W PSU is way overkill. Could run that thing on a 450W PSU easy. I have 750W PSU and never see much over 400W from the wall during synthetic stress test on bot GPU and CPU and thats with a i7 3930K at 4Ghz and GTX570 and 32Gb of ram. Idle my computer pulls 130W overclocked from the wall and rarely over 300W load in games or programs.

Question is was it a good PSU? Seasonic is the best OEM and one of there 80+ gold rated or better PSU's is a good investment. Corsair sells the AX line for example that are made by Seasonic. I have stop using other brands and OEM's and Run Seasonic in 3 computers now ranging from 2-5 years old and still going strong and 5-7 year warranty is not bad either and efficient and dead silent to.

Cheap PSU's will break thats just a fact so paying a lot for a good one is worth it. They last longer and keeps the system stable and they come with a long warranty, 5-7 years.

1333Mhz ram is fine but last time I checked 1600Mhz didn't cost a dime more and the i7 4820k supports up to 1866Mhz to tough a bit overkill but theres realy no down side to faster memory other then a very small gain in performance often measured in 0.1% or less. But processors tend to have there cache and pref-etch etc matched to the accepted mainstream memory standard and that has been 1600mhz for a few years now so its usually the price performance sweet spot sens it do not cost more then any other DDR3 ram and it offers good performance.

And I personally would avoid those prebuilt liquid cooling system. Better to build one from quality parts one self. Pump can fail and they do make noise so quality is key there. The best heat pipe coolers are as good as those closed and ready to use kits and they require no pumps. Even satellites uses heat pipes for the same very reason, no power and a ton more reliable and heatpipes move heat very fast so there accentually very good. These closed and prebuilt 120-140mm liquid coolers dont impress me at all. Howl point of water cooling is removing heat from a small source and moving it to a big radiator. Unless the radiator is not much bigger then competitive air coolers theres realy no point. Airflow is pretty restrictive so they end up being a lot more noisy then say a good tower cooler with less densely spaced fins like a NH-D14. Water cooling needs a big radiator to make sense from a noise perspective and cooling performance advantage to justify the added cost.

But prebuilt Liquid coolers have advantages in cramped chassis where they make a good option. But I find them more to be a market ploy taking advantage of the "water is cooler then air" factor.

You still use air to remove the heat in the end so and heatpipes uses a liquid that is evaporating at low tempratures, boiling and its very efficient. Water is actually a poor heat conductor but it can hold a lot of energy.

It also hard to say what cooler fits you bill with out knowing what chassis you will use and what cooler the GFX card has. A well designed PC all these components must match for good cooling and noise performance.

I consider 120x240 rad to be minimum for water cooling to make sens.

But yea your PC will play KSP just fine at top of the line performance so it wont get much faster then that other then overclocking the processor. If it was just for KSP it was not the best price/performance option sense an i5 rig could probably do the job for almost half the cost with identical performance. If its for something else why not as long as your happy thats whats important.

I run the LGA2011 x79 platform my self so and Im happy with it but its probably the least cost effective platform for KSP. The latest build was an i7 3770 in an ITX case and it preforms stock as good as my i7 3930K @ 4Ghz in KSP but I did not build a 6 core machine for KSP. An i5 3570K or 4670K would preform just as good sense KSP wont use any of the advantages of the i7 CPU at all.

P.S. Dont take it all to negatively. Its just my opinions from my experience. That rig is sweet on its own, optimal for KSP or not. But sense the question was, what would the best hardware for KSP be thats the answer i compiled. I would easily use that i7 4820K in my filserver just to have a ton of ram so its not a bad CPU its plenty good

Edited September 14, 2013 by pa1983

[Leonov]

Why not take this over to the KSP Computer Building Megathread?