Hardware & Technical Computer Build to run Elite Dangerous

Squicker

S
Dr Wookie said:
EDIT 2: wow, that Batwing thingy looks horrendous :D! One of the criteria that I have is it doesn't look like it's aimed at a 14 year old! It's also kinda big... I may have another move coming up soon.
Click to expand...

Agreed, ghastly looking thing. Those cases are the equivalent of kids in the UK who put neon lights under their 1.2 litre Ford Fiesta. PC's are utlity items and should be discreet.

But subtle cases can be had!
 

kilvenny

kilvenny
:smilie::smilie:
I have a 14 year old, so I just purchased a Vibox with lots of blue lights everywhere. Its a boy racers dream. Under the hood should cope with ED, I7, SSD and a GTX760 but I over specified the power supply and cooling so it should be easy to drop something more meaty in.
 

TheDarkKnight

TheDarkKnight
I have a system that can run Elite now but I am getting ready for Star Citizen.

As a tip always spend a bit more money on a better graphics card rather than a more expensive CPU if you want to do a lot of gaming. The graphics card is the real muscle when it comes to gaming the CPU is just there to organise.

Unless you are going to do graphical design or a lot of multitasking then anything above 16GB, or even 8Gb, is wasted. 16 is the top really.

Do not worry too much about the bandwidth etc on memory. The difference between 1600 and higher is not that much. It is a trade off between how much it can handle and at what speeds. While higher bandwidth memory can handle more it gets slower doing it. So normally 1600/1800 is fine.

Also go for a water cooling kit like the H80 from corsair for your CPU. As a kit it comes ready made and setup. All you need to do it attach it to the CPU and back of case and you are done. It is just like fitting a normal fan but it has the advantage of not throwing hot air back in to the case but venting it out the back of the PC. Overall it is healthier for the entire system.

Always make sure that you have a good amount of air flow through the PC. You want the pressure to be just so that it sucks the warm air out. As an example I have 2 fans sucking in and 3 out. It just helps with the flow across the CPU and graphics card.

Also make sure that the back of the PC has a lot of ventilation. Modern Graphics cards, while generating some heat in the case, vent most of there heat via the external port on the card itself right out the back of the PC. With little ventilation it gets warm fast in the area.

Also keep your filters on the case cleaned, if you have them, and open the case at least once a month and vacuum or air clean the case. Dust is your enemy.

As for my planned system the only changes I will make will be.

Intel i7 4770K CPU
Asus Z87 Pro Motherboard.
Corsair H100i CPU Watercooler
EVGA GTX780Ti OC (or better if a newer card gets released)
16GB DDR3 - Already have
 

kilvenny

kilvenny
Darknight - agree totally. I was starting from scratch again and factoring in that my hands aren't what they were, so wanted to have the basis of a machine that will last a few years with a gpu upgrade which I can just about manage.
 

Pyros

P
Squicker said:
Agreed, ghastly looking thing. Those cases are the equivalent of kids in the UK who put neon lights under their 1.2 litre Ford Fiesta. PC's are utlity items and should be discreet.

But subtle cases can be had!
Click to expand...

PC are utility? I beg to differ. If they were, at least to me, I'd have a rather practical and cheap beige case with very value for money (and boring) items, quite under-powered but "good enough".:cool:

Consoles are utility items. PC may be (the one for work), but may not be.

Precisely in the cases PCs are not utility items is where they must have good designs - no neon lights and other tasteless things.

Whats next? that cars are utility? :D
 

Squicker

S
Pyros said:
PC are utility? I beg to differ. If they were, at least to me, I'd have a rather practical and cheap beige case with very value for money (and boring) items, quite under-powered but "good enough".:cool:

Consoles are utility items. PC may be (the one for work), but may not be.

Precisely in the cases PCs are not utility items is where they must have good designs - no neon lights and other tasteless things.

Whats next? that cars are utility? :D
Click to expand...

Cars can never be utility! Cars are objects of splendidness.

Actually, I think perhaps I used the wrong term there. I am trying to say that, whilst PCs are of course awesome, they are functional items, not attempts at art that must have flashing lights and be shrouded in neon etc.

In fairness, this is of course my personal opinion and the functionality of a PC would not be lessened by draping it in neon. I actually have a fairly nice blue LED fan in my case, when I am feeling wild and a bit edgy I turn that on.
 
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Sparticus

Sparticus
Squicker said:
Cars can never be utility! Cars are objects of splendidness.

Actually, I think perhaps I used the wrong term there. I am trying to say that, whilst PCs are of course awesome, they are functional items, not attempts at art that must have flashing lights and be shrouded in neon etc.

In fairness, this is of course my personal opinion and the functionality of a PC would not be lessened by draping it in neon. I actually have a fairly nice blue LED fan in my case, when I am feeling wild and a bit edgy I turn that on.
Click to expand...

My Case is Matt black - nothing fancy on the outside - as it's just a functional box to hold all the goodies on the inside.


And these are the rusty innards .

What message? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!

 

Dr Wookie

Dr Wookie
Heh, I did spend a good deal of time looking at various options, and that build that erimus showed did get serious consideration. But then I saw that the x51 is designed to go through a home theatre (and mine is fantastic). So I could try it out with my other computer stuff (photoshop etc) and either use that or keep on with my laptop. So I pulled the trigger on the x51. Thanks for all the suggestions guys, I did consider all of them, including KING5TON's warning :). Another deciding factor is that the build it yourself sites had January deliveries for the builds I was looking at, possibly missing out on much of the alpha. So I am considering the extra 100 quid or so premium as ED tax :p! Amazon delivers my x51 tomorrow. Depeding on ergonomics, I might also save on a monitor and speakers, which would probably eat up the premium :).
 
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HaiderGill

H
TheDarkKnight said:
I have a system that can run Elite now but I am getting ready for Star Citizen.

As a tip always spend a bit more money on a better graphics card rather than a more expensive CPU if you want to do a lot of gaming. The graphics card is the real muscle when it comes to gaming the CPU is just there to organise.

Unless you are going to do graphical design or a lot of multitasking then anything above 16GB, or even 8Gb, is wasted. 16 is the top really.

Do not worry too much about the bandwidth etc on memory. The difference between 1600 and higher is not that much. It is a trade off between how much it can handle and at what speeds. While higher bandwidth memory can handle more it gets slower doing it. So normally 1600/1800 is fine.

Also go for a water cooling kit like the H80 from corsair for your CPU. As a kit it comes ready made and setup. All you need to do it attach it to the CPU and back of case and you are done. It is just like fitting a normal fan but it has the advantage of not throwing hot air back in to the case but venting it out the back of the PC. Overall it is healthier for the entire system.

Always make sure that you have a good amount of air flow through the PC. You want the pressure to be just so that it sucks the warm air out. As an example I have 2 fans sucking in and 3 out. It just helps with the flow across the CPU and graphics card.

Also make sure that the back of the PC has a lot of ventilation. Modern Graphics cards, while generating some heat in the case, vent most of there heat via the external port on the card itself right out the back of the PC. With little ventilation it gets warm fast in the area.

Also keep your filters on the case cleaned, if you have them, and open the case at least once a month and vacuum or air clean the case. Dust is your enemy.

As for my planned system the only changes I will make will be.

Intel i7 4770K CPU
Asus Z87 Pro Motherboard.
Corsair H100i CPU Watercooler
EVGA GTX780Ti OC (or better if a newer card gets released)
16GB DDR3 - Already have
Click to expand...


Fast memory, going mad over the cpu makes no difference beyond a point to games. A faster graphics card and higher speed monitor i.e. 120Hz refresh rate will make the biggest difference.

With AMD card generally an aftermarket graphics cooler can help you overclock and reach the full potential of the card: -
http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/index.php?lid=1&cid=17&id=73&tab=1

http://www.alpenfoehn.de/index.php/en/uebersicht-vga-cooler/14-vga-kuehler/22-peter-79xx-edition


One of these will be added in time for ED go-live party...
 

tsh

T
HaiderGill said:
Fast memory, going mad over the cpu makes no difference beyond a point to games. A faster graphics card and higher speed monitor i.e. 120Hz refresh rate will make the biggest difference.
Click to expand...

Indeed. I opted for a 2 below top end AMD CPU, and a R9 290 (cheapest with 4GB of RAM). This has given me what looks like close to the top-end benchmark results at what I think is a reasonable cost trade-off...

Having experienced the noise of the reference cooling on the 290, an aftermarket cooler will come - but I'm sure I'll be able to play alpha even with the card backed off a little...
 

Mazhurg

Mazhurg
tsh said:
Indeed. I opted for a 2 below top end AMD CPU, and a R9 290 (cheapest with 4GB of RAM). This has given me what looks like close to the top-end benchmark results at what I think is a reasonable cost trade-off...

Having experienced the noise of the reference cooling on the 290, an aftermarket cooler will come - but I'm sure I'll be able to play alpha even with the card backed off a little...
Click to expand...

Sorely waiting on the after market / cooler on the R290. Not necessarily for E: D as it may be an overkill but for SC (where I'm looking at a crossfire setup).

:)
 

TheDarkKnight

TheDarkKnight
HaiderGill said:
Fast memory, going mad over the cpu makes no difference beyond a point to games. A faster graphics card and higher speed monitor i.e. 120Hz refresh rate will make the biggest difference.

With AMD card generally an aftermarket graphics cooler can help you overclock and reach the full potential of the card: -
http://www.gelidsolutions.com/products/index.php?lid=1&cid=17&id=73&tab=1

http://www.alpenfoehn.de/index.php/en/uebersicht-vga-cooler/14-vga-kuehler/22-peter-79xx-edition


One of these will be added in time for ED go-live party...
Click to expand...

It is basically what I said. High end graphics card, middle of the road CPU and memory. That is all that is needed for a basic good gaming rig.
 

Minti2

Deadly, But very fluffy...
Minti2
Sparticus said:
I guess because the case is a NZXT H630 Case.



Let's hope it performs :)
Click to expand...

and i probably could do with wearing glasses! :eek:

It looks the business inside, did you post your specs before? i really am to lazy to go back several pages to look, i cant get through all the threads as it is! lol ;)
 

Majere

Majere
Alpha specs - revised

Direct X 11
Quad Core CPU ( 4 x 2Ghz is a reasonable minimum)
2 GB System RAM (more is always better)
DX 10 hardware GPU with 1GB video ram
Internet connection
 

Dr Wookie

Dr Wookie
By the way, my new machine has a 3D mark firestrike rating of 3983, compared with my 1057 for my laptop. E:D should be 3 times more buttery smooth than before :D
 

Black Omega

Black Omega
Well I'm going to be using a modified Mac running Windows under bootcamp until the Mac version comes out. So i'll soon see if i get any issues :S

MacPro 5.1
W3680 @ 3.3ghz
7 Systems GTX480
24gb ram

Just wondering if im going to need to upgrade from XP?
 

DavidTCB

D
APPLE MAC Help Please

I am hoping that I can get some opinions on what the currently known recommended PC specs [For Alpha] would be equivalent to in an APPLE MAC.

I have little understanding of all the specifications being quoted by everyone here - and zero as to how these would translate in to what would be needed in a Mac to efficiently play this game.

The reason is that I use a Mac as my music hi fi [server] system and need and want to update this now, not in six month -- preferably.

The thing is that for playing music I don't need a top level graphics card nor even the fastest processing speed but if it would work to get a slightly better Mac so I can also use that to play ED then I would like to do so.

For the purpose of playing music I only need a Mac Mini, say with Intel HD Graphics 4000 -- but I have no doubt this integrated card would not be sufficient and I assume also insufficient would be the Intel Iris Pro graphics card in the base iMac 21".

So looking to see is it worthwhile / will it work if I go the extra step up [or two] in iMacs.

And finally to the point ...

1/ Firstly, I would like to hear opinions on will a Mac be just as good as a PC in playing this game - either as a Mac program, or even as a PC program running Windows via 'bootcamp' [something I am yet to even try!!]

2/ If a Mac is fine what specs/model do I need/should I be getting? {I don't want to be spending 4k on a new Mac Pro!}

3/ Do the following specs for a 21" iMac look like they would be ample for ED?

--- 2.9GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor (Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz) with 6MB L3 cache

or --- 3.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz).

With --- NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.

Or would something like either of the following be considered essential

--- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M graphics processor with 2GB of GDDR5 memory

or --- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB of GDDR5 memory ... ?
 
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