Hardware & Technical PC Spec - Advice required

[Madcowz]

Hi,

My youngest son is now hooked on Elite and I'd like to get him off my PC and onto his own.

It's his birthday soon and rather than have a party/presents etc he is putting the money towards a build and talks about it non-stop (Dad.. I know you've just been been jumped by an NPC and are getting your a*se kicked because you are a forum dad and need to "git gud" but can I ask a question about which processor I should get...)

Can anyone advise on the minimum specs of a PC that will run ED Horizons on a 23" monitor and be slightly future proof without breaking the bank and not have to have all the settings turned to low?

Many thanks.

 

[fitzsteve]

Have a look at the new AMD Ryzen CPU's they look very promising, you can get CPU/Motherboard/Ram bundles from Overclockers, Scan and similar. Another good site for components is eBuyer.

Pick a good quality case and PSU as they will last you a couple of internal upgrades, do NOT buy a cheap non branded PSU, it's a false economy.

As for Graphics Card entry level would be an NVidia GTX1060 or AMD RX480 and should serve you well, look at the 1070 if you want to run 1440p.

For case brands I highly recommend Coolermaster, Corsair and Antec, their cases are very nice to work with.

Consider a hybrid drive or separate SSD for OS and HDD for data as this will speed up loading and general OS operations.

The standard coolers that come with the new Ryzen chips look ok but you could consider an all in one liquid cooler, they make a build looks nice and tidy, I use the Corsair Hydro Coolers in my builds.

These days I will only use Crucial Ram, I've never had a issue with a Crucial stick but I've had to RMA many other brands such as Corsair and HyperX.

Finally good luck with the build, I assume you will build your own and not buy off the shelf? If you get stuck there's a wealth of knowledge on these boards.

 

[Gortron]

CPU wise you want a middle of the road i5 or perhaps look at the new AMD Ryzen 5 when they come out in a few months. Ram wise 8GB will do, 16GB is overkill at the moment IMHO but if you have the spar cash go for it.

As Fixsetev said, don't get an cheapo PSU, get something atleast Bronze rated not some unknown £30 job.

Graphics wise i'd go for a GTX1060 3GB or 6GB will be great for 1080p and even useable if not great with VR if you want it later (though i'd go for a 6GB if that is the plan). Anything more powerful is alot more expensive but the more you can afford to plonk in the better.

A system like this will be great for ED https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/cheap-intel-gaming-pc-next-day-delivery-uk-g35i Though i'd add a small SSD for the OS.

If you are going to build your own then keep an eye on Scans today only package deals https://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly#combodeals

 

[Zetta]

Personally I would get an Intel Pentium G4560 (2C/4T) for £60, add in whatever motherboard and RAM (8GB) to suit.
For a GPU, an AMD RX 470 (£160 or so)

It keeps your costs reasonably low while also allowing you to upgrade the CPU and GPU at a later date if required.

 

[The Chairmaker]

Personally I would get an Intel Pentium G4560 (2C/4T) for £60, add in whatever motherboard and RAM (8GB) to suit.
For a GPU, an AMD RX 470 (£160 or so)

It keeps your costs reasonably low while also allowing you to upgrade the CPU and GPU at a later date if required.

Dual core is pretty much dead now and does not meet Elite Dangerous minimum specification.

Anyone purchasing a gaming PC should be thinking quad core minimum Especially with more and more games requiring multi threading for optimal use.
The fact AMD are releasing Octa core chips and Intel will soon be releasing more mainstream heaxacore chips shows the way the market is going.

 

[MickyG1982]

Dual core is pretty much dead now and does not meet Elite Dangerous minimum specification.

Anyone purchasing a gaming PC should be thinking quad core minimum Especially with more and more games requiring multi threading for optimal use.
The fact AMD are releasing Octa core chips and Intel will soon be releasing more mainstream heaxacore chips shows the way the market is going.

Not with the G4560, while obviously not top tier it's perfectly capable of punching well above it's weight, at the moment it beats any 4+ core AMD CPU out by a large margin in most gaming applications. While I probably would have agreed with you if we were talking about any skylake pentium, this one has hyperthreading & that really does make all the difference.

Given that it is a very decent budget performer I would consider it the perfect starting point for a cheap build with direct access into Intels latest line of chips.

 

[Blackbeard]

Hi,

My youngest son is now hooked on Elite and I'd like to get him off my PC and onto his own.

It's his birthday soon and rather than have a party/presents etc he is putting the money towards a build and talks about it non-stop (Dad.. I know you've just been been jumped by an NPC and are getting your a*se kicked because you are a forum dad and need to "git gud" but can I ask a question about which processor I should get...)

Can anyone advise on the minimum specs of a PC that will run ED Horizons on a 23" monitor and be slightly future proof without breaking the bank and not have to have all the settings turned to low?

Many thanks.

For a slightly future proof gaming PC, you'd be looking somewhere between £600-£800. I'd go with the lowest spec/cheapest AMD Ryzen CPUs to start with for sure, they're definitely future proofed.

 

[Gortron]

Not with the G4560, while obviously not top tier it's perfectly capable of punching well above it's weight, at the moment it beats any 4+ core AMD CPU out by a large margin in most gaming applications. While I probably would have agreed with you if we were talking about any skylake pentium, this one has hyperthreading & that really does make all the difference.

Given that it is a very decent budget performer I would consider it the perfect starting point for a cheap build with direct access into Intels latest line of chips.

Yeah that G4560 is really good bang for buck. Although it isn't 4 core is does outperform AMD CPUs in most benchmarks I've seen, except heavily multi-threaded games like BF4 and Elite is supposed to take advantage of multithreading. Would be interesting to know if how people get on with it in ED being as it is supposedly below requirements (I'd imagine it is perfectly alright).

Scan do some good value systems based on it:

https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/ready-to-ship-intel-value-gaming-pcs
https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/cheap-intel-gaming-pc-next-day-delivery-uk-g20i

They would certainly be a good starting point to base a system on if on a tight budget. The one in the top link LN78254 is only £650 and comes with a 1060 3GB. Although the CPU might not be much good in the future it will take a 6th gen i5 i7 so it is reasonably future proof.

 

[Madcowz]

Thanks for all your replies.

I will digest them over the weekend.

I'm fairly ok at PC building unlike my ship flying but need to know what we can get away with for a low-ish end system that wouldn't be a disappointment for a 13 year old. Ideally he would just be doing homework on the PC and planning tidying the house but unfortunately apparently it needs to run games.

I'm currently running an i5 6600k/Asus Z170 mobo/8GB/GTX 970 and can play with some ok settings on a triple 23" monitor system at 5760x1080 using Nvidia "sometimes works properly" surround. I may upgrade some parts on this box and "sell" him the parts but so far it seems that prices have jumped considerably since I built this.

Will keep on digging and looking at the Ryzen. I see the 7 has just broken some records but not everyone has a liquid nitrogen set up handy...

https://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/news/article.php?storyid=16183

Any and all advice welcome.

Thanks,

Heds

 

[MickyG1982]

Thanks for all your replies.

I will digest them over the weekend.

I'm fairly ok at PC building unlike my ship flying but need to know what we can get away with for a low-ish end system that wouldn't be a disappointment for a 13 year old. Ideally he would just be doing homework on the PC and planning tidying the house but unfortunately apparently it needs to run games.

I'm currently running an i5 6600k/Asus Z170 mobo/8GB/GTX 970 and can play with some ok settings on a triple 23" monitor system at 5760x1080 using Nvidia "sometimes works properly" surround. I may upgrade some parts on this box and "sell" him the parts but so far it seems that prices have jumped considerably since I built this.

Will keep on digging and looking at the Ryzen. I see the 7 has just broken some records but not everyone has a liquid nitrogen set up handy...

https://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/news/article.php?storyid=16183

Any and all advice welcome.

Thanks,

Heds

I'd say, something in the region of this for a budget build:

Pentium G4560 £55
B250 Motherboard £66
500-600W PSU £58
8GB DDR4 2400 £63
1TB Hard Drive £43
DVD RW £14
Gaming Case (with Fans Etc) £41
Oh & not forgetting the GPU £140

That is a decently specced budget gamer for around £480 plus the cost of an Operating system (£82)

It'll beat any current generation AMD rig, even their current top end 8 Core rigs in most situations (We'll have to see with Ryzen).

Your current i5 would run perfectly in that Motherboard too, should you decide to upgrade at a later date & the motherboard itself can take everything up to the latest & greatest kaby lake i7 (as can yours). As a starter build you would be pushed to do much better for the money. Though, as always, there is wiggle room especially if you have a retired PC that could donate a part or two.

[video=youtube;H-aP0JqJkJ0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-aP0JqJkJ0[/video]

 

[Gortron]

I'd say, something in the region of this for a budget build:

Pentium G4560 £55
B250 Motherboard £66
500-600W PSU £58
8GB DDR4 2400 £63
1TB Hard Drive £43
DVD RW £14
Gaming Case (with Fans Etc) £41
Oh & not forgetting the GPU £140

That is a decently specced budget gamer for around £480 plus the cost of an Operating system (£82)

It'll beat any current generation AMD rig, even their current top end 8 Core rigs in most situations (We'll have to see with Ryzen).

Your current i5 would run perfectly in that Motherboard too, should you decide to upgrade at a later date & the motherboard itself can take everything up to the latest & greatest kaby lake i7 (as can yours). As a starter build you would be pushed to do much better for the money. Though, as always, there is wiggle room especially if you have a retired PC that could donate a part or two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-aP0JqJkJ0

Sounds like a good build to me.

@OP Why not buy the bits above and give them to him to turn into a PC? Would be a pretty awesome way to learn how computers work!

 

[jmg]

Hi,

My youngest son is now hooked on Elite and I'd like to get him off my PC and onto his own.

It's his birthday soon and rather than have a party/presents etc he is putting the money towards a build and talks about it non-stop (Dad.. I know you've just been been jumped by an NPC and are getting your a*se kicked because you are a forum dad and need to "git gud" but can I ask a question about which processor I should get...)

Can anyone advise on the minimum specs of a PC that will run ED Horizons on a 23" monitor and be slightly future proof without breaking the bank and not have to have all the settings turned to low?

Many thanks.

I just built out a system for my daughter that runs SC and ED. I spec'ed out a "minimum" system, and a "over the top" system. I ended up going with "over the top," but the "minimum system" I thing was well under $1k, and would have been capable of easily running ED at full settings.

The three parts I think you want to focus on the most are the graphics card, the processor, and the drive.
for biggest bang for your buck, I'd focus on an nvidia 1060, an i3 ... maybe an i5 if you can budget it. As for the drive, I'm a huge fan of m.2 nvme, but they can start getting expensive, so I'd just go with a normal SATA ssd.

Anyway, I can list a bunch of parts, but maximum PC actually has a decent budget build guide... take a look.. I wouldn't use it as a bible, but rather as a good starting point:

http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-build-guide-budget-gaming-pc/

 

[Madcowz]

I'm a huge fan of m.2 nvme, but they can start getting expensive, so I'd just go with a normal SATA ssd.

I'm quite partial to U.2. Recently dropped a PCIe 3.0 750 Series into a build for someone but the boy will be getting a bog standard SSD like normal people.

@OP Why not buy the bits above and give them to him to turn into a PC? Would be a pretty awesome way to learn how computers work!

And he will be building it himself. No better way to learn. He's doing a lot of the research himself just now, I pointed him towards Tom's Hardware and he's been speaking to friends who have also built their own machines. I firmly believe in learning to do something for yourself.

So, GPU wise, a GTX 1050 or 1060 is a good entry level for Elite?

 

[fitzsteve]

So, GPU wise, a GTX 1050 or 1060 is a good entry level for Elite?

Should do, I played just fine on my old media PC (with Horizons too) on a 2gb GTX660, mid-high settings @1080p

PC was modest spec, i5 3570k & 8gb Ram.

 

[MickyG1982]

I'm quite partial to U.2. Recently dropped a PCIe 3.0 750 Series into a build for someone but the boy will be getting a bog standard SSD like normal people.



And he will be building it himself. No better way to learn. He's doing a lot of the research himself just now, I pointed him towards Tom's Hardware and he's been speaking to friends who have also built their own machines. I firmly believe in learning to do something for yourself.

So, GPU wise, a GTX 1050 or 1060 is a good entry level for Elite?

If you can afford it I would go for the 1060 (preferably the 6 Gb model), it will be bottlenecked by the CPU initially, on some games, but provides performance levels somewhere between the 970 & the 980 (ultra settings at 1080p would not be unthinkable). But, if you did decide to upgrade your own rig & just happened to have a spare i5 floating about...

The 1050Ti is roughly equivalent to my own GTX 960 in terms of performance which, on my rig, plays with almost everything on high and usually sits around 50-60 fps. You should get better performance than that with ease on a G4560, I would expect 60fps on high to ultra settings with the 1050Ti (4Gb) at 1080p.

 

[Dirtbird]

I think you'll be quite pleased with the suggestions given here. Despite appearances, ED runs quite well on many different specification machines, and you don't need a killer rig to enjoy the game. I play on two systems, one at home and one at the office. The office one is a mini-ITX Skylake i7 with a GTX 1060 6GB and NVMe SSD and it is very smooth and the frame rate very rarely drops below 60 with the settings at max (1080p). At home, the rig is much more modest, being an i3-3240 with a Radeon 7770 with only 1GB video RAM and a regular HDD. It's running 720p but that's because our TV is an older plasma model.

The home rig runs well, apart from the 5 second pauses to switch to the system or galaxy map. Frame rates are mostly 50 at medium-high settings with some occasional drops to 35 or so while approaching or driving around on planets, or when you're very close to the mail slot of a space station. I've never found the CPU to be a limiting factor, probably because the graphics card is much more of an issue. Nevertheless, general flight and combat, even in dense RES is smooth on this low end rig from 2012.

Basically, almost anything new you buy now as long as you don't cheap out too much on the graphics card or CPU. Spend a little more money on things that can last many generations of PC, like the case and power supply.

 

[Garybee]

These suggestions (for GPUs) are all considerably faster than the recommended specifications that are shown on the 'frontier store'. Are the recommendations there inadequate?

"RECOMMENDED PC SPECIFICATIONS:
OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K Quad Core CPU or better / AMD FX 4350 Quad Core CPU or better
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 770 / AMD Radeon R9 280X or better
Network Broadband Internet Connection
Hard Drive: 8 GB available space"

 

[fitzsteve]

These suggestions (for GPUs) are all considerably faster than the recommended specifications that are shown on the 'frontier store'. Are the recommendations there inadequate?

"RECOMMENDED PC SPECIFICATIONS:
OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K Quad Core CPU or better / AMD FX 4350 Quad Core CPU or better
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTX 770 / AMD Radeon R9 280X or better
Network Broadband Internet Connection
Hard Drive: 8 GB available space"

I think that needs updating to be honest, maybe fine for the core game but Horizon's is a bit more demanding.

I would say a 970 is recommend spec GPU. Those old CPU's probably still ok, my old i7 3770 is more than quick enough and I'm gaming on a 970 on my media PC, it's not quite quick enough for sustained 60fps with Ultra @1080/vsync but most of the time it's there. I dropped it to 'high' as FPS drops pee me off.

 

[proffrink]

Price drops are incoming on the 10' series in the next couple of months. I know everyone infuriatingly says to 'wait' all time time, but this may be the moment to do so if you want to grab a cheap 1070. The 1080s have already dropped by $150.

 

[Ren 'Space Madness' Hoek]

Hey man. You'd do best to wait a few months for the Ryzen CPUs and Vega graphics cards to drop. If you want to buy sooner, consider the following.

CPU: Pentium G4560 (two cores, hyperthreaded, runs at 3.5 Ghz, dirt cheap [50ish pounds, 60ish USD]). Close to an i3.
GPU: 1060 3GB, or 1050ti 4GB. The 1060 would be a better option, but you can save a bit of cash going with the 1050ti.

Also, buy a decent PSU, and a Motherboard that'll allow upgrading (these two will save money down the track when you want to upgrade).

/initiateoldmanrant/ I remember when we could play Elite on our Apple 2-Es with 64Kbs of RAM! /endoldmanrant/