Hardware & Technical A PC spec for Horizons - some questions

Draven Darken

Draven Darken
I'm looking at the configuration below for a possible Windows gaming PC for Horizons and for video capture from the game for my "DarkenSpace" series. As it has been over ten years since I have looked at Windows PC hardware, I am very much in the dark about it in a number of areas, and would appreciate any input.

My goal is to run the game at 1080p (for now, since that's the resolution of my video series ... I simply don't have the Internet bandwidth to update 1440p episodes to YouTube) at maxed-out quality settings and with a sufficiently high frame rate to at least guarantee 30 fps in all scenarios (and hopefully closer to 60 fps). Eventually I'll probably get a 2k monitor, but I don't see myself ever going to 4k or a multi-monitor or VR setup (my eyes aren't that good, and looking around at multiple monitors or wearing a VR headset would make me dizzy due to inner ear issues). This PC will be pretty much exclusively a gaming and video capture system.


  • Mid-tower case, liquid cooled
  • MSI Z170A Gaming M9 ACK motherboard
  • Core i7 6700K 4x 4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turboboost)
  • 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980Ti
  • 16GB DDR4 Kingston 2666MHz (2 x 8GB)
  • 250 GB Samsung 850 Evo Series SSD primary OS drive
  • 4TB WD Digital Caviar Black game and video capture drive
  • 1000 watt Corsair RM1000 PSU
  • Windows 10 Home OS


My questions and concerns are:

Some people suggest that the older X99 chipset is a superior option to the Z170. As far as I can tell, this is primarily because of the X99 having more PCIe lanes, and the primary benefit of that seems to be for massively SLI GFX card combinations. As I said above, I have my doubts that I'll ever want to stack up multiple GFX cards, so that is why I am inclining toward the newer Z170 chipset and its support for newer, cooler running CPUs ... but am I missing something?

Will a single 6GB GTX 980 Ti give me the graphics quality and performance I am looking for at the same time as recording gaming sessions via ShadowPlay?

Will installing the game into a physical hard drive rather than an SSD make any significant difference in Horizons performance? (I'm not concerned about game startup time, just about in-game performance once things are loaded, and I cannot afford an SSD large enough to store games and video captures.)

Is a 1000w PSU sufficient for this configuration? Or maybe even overkill ... could I drop down to 850w without inviting problems?

I have read that an i5 CPU might be quite sufficient for Horizons, but as I said, I want to make sure I can simultaneously do video capture. And I also want to be able to run other games well that might be more CPU-bound, so my inclination is to go with the i7 CPU, since the price difference isn't huge.

I am assuming that 16GB of system RAM is sufficient for my current needs. I should be able to add more in the future easily enough if the need arises.

I'm not thrilled about some aspects of Windows 10, but I want to have the latest DirectX versions available for future games, so I'm under the impression that W10 is the way forward in that area. And I expect to use this system for quite a few years, so putting an already-aged Windows 7 on it seems like a bad idea.

Barring any unforeseen developments, I'd like to order this by sometime next week. Until then, any thoughts would be much appreciated!
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Personally I'd say you can save many many hundreds of pounds and still attain your goal. I've got an i5 4690K, 16Gb RAM, and a GeForce GTX 970, I'm running Horizons with all settings maxed out/Ultra on a 1920x1080 screen and I'm getting a steady 60fps everywhere, even on planet surfaces (n.b. I've set v-sync to fix some screen tearing). Oh, and I'm recording with ShadowPlay at the same time!

Draven Darken said:
I'm looking at the configuration below for a possible Windows gaming PC for Horizons and for video capture from the game for my "DarkenSpace" series. As it has been over ten years since I have looked at Windows PC hardware, I am very much in the dark about it in a number of areas, and would appreciate any input.

My goal is to run the game at 1080p (for now, since that's the resolution of my video series ... I simply don't have the Internet bandwidth to update 1440p episodes to YouTube) at maxed-out quality settings and with a sufficiently high frame rate to at least guarantee 30 fps in all scenarios (and hopefully closer to 60 fps). Eventually I'll probably get a 2k monitor, but I don't see myself ever going to 4k or a multi-monitor or VR setup (my eyes aren't that good, and looking around at multiple monitors or wearing a VR headset would make me dizzy due to inner ear issues). This PC will be pretty much exclusively a gaming and video capture system.


  • Mid-tower case, liquid cooled
  • MSI Z170A Gaming M9 ACK motherboard
  • Core i7 6700K 4x 4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turboboost)
  • 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980Ti
  • 16GB DDR4 Kingston 2666MHz (2 x 8GB)
  • 250 GB Samsung 850 Evo Series SSD primary OS drive
  • 4TB WD Digital Caviar Black game and video capture drive
  • 1000 watt Corsair RM1000 PSU
  • Windows 10 Home OS


My questions and concerns are:

Some people suggest that the older X99 chipset is a superior option to the Z170. As far as I can tell, this is primarily because of the X99 having more PCIe lanes, and the primary benefit of that seems to be for massively SLI GFX card combinations. As I said above, I have my doubts that I'll ever want to stack up multiple GFX cards, so that is why I am inclining toward the newer Z170 chipset and its support for newer, cooler running CPUs ... but am I missing something?
Click to expand...

Will a single 6GB GTX 980 Ti give me the graphics quality and performance I am looking for at the same time as recording gaming sessions via ShadowPlay?
Click to expand...

EASILY

Will installing the game into a physical hard drive rather than an SSD make any significant difference in Horizons performance? (I'm not concerned about game startup time, just about in-game performance once things are loaded, and I cannot afford an SSD large enough to store games and video captures.)
Click to expand...
The difference an SSD has made to startup is extraordinary. Not sure it'll make that much difference to running game tho.

Is a 1000w PSU sufficient for this configuration? Or maybe even overkill ... could I drop down to 850w without inviting problems?
Click to expand...
Probably overkill. For my rig (obviously lower spec than yours) I'm running with a 750KW supply and even that was to allow me room to manouevre in the future.

I have read that an i5 CPU might be quite sufficient for Horizons, but as I said, I want to make sure I can simultaneously do video capture. And I also want to be able to run other games well that might be more CPU-bound, so my inclination is to go with the i7 CPU, since the price difference isn't huge.
Click to expand...
i5 is working absolutey fine for me (remember, I'm doing video capture too) although I think FD have recommended an i7 for Horizons.

I am assuming that 16GB of system RAM is sufficient for my current needs. I should be able to add more in the future easily enough if the need arises.
Click to expand...
Again, working fine for me.

I'm not thrilled about some aspects of Windows 10, but I want to have the latest DirectX versions available for future games, so I'm under the impression that W10 is the way forward in that area. And I expect to use this system for quite a few years, so putting an already-aged Windows 7 on it seems like a bad idea.

Barring any unforeseen developments, I'd like to order this by sometime next week. Until then, any thoughts would be much appreciated!
Click to expand...

I balked at Windows 10 too, but you know what ... it's fine.

P.S. if you want to see how I came to this decision then my original thread where I too asked for advice (and received quite a lot) is over here ...

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=199124
 
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Draven Darken

Draven Darken
Alec Turner said:
Just re-reading my thread and you might find this little tool useful in helping you to choose the graphics card ...

http://wheeldecide.com/index.php?c1...time=5&width=&cols=&tcol=&weights=&x=122&y=17

:D
Click to expand...

Haha. :)

On the topic of scaling back my specs, I guess the way I am looking at things is that I always want to future-proof my computer purchases at least a bit. E.g., I don't want to "get by" with a 970 if it does the job for Horizons, only to find that I will need to upgrade it for ED season 3. I generally like to be "one step behind the bleeding edge" in my specs in order to save at least a little money ... hence no Titan GFX card for me right now, but I'm hoping the 6GB 980 Ti would be good for a while. I've also read that Horizons can use more than 4GB of video RAM in some planetary environments, which is why I am speccing out a 6GB video card. Similarly, I'd also want to run X-Plane 10 on high settings on this proposed system, and some aircraft can exceed 4GB of textures for that. I definitely should consider whether the PSU is overkill for a Z170 board and that GFX card, though ... I really have no clue about that, and I definitely don't want to find out later than I've underestimated my requirements.

Thanks for the comments and the thread link ... I'll take a look.

EDIT: I think my biggest question is the one you didn't respond to, about the board type (Z170 vs X99).
 
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Surfinjo

Surfinjo
I don't have much experience of AMD personally but I've been told this is well worth a look:


AMD FX-6 Six Core 6300 Processor | 3.5Ghz 6Mg cache
8GB DDR3 Memory | 1600Mhz
2TB Hard Drive + 120GB Solid State Drive |
AMD Radeon R7 370 2GB GDDR5 Graphics
22x DVD Writer
Novatech PowerStation 500W PSU (Non Modular)


£494.99 inc vat

OS additional.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/pc/range/novatechblacknta38.html
 

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE

Porina

Porina
The original proposed system is similar to my current build. Worst case I get around 45fps on planet surfaces at 3440x1440. Extrapolating that down, 100fps minimum should be possible at 1080p! I haven't tried it myself and I'm not in a good position to do so right now.

If you go budget X99 + 5820k, you can get it for a similar cost to upper mid range Z170 + 6700k. With overclocking the 5820k would offer more combined CPU power, at more power consumption. Also the X99 supports quad channel ram which might help in some situations. But ED is not a CPU heavy game and the 6700k is plenty. I keep debating on getting one just to play with for compute tasks but both bang for buck and performance per watt isn't there. If you really need a single as fast as it gets PC, consider it. I'd argue unless you know why you want X99, then Z170 is a safer choice. Likewise the higher end CPUs for X99, if you're spending that much, you need to know why you are doing so.

Consider a 2nd SSD for games/application storage. The Sandisk 960GB is often on sale for around £160, which isn't excessive for a build of this level. Still keep a rotating disk for bulk storage, and consider budget for something to backup files onto just in case. I work on the assumption that I want to keep two copies of everything, on different physical drives, preferably not on the same system at the same time.

If cash is tight, following might be a consideration. I don't know if the video tasks benefit from hyper-threading from the i7, but if not, save yourself some cash and get the i5-6600k instead as it a trivial overclock to the same clock levels as the standard i7.

The 1000W PSU is overkill. Roughly speaking figure on up to 300W or so for a single high end GPU, up to 100W for 6700k unless you try to overclock the nuts off it. Everything else isn't significant. How much headroom you want on the PSU is up to you. I went for an 850W with some toys on it although it is still overkill for my system. I'd say anything 600W+ is plenty assuming you're not going to drop a 2nd GPU in ever.
 

Draven Darken

Draven Darken
Porina said:
The original proposed system is similar to my current build. Worst case I get around 45fps on planet surfaces at 3440x1440. Extrapolating that down, 100fps minimum should be possible at 1080p! I haven't tried it myself and I'm not in a good position to do so right now.

If you go budget X99 + 5820k, you can get it for a similar cost to upper mid range Z170 + 6700k. With overclocking the 5820k would offer more combined CPU power, at more power consumption. Also the X99 supports quad channel ram which might help in some situations. But ED is not a CPU heavy game and the 6700k is plenty. I keep debating on getting one just to play with for compute tasks but both bang for buck and performance per watt isn't there. If you really need a single as fast as it gets PC, consider it. I'd argue unless you know why you want X99, then Z170 is a safer choice. Likewise the higher end CPUs for X99, if you're spending that much, you need to know why you are doing so.

Consider a 2nd SSD for games/application storage. The Sandisk 960GB is often on sale for around £160, which isn't excessive for a build of this level. Still keep a rotating disk for bulk storage, and consider budget for something to backup files onto just in case. I work on the assumption that I want to keep two copies of everything, on different physical drives, preferably not on the same system at the same time.

If cash is tight, following might be a consideration. I don't know if the video tasks benefit from hyper-threading from the i7, but if not, save yourself some cash and get the i5-6600k instead as it a trivial overclock to the same clock levels as the standard i7.

The 1000W PSU is overkill. Roughly speaking figure on up to 300W or so for a single high end GPU, up to 100W for 6700k unless you try to overclock the nuts off it. Everything else isn't significant. How much headroom you want on the PSU is up to you. I went for an 850W with some toys on it although it is still overkill for my system. I'd say anything 600W+ is plenty assuming you're not going to drop a 2nd GPU in ever.
Click to expand...

That's great information, thanks much! I will have extra drive bays available in the system, so I could and very likely would add more SSDs to it down the road as the price thereof continues to drop and the capacities go up, but I think for now I will probably stick with the specs above (I can always put ED on the 250GB SSD for now if I find that it makes a difference). But the PSU I do think I'm going to drop to an 850w (I still like the idea of having a little extra there, to help keep the heat and PSU stress down, so I probably wouldn't drop all the way to 600w). I don't plan to overclock either the CPU or the GPU ... I want a stable system that will last a while, so I prefer to spent a little more to get components that will give me the performance I want with their stock settings.
 

Porina

Porina
Technically speaking, your system will still likely be overclocked :) The officially supported ram speed by the CPU is 2133, so 2666 is already above that. Pretty much all GPUs are factory overclocked now and I'm not sure I've seen a higher end one offered for sale that wasn't. Also depending on the motherboard bios, chances are they'll give it a little overclock too. They can take the Intel Turbo a step further, and run all cores at the turbo speed which was meant for single core load. This can be turned off easily at least.

I wouldn't worry about these "little" overclocks as they tend to be pretty safe. It is only when you go more extreme that problems start arising. In various hardware testing, ram doesn't start getting fussy until you go above 3000 or so. I haven't really pushed my CPU clocks but 4.2 runs solid without high voltages. The GPU (Asus with reference cooler) also hasn't given any problems and I just leave it to do what it wants.
 

Porina

Porina
powerstress.jpg

Ok, I checked my PSU model, and it was 750W after all. Specifically the Corsair HX750i. This allows you to monitor what it is doing in Windows software by plugging into an internal USB port on the motherboard. For example, this is the power my system is taking when running Furmark to torture the GPU, and also software similar to Prime95 stress test to load CPU. So you can see things like power in and out (and therefore efficiency), voltage and currents on each rail. Also fan speed and temperature. Note it can run in a silent mode where the fan doesn't turn if it isn't too hot without. If I don't run anything at all, I'm around 60W in, 50W out idle at desktop.
 

Draven Darken

Draven Darken
Porina said:
Ok, I checked my PSU model, and it was 750W after all. Specifically the Corsair HX750i. This allows you to monitor what it is doing in Windows software by plugging into an internal USB port on the motherboard. For example, this is the power my system is taking when running Furmark to torture the GPU, and also software similar to Prime95 stress test to load CPU. So you can see things like power in and out (and therefore efficiency), voltage and currents on each rail. Also fan speed and temperature. Note it can run in a silent mode where the fan doesn't turn if it isn't too hot without. If I don't run anything at all, I'm around 60W in, 50W out idle at desktop.
Click to expand...

Nice. I've decided to go with an 850W model (also a Corsair, so I think I'll have access to the same type of monitoring).

By the way, as things have developed in a positive way today, I decided I didn't have to wait any longer after all, and have already placed the order for my new gaming/video capture system. Thanks to everyone who offered opinions, and I'll let you know how it works out!
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Draven Darken said:
By the way, as things have developed in a positive way today, I decided I didn't have to wait any longer after all, and have already placed the order for my new gaming/video capture system. Thanks to everyone who offered opinions, and I'll let you know how it works out!
Click to expand...

Woo Hoo! I can feel the excitment from here. Enjoy :)
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
Alec Turner said:
Interesting, although ... for £4000 wouldn't it be cheaper to spend £2000 on an even better spec'd gaming PC AND a very nice laptop?
Click to expand...

Undoubtedly.

Though I'm a wee bit more concerned with the thingie poking out the back!

Puts me in mind of a portable Transistor Radio I was given in the mid 60s. It was small, (about 1" x 2.5" x 5" designed to use PP3) but to get more than 10 mins out of it, it needed a battery that was about 3X the size.

It was expensive as well. I think it cost about £4.00.00.



GE1.jpg
300-shillings-coins.jpg
 

Porina

Porina
I'm not sure if it was this laptop I was reading about previously, but there's not exactly that many watercooled laptops are there? If I remember correctly, the cooling is in a dock, so you can only get that performance when docked.
 

Surfinjo

Surfinjo
Porina said:
I'm not sure if it was this laptop I was reading about previously, but there's not exactly that many watercooled laptops are there? If I remember correctly, the cooling is in a dock, so you can only get that performance when docked.
Click to expand...

Yep, that's basically it.

I have a laptop and use it occasionally. Such overheating as it does suffer from is largely down to its design. Putting the air intake on the base, making it almost impossible to clean out accumulated dust without dismantling the whole thing. Just two rather obvious points.

Surely, before they go making such a preposterous addon Laptop designers might think about some redesign?

Not really rocket science, but it does suggest that the objective is cache rather than practically.
 

Porina

Porina
If the air intake isn't on the base, where else are they going to put it? Edges are usually full of connectors or speaker outlets. The upper surfaces? I think it would suffice if they just give easier access to the fan. I just took apart my work laptop a moment ago. A single cover gives you access to the SSD, ram, wifi, wwan and the fan. Better than my personal laptop, which I can't access anything without breaking a warranty sticker.
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
If you intend to use the Oculus Rift later, you have the right configuration for the future and the next seasons of ED. Maybe to wait for the next generation of graphic card to come this year ?
 
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