Hardware & Technical Computer Build to run Elite Dangerous

[Patrick_68000]

as space is essentially empty!

Until it does so has the planetary landings

 

[HaiderGill]

Yes, one thing I used to get with the 2 SLI 580's was micro-stuttering, but that's gone with the 780. Also, I have a 120Hz monitor and last gen games will hit a constant 120FPS. Batman Arkum City in 3DVision is running at 80FPS (evidently it could go to 160 non-3D), for example. Even the majestic looking Tomb Raider 2013 in 3DVision was running well over 50 most of the time with everything on, so ED should be very fast, as space is essentially empty!

I concur with you on that, my Panasonic Plasma TV can 120Hz and games are very noticeably smoother & faster - Dirt3 and PES mainly. Unfortunately the LCD IPS monitor can only handle 60Hz...

 

[Zieman]

Help!

I went crazy & squandered all of my hard-earned, slowly accumulated little pile of money on a new computer

Fractal Design Refine R4 Titanium grey
Corsair AX860i PSU
4 x Fractal Design R2 140mm extra case fan
Asus Z87-PRO
i7 4770K (Haswell) 3,5 GHz
Corsair Hydro H90 (watercooling for LGA1150)
Kingston HyperX Beast 2400 16 GB (2 x 8 GB)
Asus GTX 780 DC2OC 3 GB
Kingston HyperX 3K 240 GB SSD
WD Caviar Black 2 TB
Asus BW-16D1HT Blu-ray RW
Asus Xonar DX-XD Pci-e soundcard
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit (OEM)

This build should last me another 5+ years, maybe even more, and hopefully with less parts swapping than my previous build. I didn't go for top-notch graphics this time, it is easy to upgrade later if/when my budget allows that (I suspect that GTX 760 is guite good "bang-per-buck" -wise). This rig should run even the Alpha E: D without breaking a sweat on lowly 1920x1080, hopefully at leas at moderate 'bells & whistles' enabled...

On my current PC I've had to swap the PSU once (been very happy with the Corsair unit I now have). I've also upgraded GPU twice, CPU once & memory once + installed more efficient CPU heatsink/fan.

Now waiting with sweaty palms for the stuff, due to arrive within a few weeks.
EDIT: dropped half of the RAM to afford GTX 780 instead of the 760 unit, also swapped the PSU to a bit more powerful & efficient model

 

[Bikky]

I5 quad core 3.2ghz @ 4.2Ghz
16Gb DDR3 Corsair RAM
64Gb SSD OS
500GB 7200 RPM 8ms 16MB Cache

All 1yr old

Nvidia 768Mb DDR5 GTX 9800 (OC'd)
3year old, but will be looking into a 760-880 model come February (once I've tested against existing spec)

all wrapped up in a Gigabyte 3d Aurora
Oh and 2 x 19inch monitors

 

[KING5TON]

Help!

I went crazy & squandered all of my hard-earned, slowly accumulated little pile of money on a new computer

Fractal Design Refine R4 Titanium grey
Corsair TX750 v2 Enthusiast
2 x Fractal Design R2 140mm extra case fan
Asus Z87-PRO
i7 4770K (Haswell) 3,5 GHz
Corsair Hydro H90 (watercooling for LGA1150)
Kingston HyperX Beast 2400 32 GB (4 x 8 GB)
Asus GTX 760 2 GB
Kingston HyperX 3K 240 GB
WD Caviar Black 2 TB
Asus BW-16D1HT Blu-ray RW
Asus Xonar DX-XD Pci-e soundcard
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit (OEM)

This build should last me another 5+ years, maybe even more, and hopefully with less parts swapping than my previous build. I didn't go for top-notch graphics this time, it is easy to upgrade later if/when my budget allows that (I suspect that GTX 760 is guite good "bang-per-buck" -wise). This rig should run even the Alpha E: D without breaking a sweat on lowly 1920x1080, hopefully at leas at moderate 'bells & whistles' enabled...

On my current PC I've had to swap the PSU once (been very happy with the Corsair unit I now have). I've also upgraded GPU twice, CPU once & memory once + installed more efficient CPU heatsink/fan.

Now waiting with sweaty palms for the stuff, due to arrive within a few weeks.

Hope your going to overclock that i7 since you bought the expensive cooler. I've got my 3570K cranked up to 4.4GHZ on air.

 

[Zieman]

Hope your going to overclock that i7 since you bought the expensive cooler. I've got my 3570K cranked up to 4.4GHZ on air.

Yup, that's the idea. Slight/moderate OC with (hopefully more than) adequate cooling = me happy & long-lived PC .

Longevity & scalability were the reasons behind opting for faster RAM & middle -range Mobo instead of a budget one + high/middle range GPU instead of high-end.

So, I think the system is quite well blanced, and first bottleneck will be the Graphics card. And that is easy to upgrade, once I feel the benefits will outweigh the cost of new GPU.

 

[yellowbert]

Sounds like we have built very similar Rigs. Mine is just finished and looks like this:

Fractal Design R4 (all HDD cages removed and 2 extra fans for better cooling)
ASUS maximus VI Hero motherboard
i7 4770k
16Gb GSkills RAM
Seidon 240M CPU cooler (mounted at top of case)
ASUS Gtx780 3Gb OC edition graphics card
Corsair HX850 PSU
Samsung 840pro 256Gb SSD
Seagate Barracuda 1Tb HDD
ASUS DVD drive

It's currently overclocked at 4.2Ghz which shouldn't stress anything too much and it seems to run all the current games at max settings (1080p) nicely so I'm hoping for a nice ED experience but only time will tell.

 

[NeilF]

I will be buying a NEW PC after Elite Comes out - specs based on Players Feedback - my current PC is 5 yrs Old.

Snap snap & snap...

I actually suspect my 5yr old machine will run it fine!

 

[Maxeren]

Finally bought a Asus GTX780 for my 3 year old rig

i7 950 3.07Ghz
ASUS P6X58D-E
OCZ 6 GB DDR3 1333MHz (3x2) (would be next upgrade)
Intel 320 Series 120GB SSD
Gigabyte 275GTX
Corsair CMPSU-850HXEU 850W PSU
SilverStone Fortress 2 Black

 

[Hellhawk666]

Finally bought a Asus GTX780 for my 3 year old rig

Way to go! I have the same card - you will not be disappointed.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

I finally upgraded my graphics card to take advantage of the NVIDIA price drops. The GTX780 was too rich for my blood, so I went with an MSI GTX770 Gaming edition for £245.99. I like to run my rig cool and quiet, which the MSI cards and coolers apparently do very well.

My set-up is now as follows:
Case: Fractal Design Define R4
PSU: BeQuiet! 680W
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme6 Z77
Processor: Core i5 3570k; Noctua NH-U12P SE
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz
GFX: MSI GTX770 Gaming 2048mb (not yet installed)
Storage: 128GB Samsung 830 pro (OS); 250GB Samsung 840 (Games); 1TB external HDD (plus more externals tucked away in draws!)
Sound: Roland Quad Capture (USB soundcard); KRK Rokit 5 (Studio monitors)
Input: Xbox360 wired gamepad; Microsoft Sidewinder X4 keyboard; Sharkoon Fireglider 7-button mouse; Roland A-300 Pro (USB Midi Keyboard)
Monitors: Samsung 23.6"; LG 17"

Think that's it! The GFX card has wiped out my finances until the next paycheck, when I'll probably get a cheap joystick to play about with during alpha. All in all though, I reckon I'm set up for alpha. When the new card comes, I'll move my old Radeon 7750 across to my previous rig, and then use that as a more modest test machine, in case that's helpful for Frontier's data gathering.

 

[Jenner]

I finally upgraded my graphics card to take advantage of the NVIDIA price drops. The GTX780 was too rich for my blood, so I went with an MSI GTX770 Gaming edition for £245.99. I like to run my rig cool and quiet, which the MSI cards and coolers apparently do very well.

My set-up is now as follows:
Case: Fractal Design Define R4
PSU: BeQuiet! 680W
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme6 Z77
Processor: Core i5 3570k; Noctua NH-U12P SE
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz
GFX: MSI GTX770 Gaming 2048mb (not yet installed)
Storage: 128GB Samsung 830 pro (OS); 250GB Samsung 840 (Games); 1TB external HDD (plus more externals tucked away in draws!)
Sound: Roland Quad Capture (USB soundcard); KRK Rokit 5 (Studio monitors)
Input: Xbox360 wired gamepad; Microsoft Sidewinder X4 keyboard; Sharkoon Fireglider 7-button mouse; Roland A-300 Pro (USB Midi Keyboard)
Monitors: Samsung 23.6"; LG 17"

Think that's it! The GFX card has wiped out my finances until the next paycheck, when I'll probably get a cheap joystick to play about with during alpha. All in all though, I reckon I'm set up for alpha. When the new card comes, I'll move my old Radeon 7750 across to my previous rig, and then use that as a more modest test machine, in case that's helpful for Frontier's data gathering.

That's the same mobo/cpu/ram setup as me! I've got two 680s in SLI for my gfx setup.

Love the PS name. Would be even cooler if it was like "Shut the F Up! 680W"

 

[Slawkenbergius]

That's the same mobo/cpu/ram setup as me! I've got two 680s in SLI for my gfx setup.

In which case, you win! Unfortunately, even if I wanted to get a second 770 down the line, I'm not sure my PSU is rated quite high enough. I guess it might be just about alright seeing as none of my other components are particularly power hungry. Come to think, I forgot to add my LG Blu-ray player to the specs list, as a rarely use optical media...

Love the PS name. Would be even cooler if it was like "Shut the F Up! 680W"

Yeah, beQuiet are really good. At the moment, my rig's quiet enough that my loudest component is my external HDD, followed by the passive hiss of my speakers! Only during the height of the English summer do my system fans kick in loud enough to be audible. I'm hoping the GFX card doesn't do too much to spoil that at idle, as my current one is passively cooled.

 

[Oss133]

Love the PS name. Would be even cooler if it was like "Shut the F Up! 680W"

I heard they wanted to open a factory in the UK but there were problems with the name. Etiquette required that it be changed to "Sorry, I hate to be a bother but I wonder if you could see your way clear to turning it down just a tad? Sorry. The neighbours, you know. Thanks awfully. Sorry."

 

[Jenner]

I heard they wanted to open a factory in the UK but there were problems with the name. Etiquette required that it be changed to "Sorry, I hate to be a bother but I wonder if you could see your way clear to turning it down just a tad? Sorry. The neighbours, you know. Thanks awfully. Sorry."

Then they realized how much money they'd save in printing costs by locating to the rude n' crude US.

 

[HaiderGill]

I have been growing mine over the weekend, chucked all the bits in a Fractal Design Define R4 case and added a Sandisk SSD 64GB.

Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Vapor-X @950MHz
Intel i-760 @3.6GHz
Enermax NAXN 650W PSU
Enermax ETS-t40tb heatsink & fan
Asus P7H55/USB3 motherboard
Crucial Ballistix Elite DDR-1600 8GB
Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 2TB HDD data + pagefile
Sandisk SSD 64GB OS
Lite-on Bluray burner
AOC i2367fh IPS LCD & 50inch Pany plasma
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Creative Labs hardware DTS encoder
Denon AVR-2808
5.1 Arcam Muso compact bookshelf speakers & Logo subwoofer
PS Dual-shock
MS Sidewinder Pro 2
MS Strategic Commander
PS Eye & Face-track

It's very quiet compared to the previous set-up. Now I will see how far I can push the GPU. I'm hoping I can push it over a GHz...

 

[Slawkenbergius]

I have been growing mine over the weekend, chucked all the bits in a Fractal Design Define R4 case

Nice to see there are a few other 'minifridge' owners out there.

 

[HaiderGill]

They are a very nice quality case. Really goes well with the black colour of the motherboard, PSU, cables. It is set off by the neon blue of the motherboard component heatsinks and the silver aluminium CPU heatsink and black fan. It was a toss up between the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1. I'm seeing how it runs, I've plugged all the supplied fans into the motherboard. I would like to add a http://www.prolimatech.com/en/products/detail.asp?id=1200&page=1 to the fan slot at the front firing to graphics card and one to the bottom firing up and have these controlled by the built-in fan controller. I want to overclock the 7950 Vapor-X to above 1.1GHz. So I want to cool the VRMs and the GPU. I feel GPU OC gives the biggest bang per buck of all OCing. If I can get it to hit the performance of a stock HD 7970 temps permitting that would be brilliant.

 

[Rogehans]

Define R4 are great cases I know I have one too!

 

[jabokai]

Define R4 are great cases I know I have one too!

Does the door fold back against the side of the case? I'm looking for a new one to replace my Antec P180 but need the door to fold right back, like this -