Hardware & Technical Computer Build to run Elite Dangerous

Aleksej

Aleksej
Makasuro said:
Current System Specs:
• CPU: i7 2600K @ 4.4GHz
• Chipset: MSI P67A-GD65
• Memory: 8 gigs Corsair Vengeance 1600 DDR3 RAM 9,9,9,24,1T timings
• GPU: Asus GTX 570 OC'd 800/1600MHz/1910MHz
• HDD: WD Black 1Tb
• Soundcard: SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
• Monitor: 23.6" FHD Acer GD235Hz @ 120Hz
• PSU: Cooler Master Real Power Pro 650
• Headphones: Asus ROG Orion
• Keyboard:Corsair Vengeance K60
• Mouse: Logitech G5
• Gaming Accessories: Track IR 5 Pro / X52 HOTAS / Pro Flight Pedals

Specs for the new build I am putting together at the end of this year:
• CPU: i7 5960X
• Chipset: MSI X99 chipset
• Memory: Corsair 16GB DDR4
• GPU: MSI 880GTX
• SSD: 1TB Samsung 840 Pro
• HDD: 2x WD 1TB drives
• Soundcard: Creative Sound Blaster Zx
• Monitor: 27" WQHD G-Sync Asus ROG Swift PG278Q @ 144Hz
• PSU: Cooler Master V850
• Headphones: Sennheiser G4ME ZERO BLACK
• Keyboard: Corsair Vengeance K70
• Mouse: Logitech G502 Proteus
• Gaming Accessories: Oculus Rift
Click to expand...

If you have too much money - then why not. However, most probably you won't feel any performance benefit in ED from CPU upgrade. 2600K is more than enough for ED. Buying a $1000/1000EUR CPU is really questionable. There is already 850 Samsung SSD series. Why would you need 2x1TB HDDs, for raid 1? OR CV1 is expected to be released only next year. SoundBlaster upgrade is also somewhat questionable.

So I do not see any reasons for upgrading anything besides GPU and monitor. Also I do not see HOTAS or Rudder pedals in the list.
 

Makasuro

M
The CPU is for future proofing. I've had my current build for roughly 4 1/2 years now, and I normally upgrade every 2. So this year I'm upgrading and going all out and again attempting to future proof my PC for the next 2-4 years. And yes, my budget is around 3-4k.

MSI because I have had nothing but great results with them. Same with ASUS so those are very interchangeable for me.

2x TB HD for storage, and a little redundancy. The SSD will be for games/OS.

Soundblaster Zx is a very good card with a quality amp and DAC. I don't want any external DACs and feel this card will be more than enough to drive the Sennheiser headphones.

And yes, I'll probably wait for Oculus CV1 if it's early next year, if not I'll buy DK2 and sell on EBay later.

I already own HOTAS X52 and rudder pedals and have no plans to swap those out any time soon. My hands are too small for the Warthog.
 
Last edited:

CoyoteNZ

C
Zireael said:
Pretty big depending on your GPU and provided you'll be fine with 20-30 fps or reduced resolution/detail.
Click to expand...

Cool, I'll have to find another hd so I can dual boot my (linux) file server to see how it performs and see if it can handle the game. It only has the built in graphics, so I'll grab the gtx 760 from my main machine to give it a fair test.

Now I have to work out were to get a windows key for the darn thing. Will have to hope I have one in my computer graveyard unless anybody has a spare. I used to have plenty of spares, because work used to have corporate licenses, but the provider for hardware we had only sold boxes with windows, even though we were all ready covered license wise :( now I'm afraid last time I decided to venture back into windows at home I had to buy a copy. Really don't want to have to do that twice for just one game.
 

Aleksej

Aleksej
Makasuro said:
The CPU is for future proofing. I've had my current build for roughly 4 1/2 years now, and I normally upgrade every 2. So this year I'm upgrading and going all out and again attempting to future proof my PC for the next 2-4 years. And yes, my budget is around 3-4k.

MSI because I have had nothing but great results with them. Same with ASUS so those are very interchangeable for me.

2x TB HD for storage, and a little redundancy. The SSD will be for games/OS.

Soundblaster Zx is a very good card with a quality amp and DAC. I don't want any external DACs and feel this card will be more than enough to drive the Sennheiser headphones.

And yes, I'll probably wait for Oculus CV1 if it's early next year, if not I'll buy DK2 and sell on EBay later.

I already own HOTAS X52 and rudder pedals and have no plans to swap those out any time soon. My hands are too small for the Warthog.
Click to expand...

That's your decision how to spend money. Your i7 2600K will probably be enough until Skylake, i.e. for 1.5-2 more years. Also there is no special difference in games between Haswell and Ivy-E so most probably you won't see any difference between Haswell and Haswell-E. So the difference is between paying 300EUR or 1000EUR for a CPUs that offer the same performance.

Most probably you will only be able to hear the difference between SB only if you are musician.

You only need to upgrade when you feel that PC does not provide enough performance. i7 2600K has a CPU usage of about 50-60% in ED so it is definitely not bottlenecking the performance.

As well as you cannot have your build for 4.5 years as 2600K was released in the end Q1 2011, i.e. 3 years and several months ago.

I have also upgraded each 2 years but now the CPU performance is almost not increasing from one generation to another. So I really do not see any sense in upgrading now.
 
Last edited:

horncastle

H
Hi below is my spec I am very close to ordering off DinoPC. Configuring the same on overclockers and uk gaming pc comes in about £100more. This is £1250, or 1310 if I go with a 6gb gtx780.

I have gone for less but quicker ram, no secondary storage as just purchased a NAS. Should this keep me going for 3-4 years? The sole purpose of this pc is ED.

Will a 6gb card help output to an occulis rift or 4k monitor etc?

Next is a monitor, joysticks and chair and headset.

Thanks for any comments and all the comments in this thread that have helped me learn a bit about modern PC's


CPU: NEW! Intel Core i5 4690K (2230)
Included

CPU Overclocking: 4.3Ghz - Extreme Overclock (oc43)
Included

CPU Cooler: Corsair H100 Extreme Water Cooler (3026)
£5.00

Operating System: Windows 8.1 (64-bit) (11022)
Included

Motherboard: NEW! Gigabyte G1 Sniper Z97 (4213)
Included

RAM: 8GB Corsair 2133mhz Vengeance (2x4GB) (5060)
£-50.90

Hard Drive: NEW! Corsair 256GB LX SSD (6070)
£50.60

Optical Drive: 22x DVD±RW DL S-ATA (7003)
Included

Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB (8099)
Included

Sound card: Onboard 7.1 Audio (10001)
Included

Case: Corsair Carbide 500R White (17999)
£-21.10

PSU: 850W Corsair RM Fully Modular (18056)
£31.00

Warranty: 3 Year SureCare Warranty (sc-1)
 

Aleksej

Aleksej
horncastle said:
Hi below is my spec I am very close to ordering off DinoPC. Configuring the same on overclockers and uk gaming pc comes in about £100more. This is £1250, or 1310 if I go with a 6gb gtx780.

I have gone for less but quicker ram, no secondary storage as just purchased a NAS. Should this keep me going for 3-4 years? The sole purpose of this pc is ED.

Will a 6gb card help output to an occulis rift or 4k monitor etc?
Click to expand...

3GB VRam will probably be not enough for 4K. However, I doubt that a single GPU is capable of providing stable 60fps+ at 4K now. As for OR I wouldn't think of it now as it is going to be released the next year only and by then there will be the next generation of GPUs.

CommanderRyder said:
I am still lost why people still go with the more slower I5 Intels, they are useless processors, my 8 core AMD has more bang and it costs less... You will not lose anything by going for a much faster AMD processor and at a cheaper price. Trust me I used to go Intel, just because of the name, and all my mates had them, then a mate of mine opened my eyes, and I have never looked back.

I do like the PSU. I have the 800W version, they are really good... But I still feel as a complete system you could do better still, for the same amount of money, as for the 3 year warranty, do not bother, not worth having.

And finally if you are looking for a monitor. I am selling my old gaming monitor, due to upgrade... :D

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121404142975?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

As for over clocking, I just cannot see the point of it, I cannot see the point of killing a machine, before it has even been built... Never liked it and will never do it, even though my AMD 8150 processor can be overclocked to a nice 4.4ghz. I have a nice 3.6ghz with 8 cores... 800 Mhz is not going to make a difference.
Click to expand...

May be because the discussion of the performance in the factions scenario during Alpha 3 has revealed that 4-core Intel i5 2500 has about the same performance as 8-core AMD FX8350 and 4-core Intel i7 2600k is much better.:rolleyes: And ED has utilized all 8 threads in the case of FX8350 and i7 2600k.

And just in case here are the review of FX8350 with the gaming tests clearly showing that it is nowhere near the performance of i5 2500k:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/11/06/amd-fx-8350-review/6
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/5
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_fx_8350_processor_review,18.html

This proves that your statement about useless i5s is wrong.
 

horncastle

H
Dang it at this rate I will never decide on a PC.

Just to clarify my understanding from what I have read before.

CPU is not the main bottleneck in ED the GPU is so I have decided on a middle of the road i5. For AMD I did initially look here but only because it had 8 cores and was cheaper but was not sure that ED would be quicker because of the extra cores and well I am not sure if it is all down to branding over technology but the opinion seems to be Intel is best.

For the GPU was initially thinking maybe a 2gb/3gb and then adding another next year, as currently ED does not support SLi or Crossfire. But then I thought why not just go straight in with the 6gb for only £60 more over the gtx 780 3gb.

Maybe I will try a couple of AMD configs and see what the price difference is.

Thanks
 

Aleksej

Aleksej
horncastle said:
Dang it at this rate I will never decide on a PC.

Just to clarify my understanding from what I have read before.

CPU is not the main bottleneck in ED the GPU is so I have decided on a middle of the road i5. For AMD I did initially look here but only because it had 8 cores and was cheaper but was not sure that ED would be quicker because of the extra cores and well I am not sure if it is all down to branding over technology but the opinion seems to be Intel is best.

For the GPU was initially thinking maybe a 2gb/3gb and then adding another next year, as currently ED does not support SLi or Crossfire. But then I thought why not just go straight in with the 6gb for only £60 more over the gtx 780 3gb.

Maybe I will try a couple of AMD configs and see what the price difference is.

Thanks
Click to expand...

VRam does not add-up in SLI or Crossfire. If you have 2 GPUs with 2GB VRam in SLI or Crossfire - you still have 2GB VRam total.
 

Aleksej

Aleksej
CommanderRyder said:
You should check your last link... Looks like I was right. :cool: No but you are right pay more for an I5 and then wish you did not in the long run...
Click to expand...

So what is there in the last link? i5 3570 is still better than FX8350 and and i7 2600k is way better than FX8350.
 
Last edited:

Aleksej

Aleksej
CommanderRyder said:
Maybe it says it in a benchmark, but when you run both machines side by side, like I have in the past. And get them to do the same tasks at the same time.

The AMD completes all tasks first, and I am on about heavy encoding and decoding, along with Mp3 conversions and packing rar files.

When I test, I test using programs that load the processors, so you can see what is happening.

Both builds had the same ssd along with the same graphics card.

We are also talking about the smallest percentage of margins. In my eyes it is still not worth the extra money, you are paying, when at the end of the day, it is the graphics card that is most important, while playing Elite...
Click to expand...

The PC is being built for ED. And i5 is much better for gaming then FX8350, which is proved by all the reviews. What is the purpose of looking at synthetic benchmark results, decoding/encoding if the PC is not being built for these purposes?
 

Aleksej

Aleksej
CommanderRyder said:
Because my 8 core AMD runs ED with no issues at all at full res, with my old 6850 Asus Oc graphics card... Thats why. :D
Click to expand...

But this does not mean that it is better than i5 or i7 for ED especially as it provides both lower average and minimal frame rate according to the reviews. And while you do not have issues the minimal frame rate is very important if OR is planned. And in this case an i5 seems to be a much better choice.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
I sold my 8 core AMD build that I put together for SteamOS as I neglected the Nvidia requirement :( also it was slower than my old i5

I still want AMD to come out with a great competitive chip, but it's not here and probably won't be for several years :(
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
I'm not an intel fan.

And AMD do exactly the same thing. 939, AM2 ring any bells?

Just use the right tool for the job, and in this case, it's running Elite and I prefer it on i5's compared to AMD's offerings.
 

Juniper

Juniper
Asp Explorer said:
I'm not an intel fan.

And AMD do exactly the same thing. 939, AM2 ring any bells?

Just use the right tool for the job, and in this case, it's running Elite and I prefer it on i5's compared to AMD's offerings.
Click to expand...

I haven't built a system with Intel chips since the 486 days. :)

Main reason being cost, AMD chips are simply cheaper to buy & typically use less power.

No idea what that guy is on about with backwards compatibility - if they need to introduce a new socket, they do. Both of them. ;)
 

Aleksej

Aleksej

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Haswell was quite nice really - the GF's 4440 benches slightly better than my 3570k at stocks, and the igpu runs Elite very smoothly at medium. Impressive enough on its own.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom