Hardware & Technical Ready to make the leap into Elite Dangerous, looking for PC advice/recommendations.

Hello Everyone,

My name is George and I am ready to jump into the Elite Dangerous universe. I am looking to build a rig on a budget that will give me the best ED experience while utilizing some of the hardware I have laying around. I am not looking for anything VR capable just yet.

I have a Intel DG43GT systemboard with 16 GB of RAM just siting around. Would this make a decent starting point for a Elite rig? I don't remember what cpu it is running. Can this board support a decent video card? I would rather not scrap this stuff and start from scratch if I can avoid it. I have included a link to the boards specs.

https://www.cnet.com/products/intel...ard-micro-atx-lga775-socket-g43-series/specs/

I would love to hear from some more Commanders about their experiences. Any ideas, input, suggestions, thoughts, or advice are greatly appreciated! Thank you all for the time. Have a great day!

Safe flying!

Respectfully,
George D.
 
I used to build my own too, but like oil changes after a while I had other people do it for me (lol)

My first ED machine was a 32 bit HP laptop that was a cheap refurb and got me all the way to Elite for combat. When Horizons came out I bought a cheap off-lease HP Z-600 work station as a refurb and put a GTX 960 in it. It's still my Elite PC today. Runs great. Refurbs also come with an OS, pretty handy if you don't have a licensed copy on hand.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/487663/6300_Pro_Desktop_Computer_Off_Lease_Refurbished

Just an idea, not saying you should or shouldn't. But, I also went through the build-your-own phase so I totally get where you are going with this :)

Welcome aboard, when you get here!
 
Hello Everyone,

My name is George and I am ready to jump into the Elite Dangerous universe. I am looking to build a rig on a budget that will give me the best ED experience while utilizing some of the hardware I have laying around. I am not looking for anything VR capable just yet.

I have a Intel DG43GT systemboard with 16 GB of RAM just siting around. Would this make a decent starting point for a Elite rig? I don't remember what cpu it is running. Can this board support a decent video card? I would rather not scrap this stuff and start from scratch if I can avoid it. I have included a link to the boards specs.

https://www.cnet.com/products/intel...ard-micro-atx-lga775-socket-g43-series/specs/

I would love to hear from some more Commanders about their experiences. Any ideas, input, suggestions, thoughts, or advice are greatly appreciated! Thank you all for the time. Have a great day!

Safe flying!

Respectfully,
George D.

Hey George,

I've run Elite on a 2015 netbook with an i3 with Intel graphics and had a lot of fun.

My friend runs it on a second gen i7 with a new GTX 1050ti and say it runs great.

Personally, I would recommend an i5 and GTX1050ti as a starting build for someone making a new rig.

Hope this helps, and welcome to the club!

Fly Safe 07
 
With that board you will be able to build it up to something playable, a high end Core2Quad or elderly Xeon quad core should fit in that board and paired with the 1050ti should make a decent low end gaming rig. But you can expect even that card to be bottle necked by anything you build with that board & won't be running to it's full potential...
 
I started to get stutter on my old OCed Core2Quad Q6600 (3.1GHz). The problem is Horizons.

I wouldn't expect great performance with your CPU essentially bottlenecking any modern card, which will be a requirement for Horizons.

Anything from a 2nd generation i5/i7 onwards that meets the minimum requirements should run with enough muscle to power a suitable GPU. You can always overclock Intels. I always go for a -K numbered part for the unlocked multiplier.

Your budget is the constraint here. How much do you want to pay?
 
Am sure you can run this game on a good budget system. I run it at ultra on a gaming laptop. i7, GTX770M (3gb), 7600rpm drive and 16mb RAM. Not decided if worth putting on my SSd yet but may do. It works perfect so playing at high which i did to start with you will still get a great experience on lower spec.
 
Here's the compatible CPU's

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Intel/DG43GT.html

Not spending much time on benchmarks, I would probably go for a Q9650. I ran a Q9550 for a few years myself up to 2011.

Not sure if you can even buy them new these days so ebay is your friend for CPU. Maybe check the memory speed on what you have is 1333Mhz.

Honestly though, if you're going to start buying bits off ebay I'd suggest going whole hog and get second hand mobo + CPU + memory. The mobo you have is fairly old and bang-for-buck on better system is going to be very high. Lot of folks upgrade perfectly good 3-4yr old systems and sell the lot on the ebay.

Try this search for example:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=motherboard and cpu i5 bundle
 
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Apart from the potential problem of finding a suitable CPU, the thing that bothered me about this board is the fact that the single PCIe x16 slot is only PCIe2 - wouldn't that limit the capability for Elite?
 
Anyways, if you are on a massively tight budget you should be able to build a semi decent rig based around something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pentium-Mo...777&sr=8-3&keywords=pentium+g4560+bundle&th=1 and this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zotac-GeFo...TF8&qid=1512059888&sr=1-1&keywords=gtx+1050ti

If you already have a PSU, Case and drives you would only need to get a Windows Key for very cheap (Amazon sells those very cheaply) and of course the game itself total investment less than £400.

Extend that budget a little (£100ish) & you would be looking at this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/ADMI-COMPO...id=1512060070&sr=1-19&keywords=ryzen+3+bundle plus the GPU above & Windows would score you less than £500 Both would provide you with a far better experience than the board you already have.
 
I went thru microcenter as well and got the G221

http://www.microcenter.com/product/474127/G221_Desktop_Computer

Per the steam VR app, its ready to go for VR as well and isn't proprietary so can be upgraded in the future. I'm currently playing Elite with ultra settings on it with zero problems.

Adding up what I was thinking of purchasing to build it myself, this worked out even better and came out cheaper "with someone else building it for me! :D
 
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This is great! Thanks for all this information. I have another option I would like to get your input about. I just picked up another machine a friend was getting rid of. The specs are below. I know that the video card is not even close to being sufficient but what are everyone's thoughts on the rest?

Dell Optiplex 790 Small Form Factor chassis
Intel i-5 2400 @3.10 GHz
16 GB DDR3 1333 MHz
socket LG 1155 systemboard Sandy Bridge Intel Q65 chipset https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA7W5452167
AMD Radeon HD6350
1 TB Western Digital Hard drive

I have just wiped and reloaded it with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit and it runs great. What do you guys think? Can a decent video card make this free machine serviceable? Thank you all again for putting up with all these questions!

Respectfully,
George D.
 
Hello George

You seems quite a polite and reasonable person I'm not sure if Elite Dangerous is the game for you... :)

But if you decide to join there is a Free Anaconda waiting for you at Hutton Orbital.
 
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This is great! Thanks for all this information. I have another option I would like to get your input about. I just picked up another machine a friend was getting rid of. The specs are below. I know that the video card is not even close to being sufficient but what are everyone's thoughts on the rest?

Dell Optiplex 790 Small Form Factor chassis
Intel i-5 2400 @3.10 GHz
16 GB DDR3 1333 MHz
socket LG 1155 systemboard Sandy Bridge Intel Q65 chipset https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAA7W5452167
AMD Radeon HD6350
1 TB Western Digital Hard drive

I have just wiped and reloaded it with Windows 7 Pro 64 bit and it runs great. What do you guys think? Can a decent video card make this free machine serviceable? Thank you all again for putting up with all these questions!

Respectfully,
George D.
I think something of GTX 960 / 1050 range would fit that one nicely.
 
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