Here's a quote I have on a possible PC, will it run PA? Will it run it smoothly, and with decent settings, doesn't have to be maxed out. Case InWIN G7 BRUSHED EFFECT DARK GREY CASE Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4460 (3.2GHz) 6MB Cache Motherboard Gigabyte H81M-D2V: Micro-ATX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 8GB) Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 660 - 2 x DVI, HDMI, - 3D Vision Ready 1st Hard Disk 120GB KINGSTON V300 SSD, SATA 6 Gb (450MB/R, 450MB/W) 2nd Hard Disk 3TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE 1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM Power Supply CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY Processor Cooling Super Quiet 22dBA Triple Copper Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler Extra Case Fans 2 x 12CM Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof) Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD) Wireless/Wired Networking 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED) USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead) Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence DVD Recovery Media Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) DVD with paper sleeve Office Software NO OFFICE SOFTWARE Anti-Virus NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE Printer HP PHOTOSMART 5520 WIRELESS ALL-IN-ONE PRINTER Warranty 3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI) Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days Quantity 1 Total Cost £870 (Inc. an £85 printer)
Cool I'm thinking about reducing it to 8gb ram, and getting an i7 processor. Thoughts? Is more ram or more processing power important when thinking about the req's for games in a few years time.
I wouldn't say "easily" but there's not point in getting anything more powerful. It's pretty much the same specs I have and with the current state of the game, system resources are not being utilised to their full extent. See my thread here: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/can-someone-explain-this-to-me.62656/
I only have 8GB of RAM and it's fine, but I would still recommend getting 16GB if you can afford it. Don't bother with an i7, most games can't utilise multicore properly, let alone hyperthreading. For gaming core-i5 CPUs are your bread and butter. You'd be better off with a K version i5 than you would be with an i7. I would only recommend an i7 if you were doing a lot of multi-tasking, i.e. business tasks once again, see my thread which explains this further... See my thread here: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/can-someone-explain-this-to-me.62656/
What about the GPU? On the pcspecialist forums where i've asked for feedback, they are recommending a better GPU, sacrificing the additional SSD, a large chunk of the HDD space and RAM to bring the price down. What do you guys think?
Basically SSD it's good thing, but you can always buy it later while you not likely going to replace GPU soon.
The GTX660 is good bang for your buck. You can always get a better video card but you have to ask yourself, is the extra cash worth the small difference in frame rate. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7103/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-review/13 Not only that, if you actually read my thread below, then you would see that even my GTX660 is not being fully utilised (as low as 50%) so you aren't going to get any more frames by purchasing a better video card. See my thread here: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/can-someone-explain-this-to-me.62656/
Seriously you met problem with game, but: It's doesn't mean everyone else have same problem at all. There is no even guarantee it's problem with game and not something else. It's might change with every game update. So giving advices about hardware purchase based on this situation it's kind a weird.
Download Open Hardware Monitor and see for yourself. http://openhardwaremonitor.org/ And even if they do manage to improve the hardware utilisation stats... that's why I included the benchmark results between the GTX660 and GXT760 (only a few frames difference but the GTX760 is quite a bit more expensive). Anyway these are just my opinion, so you can take them with a grain of salt, and make up your own mind.
I'd say make sure the parts which are hardest to upgrade are max spec on purchase. RAM is easy to add later on as is an SSD, and 8GB with a HDD is sufficient to make sure your PC runs smoothly with those specs. Upgrading your processor or graphics card means discarding the old one, which is more expensive to do. So I'd make sure you get the best you can afford there primarily. @Planktum I'm sure he will also be using this PC for things other than PA too, so harping on about your own (misguided) criticisms of the game is extremely unhelpful in this thread.
Please bare in mind that I'm extremely unlikely to ever upgrade the computer. (So saving money now to spend money later wouldnt work for me) Also the monitor I'll be using will limit my resolution to 1760x1080, and I don't care about max settings. Is the gtx660 okay, or should I splurge for a gtx760? Is the performance improvements offered by an extra SSD really worth the expense? Is it better to go with two hard drives or just the one big one?
I appreciate the sentiment, and I'm certainly not trying to discourage you from offering input, but numerous people have taken the time to explain to you why the metrics you've measured in your thread are not necessarily helpful to discussions on the performance of the game, particularly given the fact that it's in very active development at the moment, with a heavy focus on performance improvements and optimisations. My personal recommendations based on the above: 660 will be ample, particularly at that resolution and with low GFX setting HDDs are frequently bottlenecks in my experience so I'd recommend the SSD SSDs are not usually big enough to store everything you want, so you'll likely want a HDD as well for stuff that demands less performance. I'm not aware of any advantage of having two HDDs over one. Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you consider adding components later on?
You can run 2 HDD in RAID 0 for double the performance of a single drive. This gives you reasonable throughput with very high capacity. The main downside to doing this is that the data is split 50:50 across both drives, so if one fails you loose everything. Edit: As for other specs, ensure you've got as much ram as possible. 8gb is a minimum for PA, 12 or 16gb is preferable (the amount of ram determines how many planets you can support in one game, if you like lots of interplanetary stuff then 16gb is a good idea).
I built a new pc last week, and i can tell you that SSD is a great investment, whole pc runs a much faster (boot time of 7 seconds) and another HDD for storage. Also, go for 16 GB ram. If you can, it is cheaper to order components and make your own pc. About graphic card, i choose r9 280 from ati, 3GB vram more than enough for PA, and about 50 euros cheaper than gtx 760. Here is my thread: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/new-pc-for-pa.62179/page-3#post-967758 I recommend you i5-4690 normal version, not K for overclocking, it goes to 3.9 GHz without any interventions in bios.
Case InWIN G7 BRUSHED EFFECT DARK GREY CASE Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4460 (3.2GHz) 6MB Cache Motherboard Gigabyte H81M-D2V: Micro-ATX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs Memory (RAM) 16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X FURY DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (2 x 8GB) Graphics Card 2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 760 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP - 3D Vision Ready 1st Hard Disk 120GB INTEL® 530 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW) 2nd Hard Disk 2TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 64MB CACHE 1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM Power Supply CORSAIR 450W VS SERIES™ VS-450 POWER SUPPLY Processor Cooling Super Quiet 22dBA Triple Copper Heatpipe Intel CPU Cooler Extra Case Fans 2 x 12CM Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof) Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD) Wireless/Wired Networking 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED) USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead) Operating System Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence DVD Recovery Media Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) DVD with paper sleeve Office Software NO OFFICE SOFTWARE Anti-Virus NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE Warranty 3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI) Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days Quantity 1 Cost: £825 --- alright so this looks good?
