First PC Build :: Dedicated Star Citizen Machine

[james_bank]

I have been doing a ton of research about building a PC.  I have a few questions.

 

First, the machine I am building is for PLAYING Star Citizen only.  I am not going to record or stream my game play.  This computer is going to do nothing other than Star Citizen.

 

Question 1:  Crossfire or SLI?  I'm leaning towards duel 970s.

 

Question 2:  Processor.  I under stand what multiple cores do (thanks linus), but I don't know how or if it will affect Star Citizen gaming.

 

Question 3:  Processor.  Same question for hyper threading.. I have a basic understanding of what it does, but have no idea if it benefits playing Star Citizen in any way.

 

Question 4:  Cost.  I wouldn't say I'm trying to build a budget PC, but the less it costs the better.  I just want a solid machine that will run max settings for 1080p gaming on one large monitor.  I'd prefer not to overclock anything and I want it to run cool.. I'm hoping I can get away with after market air cooling for the processor.  I haven't looked much at GPU cooling yet.. but I will.  Doesn't sound like much of a question.. Is it perfectly fine to not overclock or am I wasting performance because I'm new to this pc building thing and afraid?

[rentaspoon]

Are you wanting to play now or when its completed?

Edit: Also I would look at a single 980ti for now

[TheDigitalRealm]

Oh dear...from your post I take it you haven't run Star Citizen, nor do you currently play it on a PC? 

 

First of all, what is your budget?

 

Any other use case at all other than playing Star Citizen?

 

Firstly, in my opinion it's very ill-advised to plan a build for a game that has yet to release, but if you really want to, that leads to point number 2. Star Citizen is extremely demanding. SLI GTX 970's may do the trick for 1080p AT THE MOMENT. The game is still in development so it may well turn out that it requires even more horsepower to run than that. Star Citizen is going to support 6 and 8 core processors with 4 being the minimum I believe, but whether this is including hyperthreading or not remains to be seen. 

 

Yes it is fine not to overclock. Overclocking is mainly for those who want to get as much performance from their systems as possible

[Xethion]

Are you wanting to play now or when its completed?

Edit: Also I would look at a single 980ti for now

I agree with the single 980ti over sli 970s.

[MAGP]

Q1: i would use GTX980 4gb for ultra graphics if you want to use 2 then go ahead.

Q2: It is important to build a good pc especially when you are only using it mainly for your game.  I would go with i7-3770 at least to run smooth.

Q3 and Q4 the problem with wanting a budget pc is ultra and budget do not get along well.  How much is your budget and what will you be using 720p or 1080?

[james_bank]

Are you wanting to play now or when its completed?

Edit: Also I would look at a single 980ti for now

yes.

[james_bank]

Oh dear...from your post I take it you haven't run Star Citizen, nor do you currently play it on a PC? 

 

First of all, what is your budget?

 

Any other use case at all other than playing Star Citizen?

 

Firstly, in my opinion it's very ill-advised to plan a build for a game that has yet to release, but if you really want to, that leads to point number 2. Star Citizen is extremely demanding. SLI GTX 970's may do the trick for 1080p AT THE MOMENT. The game is still in development so it may well turn out that it requires even more horsepower to run than that. Star Citizen is going to support 6 and 8 core processors with 4 being the minimum I believe, but whether this is including hyperthreading or not remains to be seen. 

 

Yes it is fine not to overclock. Overclocking is mainly for those who want to get as much performance from their systems as possible

I played briefly.. my laptop hated it.

From my research, it seemed like SLI 970s crush 1080p.  When all is said and done, I'd like 60 min fps.. other than that.. eh.  I've had bad experience with FPS.. I had thought it was because my computer sucked.. maybe it was more me or a combination.. I'd just like to be on a level playing field.. if I suck, I suck.. but at least I can't blame the machine.

[rentaspoon]

yes.

The game is unoptimised at the moment, I think the person to talk to is @Adreyu as I think he has a fairly optimised system IIRC

[james_bank]

I agree with the single 980ti over sli 970s.

every thing I have seen has showed that duel 970s crush a single 980.  "not, even, close, bud" -breakfast club

do you have a source that states differently?

[rentaspoon]

every thing I have seen has showed that duel 970s crush a single 980. "not, even, close, bud" -breakfast club

do you have a source that states differently?

This game isn't like others ATM. I don't know if they have SLI running properly ATM

Edit: You'll probably need to over clock too

[james_bank]

Q1: i would use GTX980 4gb for ultra graphics if you want to use 2 then go ahead.

Q2: It is important to build a good pc especially when you are only using it mainly for your game.  I would go with i7-3770 at least to run smooth.

Q3 and Q4 the problem with wanting a budget pc is ultra and budget do not get along well.  How much is your budget and what will you be using 720p or 1080?

I thought I'd save a good bit of money if I wasn't using resources for streaming, editing, recording my gaming.  I need to run nothing but the game.  Doesn't that allow me to downsize the cpu a bit.. it doesn't have to multi task unless of course Star Citizen itself will benefit from the multiple cores/hyper threading.. that's why I was asking.

 

1080p

[james_bank]

This game isn't like others ATM. I don't know if they have SLI running properly ATM

Edit: You'll probably need to over clock too

I really want to get into arena commander and the FPS is almost out.. maybe I need to wait a little longer.  It seems a consistent opinion that its impossible to build a machine until the full release.. I thought if I went a little overkill I'd be ok.  Hard to imagine SLI 970s couldn't max settings for 1080p.  4k I understand, but 1080p shouldn't be any sweat at all.

[Xethion]

every thing I have seen has showed that duel 970s crush a single 980.  "not, even, close, bud" -breakfast club

do you have a source that states differently?

They show benchmarks for a single 980 ti vs 980 sli vs 970 sli:

http://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/

Based on what I saw it's better to have two 970 in SLI but I dont think it's enough to spend the extra cash.  You could save some money getting a single 980 TI and put it into other parts.  You also get 6GB of ram with the 980 TI vs the 4GB you would have with the SLI 970s.

[rentaspoon]

Right,

Jumped into a quick game, didnt have time for a full benchmark, game was 12ish minutes long but fairly representive of the game at the moment

this is on a 4690k at stock and a single 970 and 16GB of ram on low setting, the game hogs up the CPU at the moment.

i know its a flawed graph should give you a rough idea on how hard this game is to run.

 

I'll try and get time to do a better benchmark if you want but I would think your going to struggle with 970s SLId because 4GB (3.5GB) ATM is not enough on it's highest settings. 

 

I really want to get into arena commander and the FPS is almost out.. maybe I need to wait a little longer.  It seems a consistent opinion that its impossible to build a machine until the full release.. I thought if I went a little overkill I'd be ok.  Hard to imagine SLI 970s couldn't max settings for 1080p.  4k I understand, but 1080p shouldn't be any sweat at all.

It's ok setting up a pc now but yes i'd wait until the FPS is out. I want to do a benchamarking guide as I think I've got an average computer so give me sometime and I'll get it done

[james_bank]

all y'all are great. thanks for all the input. I think I'll continue to educate myself and buy all my pieces this Black Friday/cyber Monday. is that the best time to buy? also, do you think the 980s will drop in price by then?

[Adreyu]

The game is unoptimised at the moment, I think the person to talk to is @Adreyu as I think he has a fairly optimised system IIRC

I would definitely go for a single 980 ti. Im upgrading to that pretty soon from my 970. which handles the game pretty well but i want some real power. also i just dont think SLI is worth it for the amount of crap you have to deal with it, especially when not all games even have sli support. 980 ti is a beast and will probably cost you less than 2 970's

 

Plus the extra vram (6gb total) is very helpful with all the textures

[james_bank]

I would definitely go for a single 980 ti. Im upgrading to that pretty soon from my 970. which handles the game pretty well but i want some real power. also i just dont think SLI is worth it for the amount of crap you have to deal with it, especially when not all games even have sli support. 980 ti is a beast and will probably cost you less than 2 970's

Plus the extra vram (6gb total) is very helpful with all the textures

thanks for the info. two 970s is less than 20 bucks more. here is just one video about 980 vs 970 sli.

http://youtu.be/MX64E1XnzMc

I'd like to see what you think. the guy in this video rambles a bit at the beginning.

[Adreyu]

thanks for the info. two 970s is less than 20 bucks more. here is just one video about 980 vs 970 sli.

http://youtu.be/MX64E1XnzMc

I'd like to see what you think. the guy in this video rambles a bit at the beginning.

he does ramble holy lol but yeah I think most of us are still going to tell you to get a gtx 980 TI. its just a much more stable option and its such a powerful card. even with 2 970's if you turn up the textures on things  (in newer games obviously) you are still going to hit the vram barrier. 3.5 gb is no slouch but its definitely not as effective as 6gb and again some games just dont work with sli and  then you have to turn off one of your cards and its just a hassle. Ultimately it is your decision but i still say go for the 980 ti. 

[Grrizz]

To cover all your questions in one answer:

Wait at least another year and buy whatever hardware's available then.

Anyone buying a PC now JUST for Star Citizen is doing it horribly wrong, if you really want to get in now and what you have wont handle it save some money and aim for the lower end now then buy a system built for it closer to release unless you are either happy running sub optimum at release or ponying up some more money to get current gen hardware at that point. To take it a step further IMO upgrading at this point in time is about the worst time you could do it in recent history with next gen graphics cards shrinking 2 process nodes in one generation, HBM2 on the horizon and truly DX12 targeted architectures coming, we are currently on the tail end or at least in the transition period of what I would consider the PCs next generational step.

[colt92]

If you really want to buy it now, I would recommend you to get at least an i7-6700K, a 970 or R9 390, and a 512 gig SSD. That way you're futureproofed CPU wise, and you can have a decent GPU while you wait for newer ones such as Pascal (and save money for those).

 

About the SSD, it'll come really handy to have it for Star Citizen, it dramatically speeds up loading times for me. Right now, a 128 one is fine for the OS and the game, but as it nears completion, the size of the game will probably sit around 100GB, as previously said. But that doesn't necessarily end there. There could be free content updates and expansions after the game is out. Look at GW2. That could increase the total size even further.

[james_bank]

all sage advice. I'm going to sit tight for now. See you in the verse.. sometime next year.

[james_bank]

allow me to step back to just one of my questions. for cpu, do cores and hyperthreading matter if the computer is for Star Citizen only? I'm not even going to check my bank account balance on it.

[Maciek]

allow me to step back to just one of my questions. for cpu, do cores and hyperthreading matter if the computer is for Star Citizen only? I'm not even going to check my bank account balance on it.

 

Cores will matter more and more as the game enters further stages of development and the code gets cleaned up and optimized . Hyperthreading only matters in video editing / post production applications for now. I don't think any game will gain anything from HT in the foreseeable future. 

As for the GPU it's been said but get a solution with the most VRAM possible. The amounts of textures in modern games are humongous. The more you can fit in you vram the faster the game will run - especially on high detail levels. I have the 980ti at the moment and it runs great even on higher resolutions that you need. If you want silent rig don't get the reference cooler. It makes a lot of noise compared to the 3 fan config. The G1 gaming from Gigabyte that I have is amazing.

[james_bank]

so go for cores but f hyperthreading.. as far as gaming is concerned, yes?

[Maciek]

so go for cores but f hyperthreading.. as far as gaming is concerned, yes?

 

yes. at least for the next few years.