Factorio Forums

Hi All,

Since some time I like to play Factorio multiplayer on my old workstation with an antique i7 920 CPU, in the years upgraded with faster storage and 4K display.

I could catch up and play with my old PC surprisingly well, until end game. With multiplayer games on larger bases I get big lags and it's unplayable, so I decided it was time for a new PC

Today I ordered a PC with components below, curious for your remarks, positive but also negative. BTW: I've to wait 1 -2 weeks for all components to arrive.

Intel Core i7-11700K 3.6GHz / 5.0 GHz, 16MB, S1200
MSI MEG Z590 ACE, ATX, 4xDDR4
G.Skill Trident Z 32GB(2x16GB) 3200Mhz CL14
Fractal Design Define 7, E-ATX, Zwart
Noctua NH-D15S Chromax.Black
Samsung SSD 980 Pro 2TB, PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2
Corsair High Performance Series HX750i

Kind regards, Iwan

iWan71 wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:32 pm

curious for your remarks, positive but also negative

Factorio runs on a potato, so a higher-end rig will do fine. I could say it's overkill for just Factorio. On a more general note, I would have added a graphic card (unless this will be dedicated to Factorio and office work : Intel integrated gpus are pretty weak for anything else than 2D to date (might change soon).

Koub wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:34 am

Factorio runs on a potato

I had for a short moment this hard to describe intend to sit down and carve a Factorio-wheel out of a potatoe and try out, if it runs.

Koub wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 21, 2021 5:34 am

I would have added a graphic card (unless this will be dedicated to Factorio and office work : Intel integrated gpus are pretty weak for anything else than 2D to date (might change soon).

Good point! The iGPU also use processor RAM and bandwith so I decided to re-use the (passively cooled) GeForce GTX 1050 Ti from my old system. Not a fast GPU but quiet and has no problems to render Factorio in 4K.

Given the cost of graphic cards these days... good choice.

The mainboard is much too expensive - do you really need all the features it provides? Would you really use all of that? You can have the same chipset on mainboards with half the price. It doesn't contribute to performance - performance is mainly provided by CPU and GPU.

The power supply is also too big. Given the fact you don't even add an external GPU or your old GTX 1050 only, you simply don't need 750W. 600W or even 500W is sufficient. 750W is for setups where you add 2 graphics cards in SLI mode.
CPU TDP is 125 W + mainboard 50 W, + RAM 20 W + cooling 30 W + SSD/other components 50 W is 275 W. What do you need the other 475 W for?

However, for a well-balanced gaming PC, it lacks a proper GPU. Your old GTX 1050 is way better than the Intel iGPU, but a proper counterpart in terms of overall gaming performance to the i7 would be a graphics card like a RTX 3060.

Factorio, on the other hand, doesn't require such graphics power. But if you intend to play graphics intensive games as well, consider adding a state of the art graphics card. A RTX 3060 has a TDP of 170 W, makes the above calculation 275 W +170 W = 445 W as power supply requirement.

From what I know, Factorio is all about the RAM/CPU, and looking at your RAM, well you could have saved a lot of money.

The G.SKILL from looking on Amazon UK is around £280. Working out its Latency = CL * 2000 / Frequency = 14 * 2000 / 3200MHz = 8.75ns.

A look on overclockers, you can get Patriot Viper Steel 16GB 4400MHZ CL19's for £110. Latency = 19 * 2000 / 4400MHz = 8.63ns.

So would have saved around £180 for similar performance.

Not that my rig is any better, a very old PC in todays standards.

UserBenchmarks: Game 46%, Desk 80%, Work 36%
CPU: Intel Core i5-2400 - 74.9%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1060-6GB - 58.3%
SSD: Samsung 850 Evo 500GB - 97.9%
RAM: Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 C9 4x4GB - 51.7%
MBD: Asus P8H77-V LE

Tertius wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:00 am

The mainboard is much too expensive - do you really need all the features it provides?

I seriously considered other (cheaper) Z590 boards but none of them offered 3 PCI-E x16 and 2 PCI-E x1 slots, a big plus for me for future upgrades. All other boards I examined had drawbacks like noisy chipset fan, very hot VRM's etc... so decided to go for the ACE. I really love all (extra) features this board has to offer despite the premium price.

Tertius wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:00 am

The power supply is also too big. Given the fact you don't even add an external GPU or your old GTX 1050 only, you simply don't need 750W. 600W or even 500W is sufficient. 750W is for setups where you add 2 graphics cards in SLI mode.
CPU TDP is 125 W + mainboard 50 W, + RAM 20 W + cooling 30 W + SSD/other components 50 W is 275 W. What do you need the other 475 W for?

You're absolutely right! Although an i7-11700K can draw even more than the advertised TDP of 125W (at Power Limit2 250W for short periods of time) the power supply is huge overkill. But it is the 'smallest' PSU with Corsair Link, I really like the idea of monitoring the PSU from an internal USB header, the almost silent operation and enough 'spare' power for a high-end graphics card in the future.

Tertius wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:00 am

However, for a well-balanced gaming PC, it lacks a proper GPU. Your old GTX 1050 is way better than the Intel iGPU, but a proper counterpart in terms of overall gaming performance to the i7 would be a graphics card like a RTX 3060.

Good point although last time I'm mostly playing Factorio I like the idea to try some other games with a high-end graphics card in the future!

TreefrogGreaken wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 21, 2021 12:06 pm

From what I know, Factorio is all about the RAM/CPU, and looking at your RAM, well you could have saved a lot of money.

The G.SKILL from looking on Amazon UK is around £280. Working out its Latency = CL * 2000 / Frequency = 14 * 2000 / 3200MHz = 8.75ns.

A look on overclockers, you can get Patriot Viper Steel 16GB 4400MHZ CL19's for £110. Latency = 19 * 2000 / 4400MHz = 8.63ns.

So would have saved around £180 for similar performance.

Not that my rig is any better, a very old PC in todays standards.

Thank you for the tip!

I've no experience (yet) with overclocking and as system stability is very important to me I've chosen for a conservative approach with CL 14 DDR4-3200 memory without overclocking.

I don't like the idea using hugely overclocked RAM while only saving 0.12 ns latency for some bucks and increased risk of system instability, but that's maybe due to my lack of experience with overclocking.

iWan71 wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 21, 2021 12:23 pm

I seriously considered other (cheaper) Z590 boards but none of them offered 3 PCI-E x16 and 2 PCI-E x1 slots, a big plus for me for future upgrades.

The only consumer (non-server) expansion cards that use x16 slots are graphics cards, and how many of them do you intend to add to your PC? Really more than 1?
All the other pcie cards use x1. Some storage (SSDs) might use x4 speed, but you will use the M.2 slots or SATA for these.
In my PC, I don't have (and never needed) any additional cards except the graphics card.
A few users insist on using an extra sound card instead of just using the onboard one (uses x1 slot), and if you're in recording or streaming, some streamers want an internal hdmi capture card (uses x1 slot) instead of cheaper and more common USB capture cards. That makes at most 2 pcie x1 slots.
The only pci-e x4 capture card I know is the Elgato 4k60pro, which is for professional video recording but not for casual consumer needs. I doubt you intend to ever buy such an expensive gem.

The main expansion with components and gadgets today takes place with USB. Make sure your mainboard has enough USB 3 or USB 4/Thunderbolt connectors for front and back, and plan for USB hubs in case you need more connectors.

Christ, that's a $450 motherboard.

If you're going to drop that kind of cash on a rig, and you're doing gaming not semipro 3d/video work, get a 5600X and a good 570 mobo, and spend the literal hundreds of dollars you just saved on chip, cooler and mobo, asus has a good one for $200, there's $250 savings, the chip's $120 cheaper, and it comes with a perfectly serviceable cooler, there's another $100, so that's $380 to spend on whatever you want. Turn that same build into a minor media beast with a 5900X and an utterly silent cooler and fans if you're seriously in to Blender or whatever, that'll get you back to price parity with your current build and just leave it for dead on performance. On media workloads, not Factorio. Anything reasonable can handle factorio about as well as anything else reasonable. I'm serious: you can find maps on factoriobox where the zen 3 (and even zen 2!) chips beat everything, and others where the intel chips beat everything, but there aren't any runaway winners.

https://factoriobox.1au.us/results?map= ... 9&sort=ups

https://factoriobox.1au.us/results?map= ... 9&sort=ups

https://factoriobox.1au.us/results?map= ... 9&sort=ups

https://factoriobox.1au.us/results?map= ... 9&sort=ups

All the chips are playing in the same league here. One of those links shows the 5600X taking the performance crown on a real megabase map. It's got a better memory subsystem than the other entries but checking the rest says nothing always wins the day, not ram speed, not cpu architecture or core count or chip clock.

Tertius wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 21, 2021 1:19 pm

The only consumer (non-server) expansion cards that use x16 slots are graphics cards, and how many of them do you intend to add to your PC? Really more than 1?
All the other pcie cards use x1. Some storage (SSDs) might use x4 speed, but you will use the M.2 slots or SATA for these.

You're absolutely right, but like the idea that in the coming (5+) years I'll use this system I've sufficient expansion capabilities. You'd be suprised what kind of PCI cards I hoarded on my old Intel DX-58SO motherboard, all slots are occupied now including upgrades to USB-3 and a fast SSD.

I agree the motherboard price is high (although there are even much higher priced Z590 motherboards) but after several days of research I was in love with this one, and hope it will safe me one motherboard upgrade in the lifetime of the PC.

iWan71 wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 23, 2021 6:36 pm

and hope it will safe me one motherboard upgrade in the lifetime of the PC.

I wouldn't bet on it. In the last 10 years, Intel CPUs changed sockets every 2 to 3 years on average (I excluded the server oriented LGA 2011) :
2011 - LGA 1155
2013 - LGA 1150
2015 - LGA 1151
2017 - LGA 2066
2020 - LGA 1200 (your current one)

Alder Lake CPUs are expected early 2022, with a new socket : LGA 1700. There might be some more CPUs coming out with LGA1200 socket, but as your CPU is already in the high end segment, it's unlikely you'll upgrade it to one of those, wouldn't get much bang for your buck.

quyxkh wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:28 am

Christ, that's a $450 motherboard.

If you're going to drop that kind of cash on a rig, and you're doing gaming not semipro 3d/video work, get a 5600X and a good 570 mobo

Sorry about the confusion, I had to choose the topic title better. Of course I will use this system not only for Factorio, although it was the game that clarified I really needed a new PC

I use my PC also for software development (compiling large projects including Linux kernels), simultaneously running / testing different Operating Systems in VirtualBox and hardware development (for hobby) incl. FPGA design in Xilinx Vitis / Vivado. The Xilinx software is extremely demanding when running FPGA synthesizes, the system can't just be fast enough.

I seriously considered the AMD platform and even the Intel and AMD HEDT plaforms (Threadripper / Xeon) but that's a bridge to far me and beyond my budget.

Although the AMD 5600X is a great processor and will outperform my i7-11700K in various benchmarks I've very good experience with Intel, starting 25 years ago with my first 75 MHz Intel Pentium.

Despite the higher performance and lower power consumption of AMD I choosed again for Intel. Maybe it's like Pepsi / Coca Cola, I just stay at Intel

BTW nice links to factoriobox, I just received a mail my order is out for delivery soon. Didn't know that site, will try to post benchmarks there when my new system is online.

Koub wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 23, 2021 7:06 pm

Alder Lake CPUs are expected early 2022, with a new socket : LGA 1700.

I've read about it and Alder Lake / LGA 1700, looks very promising but just can't wait any longer. I need a new system NOW and don't want to wait 6 months on new CPU's / motherboards. BTW I'm typing this message on a Intel Core i7 920 with socket 1366

iWan71 wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 23, 2021 7:39 pm

Koub wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 23, 2021 7:06 pm

Alder Lake CPUs are expected early 2022, with a new socket : LGA 1700.

I've read about it and Alder Lake / LGA 1700, looks very promising but just can't wait any longer. I need a new system NOW and don't want to wait 6 months on new CPU's / motherboards. BTW I'm typing this message on a Intel Core i7 920 with socket 1366

I didn't imply you should have waited a couple more months to get the next gen CPU, I implied you likely won't have the opportunity to use the same motherboard for your next CPU upgrade

Koub wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:06 pm

I didn't imply you should have waited a couple more months to get the next gen CPU, I implied you likely won't have the opportunity to use the same motherboard for your next CPU upgrade

I understand I can't upgrade to next gen Intel CPU's with this motherboard so I'd choose for some overkill / spare capacity on the motherboard for upgrades, that's the point I tried to make in my previous posts

Instead of buying a new motherboard I can upgrade to new technologies just by adding a PCI card. Maybe unlikely now but are doing it since 25 years. From USB-1 to USB-3, from HHD to SSD. That's the reason I don't want a motherboard with only 2 PCI slots.

First upgrade will be a most likely existing technology, a 10 Gb NIC. My current NAS has only a 1 Gb link so no need to upgrade now. When needed I can upgrade with a 10 Gb NIC. Maybe a 100 Gb NIC in 5 years?

Virtually any video card will do the trick for Factorio. What you need is :
- a fast CPU (prioritise high core speed instead of core number)
- A high speed (and if possible low latency) RAM.

Koub wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 20, 2021 4:45 pm

Virtually any video card will do the trick for Factorio. What you need is :
- a fast CPU (prioritise high core speed instead of core number)
- A high speed (and if possible low latency) RAM.

Not any video card - take care to have decent amount of VRAM if you like lots of mods.

orzelek wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 20, 2021 4:57 pm

Koub wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 20, 2021 4:45 pm

Virtually any video card will do the trick for Factorio. What you need is :
- a fast CPU (prioritise high core speed instead of core number)
- A high speed (and if possible low latency) RAM.

Not any video card - take care to have decent amount of VRAM if you like lots of mods.

Yep, that's what the "virtually" is there for. 2Gb of VRAM are enough for the recommended specs for vanilla Factorio. Apart the very lowest end, GPUs one can find have 2 Gb and more VRAM.
Even Geforce GT 7x0s can be found with 2 Gb VRAM. Anything equivalent to a GTX 1050 or better is usually found with 4 Gb and more VRAM, and is plenty sufficient to run the game.
Even an integrated GPU can run Factorio flawlessly.