Which PC for Factorio?

[Fuller]

Hi guys

I'm curuious which components(commercially available) have the most impact on ingame performance?
My guess is CPU>RAM>GPU>SSD>HDD.

Questions:
CPU cores vs. megahertz vs. hyperthreading .
RAM amount vs. megahertz vs. RAM timing.

With the recent updates in AMD product portfolio i would assume that something like a Threadripper 1950X
(16 Core,32 Threads), 16GB DDR-4 3866 and a GeForce GTX 1070 might be the best desktop setup.

...but there are other options available like Intel Xeon Phi which are probably not supported by factorio....who knows?

[IIPoliII]

I think the best for playing is like 8 Intel xeon 2699 V4 http://ark.intel.com/products/91317/Int ... e-2_20-GHz
And like 12.32 TB of ram DDR4 2400 Mhz.
For the GPUs you can have 8 Readon Pro SSG (with 2 to of dedicated memory each) or 8 GTX 1080 TI (4 dedicated PhsyX).
For the storage you take a cluster of 45 10 TB drives https://www.amazon.de/Seagate-IronWolf- ... prise+10TB http://www.45drives.com/products/storage/
And for the game you take some PCI NVME SSD you can put in your main pc https://www.amazon.de/SANDISK-Fusion-io ... ywords=SSD.
And you take like 4 alimentation.
And you have the perfect pc to play factorio and skyrim with mods.

Perfect no (and cheap)
Poli

[Fuller]

Thanks for your answer but it doesn't help at all.

[posila]

Currently, for CPU, the better single-threaded performance the bigger factory you can build before UPS starts dropping.

16GB RAM is more than reasonable unless you intend to explore very huge areas of map (via modded radars or lua command for example)

[Koub]

Right at the moment, The last AMD architecture (Zen) seems suboptimal for Factorio, because of excessive latency on cross core memory calls.
More on this here

[Fuller]

Thx for the answers

So the way to go is an overclocked 7700k@5-5.5GhZ with 16GB DDR-4 4266MhZ CL19-19-19-39. (there are no 8GB kits available)
GPU doesn't really matter so lets assume something like a GTX 1060.
That is surprising and sad at the same time :/
Are there any plans to improve multihread performance without rewriting most of the source code?
That might be a good topic for another FFF <3

[Zeblote]

How on earth are you planning to overclocking that thing to 5.5ghz for daily usage?

[Fuller]

I could overclock it with liquid helium just for fun but i think with a consumer grade cooling system 5GHz are possible...maybe a little
bit more thats the reason for that intervall. X:=CPU clock speed in GHz -> X€[5,5.5] =/ X€{5,5.5}

[Machine Medic]

Quick google search reveals lots of complaints of thermal troubles with the 7700k.

I run a 5820k at 4400MHz [133%oc], two 980ti-s at 1304MHz [125%], a Vengeance LPX kit at 2400MHz [111%]. Perfect 60 all the time. (Except for the old clunky map editor, of course. That still drops down to 9, lol.)

At maximum synthetic load: CPU air cooled to 83*C +/- 3, GPUs air cooled to 76*C +/- 1.

My only advice if you chose an x99/lga2011v3 chip is that you choose your board very carefully... Lots of real poopy x99 motherboards out there. Avoid those.

[Zool]

As long as you aren't building megabases, any medium class PC should do well.

If you plan anything like i7-7700k + Gfx 980 or better, + random ssd + 16 GB, you should be safe for whatever you do - if your PC hits this level, the only thing that can limit you would be a bad connection

[Machine Medic]

Also, remember to consider electro-migration when you are anticipating your overclocking capacity. Sure, you can push a chip to some pretty ridiculous extremes (150%, 160%, 165%+) with the right cooling solution, but 9/10 times those extremes require you to apply dangerous voltages to the chip. Want higher frequency -> apply more voltage -> push more current -> exponentially reduce chip life expectancy. This is due to accelerated physical movement of the chip's semiconductor substrate as a result of extreme current density, and it is inevitable. Linearly higher reward = exponentially higher risk.

You can go extreme easily enough, but just be aware of the dangers to your wallet and sanity.

[Fuller]

...but i am building megabases (maybe gigabases IF the UPS allow it).

@Machine Medic
Not sure if "This is due to accelerated physical movement of the chip's semiconductor substrate" is 100% correct.
According to http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/phd/orio/node22.html electromigration is a problem at the interconnect
and not the substrate but i'm not a chip engineer...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_end_of_line

[Machine Medic]

*shrug*

Semantics aside, it's a real problem and I'm only pointing it out for your benefit.

[Tekky]

According to this thread, memory bandwidth, which I believe is proportional to memory clock speed, is very important in Factorio, especially if you want to build megabases. It seems to be even more important than CPU speed. Also, memory latency seems to have some effect, but memory clock speed seems most important.