Is there any point to a beefier PC?

[johanatnexus]

I´m suspecting my current problems with mods is that my computer is running out of juice. What´s the highest spec pc that reasonable for a heavily modded Skyrim? At what point is it just not advantageous anymore?

[strawbqwerty]

As far as I can tell after playing Sky rim for way to long. The game when modded with visual enhancement mods and whole lot of 4 k textures will slow up all but the top end video cards. I personally have AMD set up. A X570 board,a Ryzen 5 53600 cpu 32 GB of ram and 16 GB Radeon Frontier GPU. I recently tried a fairly texture heavy mod list. While playing I checked the GPU performance. The GPU was using 11gb to max of 16GB at which point the frame rate crashed and very soon after so did the game. So not knowing what you have as a set up. I would first look at your GPU. Filling your sky rim game world with a whole lot of extra npc`s, especially interiors like inns, will give the game engine some serious grief and slows thing up or just CTD. I have though had over seventy followers in Dragons reach wandering around.

[anjenthedog]

all depends on what "beefier" means.

 

Obviously a newer i-9700k or better would be of benefit. Or at least it should be obvious

an SSD vs a traditional disk drive will provide faster file access

GPU with a reasonable amount of vram is essential when talking about all the rich stuff that is shown in you tube showcases (I'm using what is likely "bare min requirements" for ultra mode, a 1060sc 6G... something better than that would be nice but not "essential" unless you're playing my-dog-bigger games with the enb crowd)

 

But this isn't a contest of whose "richard" is longer or fatter or stiffer. It's a matter of what you expect from the game. If you expect that top "pro showcaser" level some folks show in photos and videos, expect to spend and spend heavily, from using the latest greatest SOA video card to 4K vs regular monitors, to a 9900K series processor to ...well you get the drift (I hope)

 

 

I suspect what you meant to ask is "What's the LOWEST spec pc that reasonable for a heavily modded Skyrim?", because otherwise the sky's the limit. You could easily spend upwards of ~$7-8K or more for an SOA system with all the bells and whistles.

 

click my avatar to read what I run the game on. It cost me (being candid is a curse) around $2700 (US) in ~January 2019, (admittedly, from a higher end assembly shop used by folks like the local NASA Glenn facility)..to give some perspective on cost. It's middle road for gaming. Will it produce literal photo realism? Not quite. Does it produce very high quality cartoon grade? you betcha. Does such a system cost that much today? Not sure. on one hand, prices naturally drop as tech improves, on the other the global economy under the NWO isn't what it was when we still had a free world. so maybe shave a few hundred off the cost.

[speedynl]

it depends on what kind of mods you use, and what kind of res you run, if you use a lot of 2/4 k textures mods and try to run on 4k res then you need a big pc

 

if you run the game like me, with almost no 2/4k mods then a 9700k + 1660 ti + ssd is more then enough to run the game on 2k res maxed out(4k res start to lagging its to high even with out 2/4k mods)

[scorrp10]

11700k cpu, 64gb ram and an rtx3080ti... at 4k with everything on max and ENB, lots of high res texture mods, FPS can still dip into 40s in some outdoors areas...

[anjenthedog]

it depends on what kind of mods you use, and what kind of res you run, if you use a lot of 2/4 k textures mods and try to run on 4k res then you need a big pc

 

if you run the game like me, with almost no 2/4k mods then a 9700k + 1660 ti + ssd is more then enough to run the game on 2k res maxed out(4k res start to lagging its to high even with out 2/4k mods)

I actually run a fair number of 2K and 4K textures without too many problems on my 9700K system, fyi... Not a my-dog-bigger retort, just a friendly suggestion that you might be able to get a little more out of the game with select use of higher res textures if you so choose.

 

And I don't mean swords and rings and other baubles, just to be clear...using 4k or 8k textures on a ring or dagger is, imo, pure fluff best left to the spendthrift kiddies and you tube showcasers. What I mean is environmental textures and skin textures...maybe even a few favorite armor or clothing items you wear a lot or all the time (presuming higher res versions are available) .