What kind of PC should I get for Skyrim?

[haiUnder]

Im trying to figure out what certain pc I should get so I can have a better Skyrim gaming expericance on it. Something that would last me for many years

[gromulos]

8 gigs ram

AT LEAST a 4gig GPU

at least 1 TB hard drive

and a decent monitor, mine is 22 inches

if you want to spend the time, you can get a really awesome rig and save a LOT of money by using this site, it even has a system build feature that will really help you make sure everything is compatible, IE GPU fitting into motherboard ----> http://pcpartpicker.com/

[wifiman]

You don't need the 1 TB of space, more extra space is helpful but not necessary. I use a 750gb HDD and I am fine with it. If you aren't on a budget, you should try for the SDD's (Solid State Drives). They can be a bit pricy but friends of mine have told me that they decrease loading time in Skyrim by several seconds (worth it in my opinion). You probably want an i5 or i7 quadcore. I recommend i5 unless youre going to be using your computer for other things like editing media and all that because you won't see a big difference between i5 and i7 in skyrim. For graphics card, get at least NVDIDIA GTX 780 or higher if you want to have a heavily modded skyrim that looks like heaven. I bought my computer just for Skyrim too, how ironic :blush: if you aren't going to mod skyrim, well...why wouldn't you?

[Eyam3]

Nvidia 980s & 970s GPUs are out tomorrow/later today, & look promising. It "seems" they're as good as a 780ti on general benchmarks, but they do have 4gb of memory, so hopefully the 980 will better again for Skyirm.

 

I built my PC about 2 months ago, used a R9 290 ... expect I'm going to upgrade very shortly indeed. I'd get a Titan, but they're too expensive. From what I've been reading, SLI can be troublesome with Skyrim.

[michal9o90]

Are you kidding for what he need 4GB GPU? There is no reason for that. i5, 8GB RAM and gtx680/770/780 is everything What he need, I could also recommend SSD 128GB just for this game, or 256GB for windows and just this game, but it's not necessary. And there is nothing like " Something that would last me for many years" this is impossible, after 2-4 years every PC is trash nothing more. EVEN BIG SUPER HIPER HEAVY PC bought for a huge sum of money which are wasted in fact. Even that PC is a trash after 3-4 years. But when it comes to the games it's little different cuz games for a past few years just didn't evolved, (because the games are now controlled by the console market) so having 5 years old PC or even older, sometimes it could be enough for even new games, But now, buying a High End computer is pointless, because thanks to new generations of consoles, games will evolve strongly over the next two years.

[Novem99]

Are you kidding for what he need 4GB GPU?

 

Well, if you really go over the top with all the 2k/4k textures out there you can hit very fast the 4GB limit even without an ENB. That doesn't mean that below 4GB VRAM you can't play the game properly so I wouldn't agree that you should at least get 4GB VRAM but it would definitely not be a disadvantage to have so much VRAM when using a lot of HD textures.

[michal9o90]

over 17GB textures, and gtx660 Ti 2GB, And it's almost enough, in fact gtx660 it's little too slow, so I should buy gtx670 or 680 but there is no reason for 4GB VRAM unless you play on 4K resolution, but most of gamers play on normal 22 inch monitor and 1920x1080 which is pointless to use 4k textures for skyrim with that kind of monitor. The only argument in favor of more VRAM, is that, the game runs much smoother of course if GPU and CPU can handle it, because there is no benefit in an amount of VRAM, if the CPU slows card, or the card itself is too slow. Well, that's my opinion, no one have to agree with that.

Edited September 19, 2014 by michal9o90

[Amyr]

Well, it's the correct time to buy a new GPU for Skyrim.

GTX 970 OC is basically better than both 290X and 780Ti, and also quite cheaper than both.

 

http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1443&page=13

 

 

over 17GB textures, and gtx660 Ti 2GB, And it's almost enough, in fact gtx660 it's little too slow, so I should buy gtx670 or 680 but there is no reason for 4GB VRAM unless you play on 4K resolution, but most of gamers play on normal 22 inch monitor and 1920x1080 which is pointless to use 4k textures for skyrim with that kind of monitor. The only argument in favor of more VRAM, is that, the game runs much smoother of course if GPU and CPU can handle it, because there is no benefit in an amount of VRAM, if the CPU slows card, or the card itself is too slow. Well, that's my opinion, no one have to agree with that.

You must be doing something different then... Because Skyrim on ultra settings(with fov 81) is already using 1.3GB VRAM by default. And when you make some ini tweaks like uGrids(and some other draw distance(grass etc..)) your VRAM usage easily jumps to 2GB. Without installing a single mod. You must think that 2GB might be enough for you, but not everyone wants to play with your exact settings.

Edited September 19, 2014 by Amyr

[Relinquish3d]

I run Skyrim on Ultra with a few texture packs, lightning overhauls, face and body mods etc, no ENB's, with the following PC:

 

• Power Color AXR7 260X 1GD5 OC

• Intel i3 3240 @3.4GHz

• 4GB RAM

• The other components are irrelevant

 

While a SSD can speed up loading screens it wont make much of a difference. I'd prefer having the OC and important files on it only since it's a lot more reliable.

 

The whole rant was because everyone is suggesting super expensive components you don't actually need unless you're running 4K textures and/or very heavy ENB presets /Real Vision ENB for example/.

[Novem99]

over 17GB textures, and gtx660 Ti 2GB, And it's almost enough

 

But it's just enough because of your 17GB textures 15GB are overwriting themselves so you have in fact a 2GB texture pack.