I've just been abusing my xbox today by playing Skyrim for 14 hours straight (injured and have a physical job). Its been the first time I've really had a go at the game. Theres some points that really frustrate me still (lots of controversal ones, I liked morrowind too much), but I suddenly like the game a lot more than I did previously. I am considering buying a PC to play it, for mods etc. I played (am playing sometimes) MW with mods on my less than awesome laptop, and I know how much of a difference they make.

As I mentioned earlier, I have a physical job, this is in part due to my distinct lack of computer literacy. I haven't really looked at buying a PC for ages, havent upgraded since like 2006, but I'm sure some of you guys know a lot more than me about this.. After playing Skyrim, what are your thoughts on minimum specs to play (not asking for max settings, just to be able to run it nicely & definitely better than xbox haha) and does anyone have any idea how much it would cost? Also, those of you with wives/girlfriends, how do you justify spending the money? =)!

Thanks,

A depressed xbox user.

I'm in the same boat, though with a PS3.

If you know someone who can build a custom PC, you can build an awesome gaming one for around $800-$1,100. That isn't top of the line, but would be sufficient for upper end gaming. If you don't know anyone, most of the custom shops will build it for you for a fee.

I recently upgraded my system just for the sake of upgrading...not targeting any particular game...and it turns out it runs Skyrim quite nicely. It can manage Ultra Settings sometimes, but runs much better on High Quality. 1920x1080 (1080p in other words)
Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3Ghz
8GB DDR3 RAM
ATI Radeon HD 6850 1GB
Existing Mechanical (non-SSD) Hard Drives (7200RPM)

Loading times are fast enough that I rarely get a chance to read the loading screens fully.

Not sure how much a full system would cost with these components as I reused several components including hard drives, case, power supply. My guess would be somewhere in the range Shaen said, though probably lower.

I just picked up a new laptop for $1600. Prices are pretty reasonable, especially if you get a desktop. I'll be getting a new PC in a HTPC case before long as well, estimating $800ish.

It's really not much to spend.

Yeah I'm pretty sure someone could build one.. its not a bad price really. I always remembered them burning a hole in my pocket.



Ah yeah, sounds like something I could manage. I just dont have the time to play many games these days (frustrating.) its so hard for me to buy new computer knowing that by the time I get a chance to properly use it I'll probably have to upgrade it. But mods... Haha.

I never go for the latest and greatest when I upgrade...and I definitely didn't this time. I went for a midrange product that gives the most bang for the buck (this was regarded as the sweet spot by many when I bought it). My last system lasted me about 3-4 years with a couple upgrades along the way...I expect this one will do about the same. The more you spend the longer it'll last, but the price increases greatly of course. About the only upgrades I would do to my system are an SSD and an i7 cpu...leaving those for a year or more down the road.

One performance metric I used to judge relative system performance was how many Clients of EVE Online I could run at once. My old system could run 5 without any slowdown (6 resulted in some, was a Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz with the same amount of ram and same video card). This system handles all 7 of my EVE accounts without breaking a sweat. That's 3 windows visible (3 monitors), with 4 in the background.

This is a good build and sound advice.

You only need a 550w psu as well.

I have the same spec, just with a gtx560 and a FSP 500W Aurum PSU - 80plus Gold efficiency.

Mobo wise you want any z68 chipset for oc'ing that lovely 2500k. Ideally MSI, Asus or Gigabyte and make sure it has SATA 6gbs (SATA III) and USB 3.0. A lot _dont_. I just got a non K 2500 and a h67 mobo personally but now prices have come down, there's no reason not to get a K and z68.

Pick up a viewsonic vx2239wm for full 1080p hd gaming at a very cheap price.

Eww....Viewsonic...I prefer Samsung (mainly because of my support history with viewsonic). That said, that is a good monitor...it is the left side of my 3 way monitor display...the other two are Samsung.

And good advice on the z68 chipset...also allows you to setup an SSD to cache for a mechanical hard drive. I haven't done that myself...but I've heard it can improve things quite a bit for the cost of a 40GB SSD.

I also prefer Samsung but they are 40-50% more for that extra quality. The viewsonic I was very sceptical about, but its really only bad on the colour depth, but still better than my four year old syncmaster 204bw ever was so for $100 I was very pleased with it. Well recommend them for all but serious video editing/photoshopping.

The SSD caching thing svcks. Check out reviews on toms etc. If you want an SSD just grab an Agility 3 80gb. I have one as my windows/C: disk and a f3 1tb drive for bittorrent/storage etc.

Hi.

Well people can just type in specs here and there, that won't really help you out.
What we need to know is, what kind of games do you want to play?
Don't build a computer just for one game, are there any future games that you know of that you want to play.

The most important thing in building your own PC is.....preparing for the future.

I don't know where you're from [country] so i don't know the prices etc.

I'm from Sweden [god you have to love the computer part prices here].

If you want you can just PM me and we can talk it over there.


EDIT :

lack of computer literacy, that's what the TC said.

And i see alot of i just bought a GTX bla bla bla, guys remember to take it easy. CPU this and that.

While a decent PC to play Skyrim on will cost me over a grand I won't be changing from console gaming.

Depends on where you live, though i do know you wrote ME.
Most of the times you get away with a cheaper PC if you build it yourself.

Go to Tomshardware.com.

They list components for builds of various budget levels PCs and they update them frequently.

Their forum is great for questions as well.

I'd wait until most of the persistent crash to desktop problems are solved, myself. Then again, you might be a lucky PC user who had no problems.

Get something running a 64 bit version of Windows 7.

An Intel i7 processor.

A nice big hard drive or two (getting several terabytes of storage is inexpensive nowadays). You don't need any thing running an expensive SSD (solid state drive).

Get something with at least 6 gigabytes of RAM. As with hard drive space, RAM is cheap nowadays.

As far as graphics go the two major players are Nvidia and ATI/AMD. My personal preference is Nvidia for several different reasons (they have some proprietary technology that ATI doesn't and Nvidia typically is the leader in technological advancement. The big one though is that Nvidia has far better driver support).

For the best experience go with an Nvidia GTX 580 (their current top end single GPU model). I'm sure you could get good performance out of something ruining a GTX 570 or 560, however.

Stay away from anything running Intel graphics. They are not meant for playing video games.

In terms of how to justify the cost, computers are good for much more than just games. The same hardware that is good for games is also good for digital art, photo and video editing, etc. Do you have some way to relate your PC to your job?

If you have any questions about hardware feel free to PM me. I've been building computers for 15 or so years.

He asked specifically for specs on a decent rig to run the game...that's what I gave him. He wants to get an idea from this forum what kind of specs he should mention to a system builder or an OEM when he buys a system or has one built.

Realistically...Skyrim is at the upper limit of visual quality for upcoming games for the foreseeable future. Chances are most games won't match it or will be somewhat similar to it...so building a system to play this game in a decent manner will cover your bases for a lot of games to come. Sure if you build a system that will run this game spectacularly you will be able to run a lot more games in the future for a lot longer...but your cost will also increase significantly. It's clear he doesn't want an uber system...so we go back to him wanting a decent system for the game he wants to play now...which is Skyrim. He asked for something specific...and that's exactly what I gave him...my opinion on what I thought a decent system for running Skyrim would be.

In my opinion that's what he should be asking for...it will position him in a good price/performance ratio and future-proof himself for a lot of games down the road.

I say this as someone who has been building his own systems for about 15 years. I've done plenty of technical support for people with little to no computer knowledge. Explaining computers to non-computer literate people is something I know how to do. When someone like that asks for something as specifically as he asked for it I give him the details and then give him a reality check...which was what kind of performance he can expect from that kind of system. To explain further when I say it runs better on High Quality I mean I see no slowdowns in framerate at all, even under the most graphically intense sequences. With Ultra I was getting slowdowns in some instances...so I backed it down.

What are you looking to upgrade? Here is a complete box, very much tossed together. All parts are from Newegg. Room to grow, may be more than you are looking for as well. My machine is older than this setup and runs the game perfectly. If you are seriously looking you could easily find similar parts if you are an Intel/AMD AMD/Nvidia guy. Also you could find parts on special or lower things like the processor and video card and still run the game great. By doing so you could reduce the cost another $100 to $150 bucks.

You can always toss in SSD later and another HD for more room. But you don't really need those for Skyrim.


Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, comes with Three Fans-1x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan, 1x Top 140mm ...
Item #: N82E16811147153
Return Policy: Iron Egg Standard Return Policy
-$10.00 Instant
$59.99
$49.99
1

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKX 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #: N82E16822136770
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$94.99
1

ASRock 970 EXTREME3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
Item #: N82E16813157280
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
-$5.00 Instant
$94.99
$89.99
1

HIS IceQ X Turbo H695QNT2G2M Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card ...
Item #: N82E16814161372
Return Policy: VGA Standard Return Policy
$269.99
1

RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-530SS 530W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular LED Power Supply
Item #: N82E16817152028
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
-$15.00 Instant
$54.99
$39.99
1

G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR
Item #: N82E16820231460
Return Policy: Iron Egg Standard Return Policy
-$20.00 Instant
$69.99
$49.99
1

AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition Deneb 3.5GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Desktop Processor HDZ970FBGMBOX
Item #: N82E16819103894
Return Policy: CPU Replacement Only Return Policy
$139.99

Subtotal: $734.93

The computer in my specs, I purchaesd off ebay, except the power-supply...

Tower, with the Mobo, AMD 3.0Ghz x2 Dual processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB HD SATA2, and cheap power-supply. ($300 shipped)
New power supply 750Watt (28 amps x2 on the 12v rails. For dual SLI, if needed.) ($60 after rebate of $20)
New graphics card EVGA Nvidia 9800 GT 1GB DDR3 (Neede that power connector which the cheap power supply did not have the ability to provide.) ($55 + $5 shipping = $60)

Total: $420 for a new computer. Minus the Keyboard, Mouse, and Monitor, which I had previously.

Oh, and I recently upgraded to an old sound-card, which cost me a whole $5. (That is an OLD OLD OLD card, but fit my needs, over the on-board sound issues I was having.)

I can max the game, and it runs OK... 20-60 FPS (Mostly stalls in the menu-screen with the blur, or in heavy fog, or normal game-choking areas. Might be fixed with patches soon. All skyrim issues, not hardware issues.)

I can reduce the game to LOWEST, but gain nothing from that, except faster crashing from multiple things popping-up out of the blue, due to the ultra-low odd settings.

Game looks best as detected, with a few INI tweaks, crafting shadows and water and trees and things to personal taste. (Only real crashes are ones from the 1.2 issues, which are software issues, not hardware issues.)

System runs quiet, cool, and without real hesitation... (I record video and play, and play hard, when it will let me. lol.)

Here is a slightly lower cost package with a slower CPU and video card. Less ram as well. All from Newegg as well, just using their site because it is easy to toss builds together.

Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, comes with Three Fans-1x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan, 1x Top 140mm ...
Item #: N82E16811147153
$49.99

Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKX 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #: N82E16822136770
$94.99

ASRock 970 EXTREME3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
Item #: N82E16813157280
$89.99

MSI N460GTX CYCLONE 1GD5/OC GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Item #: N82E16814127510
$179.99

RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-530SS 530W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular LED Power Supply
Item #: N82E16817152028
$39.99

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL
Item #: N82E16820231277
$29.99

AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition Callisto 3.2GHz Socket AM3 80W Dual-Core Desktop Processor - C3 Revision HDZ555WFGMBOX
Item #: N82E16819103846
$87.99

Subtotal: $572.93

Build her an even better computer!

This game is very forgiving on modern PCs - it's nearly all about CPU power, which PCs have in spades. I have a several years old GPU and it's fine with Skyrim, so you can grab some second hand bargains there. Concentrate on single threaded CPU performance, like the Sandy Bridge chips and you'll do fine.

To respond to the title question, not quite yet. Id still advise waiting for the modding tools to be out, although there are quite a few plugins out already most mods are texture replaces that are not finished yet. I would probably be on the lookout for good holiday deals on PC parts though.

Also, you dont have to justify putting 14 hours strait into a TES game around here.

I like this system, it is pretty close to what i built for myself over the summer, except my HardDrives are 2xCaviar black and im running as few different brands and other parts but its a solid system. I have built MANY computers in my time and in reality, as long as you have a little knowledge, you should be able to put a computer together by yourself for under 1k. They really are not that hard at all. Hell, i could even help you over e-mail. But something to remember, the main parts you do not want to go cheap on are the Graphics card and the Motherboard. Ram can be changed as long as you have a Motherboard to sustain growth, but since Graphics cards tend to be the highest $ on the list you are going to get you dont want to have to upgrade in say 2 years. So spend the extra 50-100 and save 200-250 on a good one. Never buy the best of the best because you will shoot yourself in the foot in a few months when its not nearly as expensive lol.

Hey thanks for the replies, its some good information! I'll probably be waiting a bit because I still have to buy xmas presents etc so wont be able to afford it till after anyway. Its cool that computers dont cost as much anymore! I'm actually feeling like it may be a realistic possibility !!!

First, a thumbs up to irongamernet's system builds (great builds, I couldn't have put together such a cheap/effective combo).

As people have said, unless you have money to throw away, it's crazy to buy a PC just for skyrim.

That being said, a couple of comments on the build:

Hard Drive prices are high right now due to the flooding in Thailand. They'll drop in a few months. Get the biggest 7200 RPM you can afford. Western Digital is always a solid brand, but I'd throw in a big vote for the Samsung Spinpoint F3 (not the F4). Best drive I've ever had, and a lot of builders are crazy about these drives. SSDs are an expensive luxury. They're nice for load times and boot speed, but not necessary.

Get a 24" or 27" high quality display. Dell usually has good ones (the only thing I'd buy from Dell), but there are plenty of other good ones out there.

If you appreciate audio, get at least a cheap sound card, like an ASUS DG ($30), or more expensive Xonar DX2 ($150). Many people don't care, and on-board audio is OK, but there is a significant difference in sound quality, even in the cheaper cards. Of course, to really hear the difference in a high end sound card, you need speakers or headphones to match, or it's a waste.

When you're getting close to buying a system, check out sites like http://http://www.tomshardware.com and http://techreport.com/. It's really worth reading at least the systems build articles, which come out every few months. If you buy soon, I don't think you can go wrong with ironggamernets' suggestions, though.