Please help me choose a new computer for Cities Skylines!

[nickenr7]

Hi everyone! I don't really have any knowledge with computers! and I'm looking to buy a new (used) computer that Cities Skylines can run smoothly on! I love this game but I have ALWAYS had to play it on a really bad computer and now I'm finally getting a new one! Can someone please explain to me which one I should get? The two options right now:

1: DELL OPTIPLEX 780 - i7-2600K (8-CPUs) - 16GB DDR3 - 1TB 7.2K & WINDOWS 11, AMD Radeon Silent

2: HP intel Core i5 7500 ~ 3.8Ghz 16GB Ram 128SSD+ 500GB HDD, GPU AMD Radeon R7 2GB

Which one would you pick from these two?

Thank you so much for the help!
/Nick

[Merrlin]

The Dell is faster, but I don't think it will be fast enough to handle serious modding, assets and DLC'S. If you are able to expand Ram to at least 32gb and 4gb or more of GPU vram, you should be able to run the game without it being too bad. I run with 64gb ram, 130 mods, 5000+ assets, a few DLC'S and load time is about 3 or 4 minutes. Prior to that it had 32gb and loading was well over 5 minutes.

[maciek.slon]

The specs you have are not full, for example the type of GPU is not provided. In general, the second one seems a little bit better: newer CPU with a little bit better single core performance (but only 4 threads instead of 8, as in 2600k). SSD drive is much faster, which makes the game load faster. But! 128GB is not very much, and considering the size of swap file this game needs may be not enough. This game is also really RAM eater, so 16GB may be not enough sometimes. It is good to invest in 32 gigs.

[Merrlin]

@macieck.slon you're right I'm not up on Intel processors anymore. I custom build all my own systems and currently running AMD Ryzen 7 3800xt on an ASUS 570x chipset

[nickenr7]

Thank you both so much for your replies! I wish I had more specs but this is all I have, unfortunately.

I have two other options:

3: Fujitsu W420, 250GB SSD+4TB HDD, Intel Core i5, 32GB RAM, Windows 11 Pro
Processor modell: Intel Core i5 3470 3,20 GHz
Hard drive 1: 250GB SSD Samsung EVO 840 (+ 4 more with 1 TB HDD each

4: Acer Predator
CPU: i7-7700
RAM: 32GB ddr4 4x8gb
GRAPHICS: GTX 1050Ti 4gb (Evga)
HARD DRIVE
No.1 256 SSD M2
No.2 1Tb (1000GB ) SATA

Is any of those better you'd say?

[maciek.slon]

Intel i7-7700 is definitely the most powerful from the given set, 1050Ti is moderately good, 32GB of RAM is nice, 256GB SSD is good. If you are limited to the given options the last one is the best.

[BGratz]

In which country do you life ?

[nickenr7]

Originally posted by maciek.slon:

Intel i7-7700 is definitely the most powerful from the given set, 1050Ti is moderately good, 32GB of RAM is nice, 256GB SSD is good. If you are limited to the given options the last one is the best.

Thank you!

[nickenr7]

Originally posted by BGratz:

In which country do you life ?

Sweden. :)

[maciek.slon]

Originally posted by nickenr7:

Originally posted by maciek.slon:

Intel i7-7700 is definitely the most powerful from the given set, 1050Ti is moderately good, 32GB of RAM is nice, 256GB SSD is good. If you are limited to the given options the last one is the best.

Thank you!

Just a quick question - is the CPU i7-7700 or i7-7700HQ? Those are different units :) Although HQ is still the best from the given set, it is slower than normal 7700.

[BGratz]

Sadly i have no good Tip for Sweden, Germany or central Europe would be easyer .
Still maybe have a look on this page, its translated penny-pincher and lists very different shops and compare prices. The german version is very competent, sadly i have no idea about sweden
https://geizhals.eu/?m=1

besides that i suggest these benchmarks, they miss many details, but the breakdown to just one number make it much easyer to compare
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

The GPu is important for CS but not so much as for other games
The CPU general score is more important in CS than in other games (not 100% sure about this statement, but so far i know CS make use of all cores)
The CPU single thread performance is generally very important sinice most games (no idea about CS) will relie most on one core

[nickenr7]

Originally posted by maciek.slon:

Originally posted by nickenr7:

Thank you!

Just a quick question - is the CPU i7-7700 or i7-7700HQ? Those are different units :) Although HQ is still the best from the given set, it is slower than normal 7700.

In the description I'm reading it says: CPU-Intel Core i7-7700 @ 3.60 GHz, Kaby Lake 14 nm technology. I have no idea what that means though!

[maciek.slon]

Originally posted by nickenr7:

Originally posted by maciek.slon:

Just a quick question - is the CPU i7-7700 or i7-7700HQ? Those are different units :) Although HQ is still the best from the given set, it is slower than normal 7700.

In the description I'm reading it says: CPU-Intel Core i7-7700 @ 3.60 GHz, Kaby Lake 14 nm technology. I have no idea what that means though!

OK, so the faster one :)

[nickenr7]

Originally posted by BGratz:

Sadly i have no good Tip for Sweden, Germany or central Europe would be easyer .
Still maybe have a look on this page, its translated penny-pincher and lists very different shops and compare prices. The german version is very competent, sadly i have no idea about sweden
https://geizhals.eu/?m=1

besides that i suggest these benchmarks, they miss many details, but the breakdown to just one number make it much easyer to compare
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

The GPu is important for CS but not so much as for other games
The CPU general score is more important in CS than in other games (not 100% sure about this statement, but so far i know CS make use of all cores)
The CPU single thread performance is generally very important sinice most games (no idea about CS) will relie most on one core

Thank you for the tip and help! I'll check the links out!

[maciek.slon]

Originally posted by BGratz:

The CPU general score is more important in CS than in other games (not 100% sure about this statement, but so far i know CS make use of all cores)
The CPU single thread performance is generally very important sinice most games (no idea about CS) will relie most on one core

Quick note here: C:S will use multiple cores to a certain degree, but the most CPU-intensive task (citizen simulation) is performed in a single thread from what people say (and it is consistent with my observations). That is why it is more important to have high single-thread performance.

[nickenr7]

Originally posted by maciek.slon:

Originally posted by nickenr7:

In the description I'm reading it says: CPU-Intel Core i7-7700 @ 3.60 GHz, Kaby Lake 14 nm technology. I have no idea what that means though!

OK, so the faster one :)

Awesome haha! I leaning towards buying this one atm unless anything better comes up before that!