Help with building a pc that runs ark perfectly with max settings.

[Mr Nothing]

So after a long time of struggle I'm finally getting close to gather enough money to make my dream come true. Have a gaming pc powerful enough to run big bad boys like Ark, whatever else is out there on absolute max settings with little to hopefully no lag!

But I don't know a lot about pc parts, I have the basic idea. Like I know I got to have at least 32 giga ram and stuff. Also a good cooler to keep my pc from melting away. I live in south america Brazil. Climate here is tropical, it can get reallly stupid hot.

So plz if you could help me, showing your pc specs. That would be GREAT! and I also would love to know what I should watch out for, how I should care for my pc and etc.

BTW: Ark is my main target when I get my pc, So even if the perfect pc for Ark is not perfect for other more recent games, its okay. I primarily plan to left my social life to die playing Ark and Total War Warhammer 2.

[Duffvader]

Intel i7-9700k + GTX 2080 Ti is the best gaming performance you can get right now with a single GPU setup, but it's also the expensive one.

16 GB RAM should be enough. Ark need maxed out in 4K max. 6 GB RAM. Means 10 GB left for windows & co. That should be enough.

The key here is CPU + GPU.

Alternative you can go with AMD for a cheaper but a little bit less performance.

I'm going to upgrade soon. My first upgrade will be Motherboard, CPU, SSD's and RAM. Maybe also a new case. Will cost me around € 1200,--.

I'm waiting and saving for a new GPU, my GTX 1080 is still doing it. The money I will spend on the next GPU will be around € 600 - 800,--.

Total Cost around € 2000,-- with european prices. I don't know the prices from brazil.

[Le John]

Depends on what resolution you're going to play in. At 4K the big bottleneck is the GPU where you should go with 2080ti for best performance. CPUs will just differ a few FPS. at 1080p though CPU will make a bigger difference where you should go for 9700k

[Patouski]

Aye - it all depends how "bad and rad" you want your ARK experience to be.

i7-9700K, or even i9-9900K (if you want a slightly better Intel-based Multi-core experience) and a 2080ti is what you should aim for when it comes to Intel / nVidia combos. 16GB is enough for most games, but beefing it to 32GB can safe-proof your gaming experience on the long run.

AMD has decent options - my Ryzen 7 2700X is slightly less performant than the i7-9700K, but for 66% the price of the i7. The new Gen of Ryzen CPU(3xxx) is closing the gap on the 9th Gen i7 and i9's and the price is still decently affordable. You'll need 3000+ mhz RAM on Ryzen chipsets though, whereas Intel can do with 2400-2666 (and 3000 if you have that), but Ryzen need that 3000mhz RAM. 16GB is still the minimum on Ryzen builds, 32GB can help on the long-run as well. Any nVidia works well on Ryzen chipsets, so there's no issues there.

As for AMD GPUs, the RX 5700 series are decently fast, but I have no experience with the (read: I have no personnal friends who owns one to compare with my 1660ti or 2xxx series card I tested). They are benched top 15 on gpu.userbenchmark.com, so surely they can achieve decent performance - for nearly half the price of the RTX cards. Note that the RTX cards have had a rough ride, driver-wise with ARK. Most notable - you need to leave Shadows on LOW to avoid crashing constantly. Or... it's a driver-juggling act to find if the latest, or the one before... or maybe the one from 2 weeks ago.

On the storage side: 256GB SSD for boot / OS. That's a given. 10 seconds to enter Windows 10 (or any other OS of your choosing... Win 3.1 should be near instantaneous, no?). As for gaming - I suggest you get a dedicated 500Gb (MINIMUM) NVMe SSD for ARK. You'll want the load times to be more than decent if you have mods (look for Write and Read speeds for SSDs - Samsung EVO's are up there in quality / speed). The rest, you can get a fairly cheap, yet good quality 2-3TB HDD (Seagate Barracuda 3TB is cheap, but reliable and should hold most of your Steam library - unless you like to install every game you own and keep them installed forever, like me).

Anyways - surely others will have ideas, opinions - but this is based on my personnal experience and research when building my latest PC (Ryzen 7 2700X, 16GB 3000mhz RAM, GTX 1660ti 6GB, ARK on a 500GB NVMe SSD). Runs ARK on Epic at 1080p with a 50FPS avg on all maps @ 1.7k CDN$.

[KitsuneShiro]

I have been really happy with the AMD ryzen processors.

[Patouski]

Originally posted by KitsuneShiro:

I have been really happy with the AMD ryzen processors.

Same here - although - I still give props to my old, trusty i7-860 CPU.

It ran for the last 10 years flawlessly... but it had to... retire, to less demanding pastures - running Minecraft for my son. ;)

[BumpInTheNight]

As Le John pointed out the screen resolution is a very big influence on if that's even possible, which currently its not when using a 4K resolution, like I am. I have one of those 9900Ks and a 2080Ti and they're in a custom liquid loop and the GPU is maxed out as far as the firmware will let you take it...and I can't turn on many of the very heavy settings like Distant Field Shadows or Distant Occlusion.

Without those on and even with a couple others toned down to High rather then Epic it struggles to keep 60FPS on most open areas of maps and in a big base that's right out of the question.

Now I have enough experience with Ark and my previous SLI builds to know you could get about a +30% FPS from adding a second 2080TI...but beyond the extreme price jump and complications you also get an imperfect experience where any particle effect severely hurts FPS and flames just look strange.

So for sub-4K, like 1440P maybe, 1080P yah pretty likely. But 4K: Today's hardware cannot handle it. But that's okay because the thing is damn gorgeous even with a mix of high/epic and extra flags enabled.

[Samadhi]

Originally posted by Duffvader:

Intel i7-9700k + GTX 2080 Ti is the best gaming performance you can get right now with a single GPU setup, but it's also the expensive one.

Not by a mile sorry. There are currently about 30 CPUs more powerful than the 9700K, 50+ if you count Xeon processors.

Intel sure have done a good job though marketing what is a meh CPU, price/power wise.

OP, there isn't a consumer GPU on Earth that can run Ark @4K all epic with 60+ fps consistently.
Tbh even at 3440x1440 QHD a 2080Ti won't run max settings @60+ FPS consistently.

I highly recommend stick to 1080 and get a high end `27" monitor

Dont get your expectations too high and you wont be too disappointed.

[Rukus_82]

I run i7 8700k and 2x 1080 ti’s.

[British Geezer]

I'm very happy with my system everything on epic...

Computer Information:
Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Model: X470 AORUS ULTRA GAMING
Form Factor: Desktop
No Touch Input Detected

Processor Information:
CPU Vendor: AuthenticAMD
CPU Brand: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor
CPU Family: 0x17
CPU Model: 0x8
CPU Stepping: 0x2
CPU Type: 0x0
Speed: 3700 Mhz
16 logical processors
8 physical processors
HyperThreading: Supported
FCMOV: Supported
SSE2: Supported
SSE3: Supported
SSSE3: Supported
SSE4a: Supported
SSE41: Supported
SSE42: Supported
AES: Supported
AVX: Supported
CMPXCHG16B: Supported
LAHF/SAHF: Supported
PrefetchW: Unsupported

Operating System Version:
Windows 10 (64 bit)
NTFS: Supported
Crypto Provider Codes: Supported 311 0x0 0x0 0x0

Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
DirectX Driver Name: nvldumd.dll
Driver Version: 26.21.14.3602
DirectX Driver Version: 26.21.14.3602
Driver Date: 8 16 2019
OpenGL Version: 4.6
Desktop Color Depth: 32 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
DirectX Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
VendorID: 0x10de
DeviceID: 0x1f08
Revision: 0xa1
Number of Monitors: 2
Number of Logical Video Cards: 2
No SLI or Crossfire Detected
Primary Display Resolution: 1920 x 1080
Desktop Resolution: 3840 x 1080
Primary Display Size: 20.91" x 11.77" (23.98" diag)
53.1cm x 29.9cm (60.9cm diag)
Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
Primary VRAM: 6143 MB
Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x 8x

Sound card:
Audio device: Speakers (Realtek High Definiti

Memory:
RAM: 32713 Mb

SSD is a must one for OS and one for Ark

[Vesuvius]

Ryzen 3xxx needs 3200 RAM for minimum best cpu/RAM performance

I’m running all epic @1080p with gtx 1080 / Ryzen 7 3700x / 16g ddr4 3200mhtz no OC

[Samadhi]

Originally posted by Hyperion:

I run i7 8700k and 2x 1080 ti’s.

AFAIK Ark does not support SLi so.....

[Samadhi]

Originally posted by Vesuvius:

Ryzen 3xxx needs 3200 RAM for minimum best cpu/RAM performance

I’m running all epic @1080p with gtx 1080 / Ryzen 7 3700x / 16g ddr4 3200mhtz no OC

After having run a few different resolution combos with Ark, imo 1080p is the sweet spot for sure.

[Rukus_82]

Originally posted by Samadhi:

Originally posted by Hyperion:

I run i7 8700k and 2x 1080 ti’s.

AFAIK Ark does not support SLi so.....

I’ll double check when I get off work but both cards are being used when I game. I can’t confirm 100% it’s running in SLi I was just posting the hardware I run nothing more.

[BumpInTheNight]

Originally posted by Samadhi:

Originally posted by Hyperion:

I run i7 8700k and 2x 1080 ti’s.

AFAIK Ark does not support SLi so.....

It may not official sanction it, but you can enable it and it does give ~+30%FPS. I've done it with 980s and 1080s, couldn't stomach buying a second 2080TI just for that most recently though.

[Samadhi]

Originally posted by BumpInTheNight:

Originally posted by Samadhi:

AFAIK Ark does not support SLi so.....

It may not official sanction it, but you can enable it and it does give ~+30%FPS. I've done it with 980s and 1080s, couldn't stomach buying a second 2080TI just for that most recently though.

I contend it gives nowhere near that performance gain, or 99% of people would be using SLi for Ark.