Looking to buy or build a new PC and Valheim is the target--need helpful suggestions.

[jux2pose]

So, got my wife hooked on Valheim, and we love playing together, but one of us (guess who!) is now stuck on an old crappy laptop that gets like 10fps playing on rock-bottom settings.

We're willing to invest in a new PC to be able to enjoy the Valheim experience together. I don't need a monster PC, but I don't want to waste my money on a potato that lasts only for this game, either.

It's my understanding that the requirements and recommended settings for Valheim are pretty forgiving, so I was considering getting PC without a GPU FOR NOW and using integrated cpu graphics (intel core i5 being the minimum, I think?) until I get a real graphics card later. This strategy makes sense to me because of the currently-falling price of gpu's.

That said, I don't know much about requirements and I always need to refresh my memory on how to build my own pc every time I get the idea to do so.

Can anyone tell me if this is a sound strategy, and if not, make suggestions on what would do the trick for Valheim now but be upgradeable for the future?

Ideally we'd spend $500- $700 (monitor and peripherals not included).

Appreciate any help yall can give!

[electricdawn]

6th gen i5s like my 6600K should already have hyperthreading AFAIK. Intel actually was still borrowing heavily from the Skylake architecture in their chip designs up till the previous generation. Only the latest generation is somewhat more progressive (thanks to both AMD and Apple).

So I really don't expect too much gain, even if I would upgrade. And that would cost me a new motherboard, new memory, new CPU, so a pretty hefty price if I want a substantial performance increase.

I'd rather get a new Mac. Well... if IG would FINALLY get Valheim out for the Mac... :P

[Requimatic]

Publicado originalmente por electricdawn:

6th gen i5s like my 6600K should already have hyperthreading AFAIK

Negative. Directly from Intel's own website:

Total Cores: 4
Total Threads: 4
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology: No

The i7-4790K is over a year older than the i5-6600K and benchmarks higher. The 6600K is only about 50% (50.6%? IIRC) better than the i7-950 I have in a machine in the other room.. and the 950 is from 2009.

Again, OP, I cannot stress enough to avoid non-HT-enabled CPUs for gaming. It's a mistake you will come to regret. If budget is a serious issue, look to AMD for better pricing for similarly or better-specced chips.

If you're willing to wait a tad longer due to budget constraints and Intel is your thing, I would make an account on PCPartPicker, do a bit of research and find the CPU you want, pair it with a compatible motherboard, memory, and whatever else you want.. and then order when ready.

Just be sure NOT to buy a refurbished/recertified GPU whatever you do. The market is currently flooded with them from Crypto miners dumping their used GPUs back on to the market.

[skOsH♥]

Game is definitely more on the cpu side than gpu. You could spring for a gtx 1660 and it will run just fine, as long as it has 16gb ddr4 ram and a heavy cpu.

Although it does like to heat up the gpu, so I just run nvidias Vulcan shaders and it stays cooler. Runs more stable that way too

[electricdawn]

Publicado originalmente por Requimatic:

Publicado originalmente por electricdawn:

6th gen i5s like my 6600K should already have hyperthreading AFAIK

Negative. Directly from Intel's own website:

Total Cores: 4
Total Threads: 4
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology: No

Thank you. Wasn't quite sure. That said. Most games don't use extensive multi-threading and thus cannot benefit from them as much. Modern games might change that, and I haven't checked how much Valheim falls into this category.

Still, four parallel threads is good. Benchmarks don't really tell the whole story. i7s are nice and dandy, but quite more expensive, and nowadays all iX CPU's from Intel have hyperthreading enabled, thus making the i7 even more not-so-relevant, unless you have too much money.

This is a money constrained build. A new i3 will serve the OP just fine.

[Darkdaze]

AMD Ryzen 3700X,
MSI B550 Gaming plus (latest bios),
MSI RADEON RX 6900 XT, MSI Optix MAG27CQ Monitor res @ 2560 x 1440,
G.Skill 16GB 2X8GB DDR4 3200,
Samsung E 500GB 980EVO NVME M.2,
Windows 11, all software up to date. Max Settings 100+FPS

[electricdawn]

That GPU alone is probably worth the entire cost of the what the OP has in mind. ;)

[Samoth]

mine is about two years old, got it just before the GPU frenzy began, while not a steal at 1200, it's likely the best system I'll own. I had hoped to install parts to improve performance with another rig, and messed it up.
Inteli7-9700F/CPU@3.00GHz
16G~RAM
NVIDIAGeForceRTX3060Ti
It runs Valheim and other games pretty well, it's far from superb. The current inflation of prices might still linger for a bit. Consider also when you want to buy. Later this year as holidays approach you may find prices coming down considerably, or for whatever reason unchanged or still climbing. But, you can stand to save hundreds of dollars with some timing.
I bought as a complete system, ABS dot com. It has run quite well, and the system I broke was a lower end Cyberpower rig I got for 7-800 two years before that. Also a good brand/outfit/outlet. One thing that strikes me is in reading the system info. I am not sure entirely but I think even this good system is low-balled, in that it says it's 8G video card, but sys properties calls it 4G with 4G of 'virtual' memory. Just be careful what you buy, try and read all the thingz before handing the money over. Or possibly used, like me I have parts I will never use now, because I can no longer assemble PC's well. The broke system just sits there.. :\

[BoxingBud]

I find Valheim is somewhat gentle for a game at least for my pc, it's 5 years old. I actually play with detail lowered because it's just blades of grass clipping through the floor and the pixel aesthetic of the flat grass after looks better imo, seems like it's more part of the game. I think you'll have an easy time building a rig for just this game.

[Lothroth]

Just dropping in to say that my old GTX 780 runs Valheim fine. Nothing amazing, sometimes like 40 fps in boss fights, but it works. That could be some kind of baseline for what you need at minimum, graphics wise.

Edit: otherwise I have a 10400f, and some pretty good RAM sticks at like 3000+ MHz DDR4

[electricdawn]

Soooo... for those that might be interested in my ramblings:

New thermal paste came in, as well as the fans for my 1070Ti. Whereas the fans had the wrong mounting points (I made sure to order the right ones...), the new thermal paste was a direct winner.

Computer is now back to normal clock speed and both the CPU and GPU run massively cooler.

In my midsized Tavern, FPS still sometimes dips down into the high 20's, but it's mostly in the 30's. Everywhere else FPS are 50+, mostly 60 (FPS limiter is in effect, as my monitor refresh rate is a fixed 60hz).

Main plus, computer is MUCH more quiet. Good results for this six to seven year old beast.

[jux2pose]

Thanks very much all, time to go shoppin'!

[Not Known]

If Valheim is the target, you won't have to worry much about a computer budget.

[skOsH♥]

Publicado originalmente por Darkdaze:

AMD Ryzen 3700X,
MSI B550 Gaming plus (latest bios),
MSI RADEON RX 6900 XT, MSI Optix MAG27CQ Monitor res @ 2560 x 1440,
G.Skill 16GB 2X8GB DDR4 3200,
Samsung E 500GB 980EVO NVME M.2,
Windows 11, all software up to date. Max Settings 100+FPS

Due to running Windows

On Linux I get more frames and a cooler gpu due to using Vulkan shaders

[jux2pose]

Well, I've made a few posts like this in the past when I upgraded this current PC of mine, and I can always rely on people disregarding the budgetary concerns and being like, well you need this, this, this, and this because it's awesome, and you'd be stupid to buy this because of this....but ultimately I just wanted to spend 5-700 bucks on something that'd make me happy for the next few years.

I think I found that, so I appreciate all your help!

I won't bother saying what brand name..hahah...and some of you would probably be ashamed that I don't exactly know what motherboard I'm gonna have, but... trust me when I say I did my due diligence and research and I'm pretty sure I'll have what I need.

I was able to land a core i5 10400F (with hyperthreading, as I understand it!) with a gtx 1650 for just around $600. I'll probably have to grab another 8gb of RAM (or maybe not, once I see how the thing runs with only 8GB) and perhaps a bigger hard drive as time goes on (maybe not on that one as well, as this won't be my primary PC), but those are pretty minimal investments to me.

There'll be those of you who say I got ripped off or something, but trust me when I say I shopped around before I made this post and this was definitely a competitive price considering the components value. There are no parts centers around me, as well, so bear that in mind.

I had found something similar on Newegg for almost $100 less, but I questioned the reliability of the third-party seller. I couldn't find any recent review and any positive reviews from the last six months, so I caught the above deal on Prime Day instead. I did my due diligence and looked into whether or not I could piece together something myself for any cheaper, but I'd have had to spend probably three hundred dollars more just to add upgradeability and future-proofing to the same rig, which is not something I want to buck up for right now.

Thanks again for all your help. I may post a follow-up with some FPS info once I get the new rig in and test it out!

[Requimatic]

Publicado originalmente por jux2pose:

news

As far as not knowing what motherboard you have, you can download CPU-Z (and GPU-Z if you're curious) and it'll tell you all of the details on your CPU, board, memory, and GPU-Z will do the same for your.. GPU.

As for the CPU, it seems fairly solid. Some features are missing, but mostly the gimmicky thermal boost? or some nonsense by looking at the specs quickly. 6C/12T + HT + other functionality should do the job nicely.

I do have two warnings, however:

1. If you intend to upgrade your memory, keep in mind that it is sold in paired kits for a reason. Do not mix and match different brands/sizes. If you want to upgrade to 16GB, buy a 2x8GB kit, and install them properly to utilize dual-channel mode. This means that, of your 4 DIMM slots, you put one module in slot 0 (the left-most), skip a slot, and then put in another.

Putting them directly next to one another in slots 0 and 1 will cause dual-channel mode to not function, and you don't want that. Alternatively, to make things way easier, you could just say "eff it" and go with a 32GB kit; that would be an 8GB module in every slot.

2. You may or may not want to fully reinstall Windows when you receive the machine. Hopefully this won't be an issue for you, but in two cases I've personally dealt with when getting a tower from another site (Tiger Direct), Windows had to be reinstalled after a full format of the drive.

As it turns out, the version of Windows installed on said towers was altered in some way. Not only did it come with VLC Media Player installed, which Windows does NOT come with, but neither tower would do much of anything besides run a browser. Steam didn't work, Origin didn't work, games didn't work. Windows was "fully" updated on both towers as well.

So, worst case scenario, you would need to reinstall Windows from an official source. This being a DVD, USB drive, or a digital download straight from MS. If that motherboard has a validation key chip installed on it (sometimes has a holographic sticker on it), it wouldn't matter if you downloaded Home/Pro (I recommend Pro in all instances if possible), as long as it was for, say, Windows 7, or 10, or whatever it has on it. Might not even matter for that, I'm just assuming.

If you run in to any issues trying to run any software/games after setting up your user profile and letting Windows update, just bite the bullet and reinstall if possible. Unfortunately, that's the name of the game when buying towers from 3rd party sellers. If they've altered the installation somehow, you could unknowingly be feeding them data without even realizing it.