Building a computer for TS19

Yes you'll need ECC memory with a Xeon processor Malc, but I've never found that to be a problem. There is a way to mod a quad core Xeon into a normal Intel socket and there's plenty of 'how-tos' on the internet, but I've never tried it. Plainly I'm a Xeon convert and I have the skills to build my own machine from readily available and cheap ex-lease second hand parts, but I suppose not everyone can do that.
 
I'm almost sorry I started this thread. I'm sooo confused. Seriously, thanks for all the input. I will do some more investigations and will let you know what I decide. It will be sometime in the summer when I drop the bomb on my wife.
 
clam1952 said:
AMD are already providing Intel with serious competition with the Ryzen CPUs, both first and second generation, third is going to get interesting.

I bought a Ryzen motherboard bundle, Ryzen 5 1600 / Asus Prime B350 Plus which was heavily reduced in a closing down sale (75% off) just to see what they were like, It actually out performs my i7 6700K on multicore Benchmarks and is pretty close on single core which was a surprise, coupled with the GTX980TI (from Main PC upgraded to 1080TI) It is not far off the i7 / 1080TI performance in TANE / TRS19.

Motherboards? I tend to stick to mid range Asus boards however any from Asus, Gigabyte or MSI should be fine as they tend to use higher quality components across the range.

Xeons require a different socket on the motherboard and probably ECC memory, new looking at £500 upwards just for the Motherboard, for an unthreaded 4 core Xenon around £200 new.

An i5 8600K 6 core unthreaded is around the same price. Motherboard around £250 for a top range Asus, depending on where you look.

Note I've never used AMD GPUs with AMD CPUs, Nvidia work well with AMD.
Click to expand...

Dell sell xeons with non ECC memory.

Cheerio John
 
stouthm said:
I'm almost sorry I started this thread. I'm sooo confused. Seriously, thanks for all the input. I will do some more investigations and will let you know what I decide. It will be sometime in the summer when I drop the bomb on my wife.
Click to expand...

It isn't a easy subject. Once upon a time it was fairly simple buy a boutique machine with a GTX 980. It had to be boutique because the power supply requirements were fairly high as was the cooling requirements. These days the GTX 980 has been surpassed by faster GPUs that do not need as much power or cooling and we know a lot more about them. Hence Dell offerings aren't bad price wise and are reliable.

The Dell refurbished are fine but buy the tower case and drop in a GPU with a height of less than 4.7 inches. The lower the better. My T3610 takes that without a problem, an earlier Dell tower barely took a 4.5 inch GPU.

The GPU is all so look them up on the passmark site. They even have performance per dollar.

Cheerio John
 
pitkin said:
I was using a 1070 Ti. Anyway, I never said the I5 was the bottleneck, I just said the cores were fully loaded. I personally advise someone building a rig to plan some overhead for the future. I think an I5 (unthreaded) would be a mistake. It also depends on how you use your Trainz, and the size of your monitor. If you are switching in a yard, no problem. If you are zoomed way out and rapidly changing your point of view, I can get 100% load on my former I5.

Anyway, I am bowing out of the discussion based on my purported lack of understanding. My system quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, so it is a duck as far as I am concerned. Others can raise their own ducks.

I7 8700 K
Z370
800 watt EVGA ps
16 gb ddr4
1070 Ti EVGA
500 GB PCIe SSD M.2
several hard drives
Click to expand...

forget the server products, buy this guys hardware with the 1070ti or 1080ti and it will be a nice pc, i have used ryzen with trainz in the past and it was terrible, intel and nvidia still have the best hardware for gaming, don't let all these replies confuse you. PITKIN has a nice gaming setup, go with that. i promise you will be happy for under 2,000 bucks USD.
 
nugget2225 said:
forget the server products, buy this guys hardware with the 1070ti or 1080ti and it will be a nice pc, i have used ryzen with trainz in the past and it was terrible, intel and nvidia still have the best hardware for gaming, don't let all these replies confuse you. PITKIN has a nice gaming setup, go with that. i promise you will be happy for under 2,000 bucks USD.
Click to expand...

But remember you still won't be able to run will all the sliders on max on any content which I think was mentioned in the first post. I would concur at 11,000 whatever a GTX 1070 would be a reasonable system and certainly better than a 9,000 whatever GTX 1060 3 gig GPU. A GTX 1660 TI might be interesting depending on price a slightly more modern design lower TDP and better rating on the video card value scale.

Cheerio John
 
johnwhelan said:
But remember you still won't be able to run will all the sliders on max on any content which I think was mentioned in the first post. I would concur at 11,000 whatever a GTX 1070 would be a reasonable system and certainly better than a 9,000 whatever GTX 1060 3 gig GPU. A GTX 1660 TI might be interesting depending on price a slightly more modern design lower TDP and better rating on the video card value scale. My impression is that the 1080 TI
Cheerio John
Click to expand...

I got a deal on a used 1070 Ti, or I might have gone with the newer card. I never close my case (do any electrical engineers?), so TDP doesn't bother me. I run my sliders full, but probably not using the same content as you are. My personal opinion is that a 1080 TI is not worth the big bucks just for trainz. I think it is for the high resolution fanatics. The 1070 and 1080's used are worth a look now that the big time gamers and miners are dumping the cards.

A factor that hasn't been discussed is the PCIe lanes. The Z370 has more lanes, which improves performance for the same video card (assuming you have other units hung on it, of course).
 
Last edited:
nugget2225 said:
forget the server products, buy this guys hardware with the 1070ti or 1080ti and it will be a nice pc, i have used ryzen with trainz in the past and it was terrible, intel and nvidia still have the best hardware for gaming, don't let all these replies confuse you. PITKIN has a nice gaming setup, go with that. i promise you will be happy for under 2,000 bucks USD.
Click to expand...

I wasn't trying to be difficult or controversial nugget. As someone who has very little money I found that using ex-lease enterprise computer parts was the best way for me to end up with a reasonably good computer than can run TS2019 without any problems at all. I built my present Xeon machine for $NZ500 which has to be an absolute bargain which ever way you want to look at it.
 
pitkin said:
I got a deal on a used 1070 Ti, or I might have gone with the newer card. I never close my case (do any electrical engineers?), so TDP doesn't bother me. I run my sliders full, but probably not using the same content as you are. My personal opinion is that a 1080 TI is not worth the big bucks just for trainz. I think it is for the high resolution fanatics. The 1070 and 1080's used are worth a look now that the big time gamers and miners are dumping the cards.

A factor that hasn't been discussed is the PCIe lanes. The Z370 has more lanes, which improves performance for the same video card (assuming you have other units hung on it, of course).
Click to expand...

I think we agree on one point and that is we haven't determined the requirements. No matter what the GPU and CPU are with the right couple of a couple of sketchup models from the DLS in the layout and you're down to single digits in the frames per second. Running a GTX 980 which is around 9,000 I still back off the sliders for distance and one of the other ones. Strangely enough on some layouts with some rolling stock I get the same frame rates with a GTX 1050 TI as the GTX 980.

My personal view is something around the 10,000 mark is reasonable. Above say 14,000 and you are into diminishing returns. Holding off until the new AMD offerings are out makes sense to me.

The s/h workstation side is for the bargain hunters and has been mentioned they are well built and you really don't need the fastest CPU on the planet for Trainz. Just something to feed the GPU. I don't think the front USB ports ever worked correctly on my custom build machine but the ones on the refurbished Dell towers work nicely.

Cheerio John
 
I was perfectly satisfied with my 1050 Ti until I started installing 15 mb Ford trucks and 30 mb gas stations, etc.:eek:
Unless one is lucky or well-informed, off-lease is a mine field. For one thing amongst many, the hard drive might have been running for the last 8 years non-stop. The bios interface is often minimal, and on and on.
 
pitkin said:
I was perfectly satisfied with my 1050 Ti until I started installing 15 mb Ford trucks and 30 mb gas stations, etc.:eek:
Click to expand...

Use the preview feature in Manage content, change mode from Inspect to Performance Analysis and it will load a whole boards worth of that asset, watch the FPS, some of those fantastic looking vehicles without lod will bring the frame rate down to zero, good indication that using several will cause a serious performance hit.
 
I got lucky I guess and I also know what to look for since my daughter was hands-on involved with enterprise computer systems in her professional life. I also got my hard drives still sealed in their anti-static bags in as new condition from a computer recycler at a much lower price than they would have cost new.
 
pitkin said:
I was perfectly satisfied with my 1050 Ti until I started installing 15 mb Ford trucks and 30 mb gas stations, etc.:eek:
Unless one is lucky or well-informed, off-lease is a mine field. For one thing amongst many, the hard drive might have been running for the last 8 years non-stop. The bios interface is often minimal, and on and on.
Click to expand...

Dell refurbished go for cat A, disk drives a new WD black 6 gig drive is fairly cheap $230 5 year warrenty, and 500 gig PCI SSD's aren't that expensive at $100. You can get a fair idea of the age from the CPU model just look for a review of it. Add in a GTX 1660 TI say $300 this evening a dellrefurbished tower T3610 6 core xeon E5-1650 v2 16 gign memory $809 benchmarks at 12,732 compares to an I7 6700K at 11,109. Total cost $1,439 and that's a fairly reasonable system. Some assembly is required though in putting in the hard drives and video card.

On the straight Dell side a RTX 2070 i7 16 gigs of memory ball park $1,900 but I think you'd need to add in a bigger hard drive.

Cheerio John
 
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