How would you build your DREAM TrainZ Computer

I want to build a system just for running TRAINZ and would like suggestions for the hardware. I'm selling all my HO stuff for this, so I will have the money.

What is the ULTIMATE system, (Processor, Memory, SSD, HD, Graphics card, number of monitors and motherboard?)

Thank you all!

You don't really need to spend a real lot of money. You can get away with something under or around $2,000 and still get plenty of upgrade life out of it.

There are a number of places online to pick parts if you are interested in building a machine yourself.

www.newegg.com is one that I've used for many years.

The other option is to go to Dell and look at their XPS machines. Choose one with an i7 or better processor and at least a RTX2080. Bundle that with at least 16GB of RAM and lots of disc space and you'll be good to go.

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Welcome to TRAINZ! Amazon has Alienware and some other great gaming computers for less than 2K. I would go for an I9 Quadcore, and RTX 2070 Graphics as mentioned by MP242 above. In fact, I would go with the rest of what he has above. And everything comes with Windows 10 now (Windows 7 is out of support), and it does well if not overly bloated down. I have an Alienware I9 Quadcore with a GTX 1080 graphics card, and it makes a great heater when TRAINZ kicks the cooling fan up on high, which it does with great regularity. From reading the forums the last couple of years, I have come to the conclusion that TRAINZ is somewhat of a computer killer, so don't go cheap. There should be some other folks that can recommend the AMD processors instead of Intel, but I don't know how they compare.

If you pick up Trainz Model Railroad 2017, I bet you might find enough assets to rebuild your HO layout in TRAINZ, and there are plenty of folks here to help you!

Go for the best you can afford both in terms of cpu and gpu as Trainz can bring almost any setup to its knees if you use the wrong combination of assets . ensure that what you get has as many upgradeable paths as you can for future expansion.

Also a good computer shop may be able to build you a better gaming system than what you can buy in a store.

Get as much storage as you can , use SSD's for both system and for Trainz data base ( its a good idea to have at least a 1TB ssd for data .
if you do use standard HD's get fast ones, not 5400 speed.

If the budget can carry it, go for cards with the most vram you can get , long term it will probably pay off .
good article here on the differences between the top end Nvidia cards
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/rtx-2080-super-vs-rtx-2080-vs-rtx-2070-super/

Would suggest this probably needs to be moved to Parts and Labour sub forum, rather than the Model Railway one.