What are the absolute best pc specifications for Skyrim LE

[cameronacer]

I want to have a discussion and get the communities opinion on what they think.

Okay so first off can you get past the 4gb vram limit on LE now because i’ve not been able to find a definite answer? The specs i listed are assuming that there isn’t a limit so keep that in mind.

So i’m going to list two pc build, the first will be THE best specs optimised for LE and the second will be a more budget build.

No budget.

i9 9900k at 5Ghz
RTX titan nvlink both with 24gb of vram at 2000mhz
32gbs of the fastest ram you can get
running the game on a samsung pro m.2 drive that’s not the same drive that the operating system it on

More of a budget build.

Any cpu at 5ghz with more than 4 cores. maybe i9 8700k or something
Radeon vii at 16gb of vram
16gb of fast ram
an ssd

let me know what’s you guys think?

[ENBSeries]

I dont like such topics, because usually they are created by kids who still think that loud music is cool and fast pc with leds is even cooler way to invest money. But let's pretend this is not that case. There is statistic of pscx2 and dolphin emulators which very well represent performance for games which are badly optimized and having bottlenecks not on gpu. Because of security updates with those "melt down"and "spectre", most recent cpu from Intel should have lower performance at something, better check tests of single core performance which is the most important always for gaming, including heavily modded skyrim (skyrim se and fallout 4 too). There is one very important factor for intel cpu (starting from 8xxx as i understood), its ram speed. Both low latency, but more important frequency, i have seen the tests and seems recent intel cpu can run much faster with better memory. So if you go for intel, then frequency of cpu and memory are both very important, grab memory and motherboard with highest performance. Not sure, but maybe also worth to check game tests of same kind about enthusiasts platform instead of usual desktop (because they have 4 channel memory instead of just dual, so twice higher ram bandwidth). I don't know which socket they are now, but in the past it was 2011 and 1366. GPU from highest price range are always sucks, they are too much hot, easy to burn and after 1 year cost equal to previous models. Also next generation of videocards will be more optimized for raytracing, this is always the same story (you can google how bad gf5xxx were and how better gf6xxx, same for everything), so better to wait next while using some cheaper. And don't forget that skyrim can't run at fsp higher than 60 without bugs, so videocard can be overkill.

[cameronacer]

I dont like such topics, because usually they are created by kids who still think that loud music is cool and fast pc with leds is even cooler way to invest money. But let's pretend this is not that case. There is statistic of pscx2 and dolphin emulators which very well represent performance for games which are badly optimized and having bottlenecks not on gpu. Because of security updates with those "melt down"and "spectre", most recent cpu from Intel should have lower performance at something, better check tests of single core performance which is the most important always for gaming, including heavily modded skyrim (skyrim se and fallout 4 too). There is one very important factor for intel cpu (starting from 8xxx as i understood), its ram speed. Both low latency, but more important frequency, i have seen the tests and seems recent intel cpu can run much faster with better memory. So if you go for intel, then frequency of cpu and memory are both very important, grab memory and motherboard with highest performance. Not sure, but maybe also worth to check game tests of same kind about enthusiasts platform instead of usual desktop (because they have 4 channel memory instead of just dual, so twice higher ram bandwidth). I don't know which socket they are now, but in the past it was 2011 and 1366. GPU from highest price range are always sucks, they are too much hot, easy to burn and after 1 year cost equal to previous models. Also next generation of videocards will be more optimized for raytracing, this is always the same story (you can google how bad gf5xxx were and how better gf6xxx, same for everything), so better to wait next while using some cheaper. And don't forget that skyrim can't run at fsp higher than 60 without bugs, so videocard can be overkill.

Thanks for the reply. Im made this topic becuase i’m going to upgrade when i have the chance (money) and i have no friends to talk about it with. i’m currently using a i7 4770 not the ‘k’ version, a gtx 970 and 8gbs of ram. I love modding skyrim le and it’s the only game i play so that’s why i want to build a pc optimised for heavy heavy modded skyrim. i don’t want any bottle necks and cop outs mod wise if that makes sense. I want to be able to use any mods. with my current setup i have a 600 mod setup with only about 20 graphics mods (these graphics mods are a few texture and model mods and enb patches like sss patch and embers patch) this is becuase as soon as i add anymore graphics mods my system goes down to 20-30 average fps in fps hungry areas. interiors and such it’s 60 fps. becuase i only play this game i don’t want to say ‘i cannot use this or that mod because i know my system cannot handle it’.

i know i cannot just put a top end graphics card in my system as my other hardware probably cannot support/handel it.

as you said I want the cpu with the best single core performance with more than 4 cores. Which is probably the i9 9900k as it’s able to run at 5ghz easily from what i’ve seen on youtube. this pared with the fastest frequency ram i get get (16+gbs), i know skyrim doesn’t use more than like 8gbs right but you want more so that background programs aren’t throttoling the game.

is skyrim le limited to 4gbs of vram on windows 10? buecuase if not then a titan card like the rtx titan which yes is way overpriced for a gaming system (as it’s not a gaming card) but the frequency at 24gbs of vram will smash skyrim le at 4k. but becuase i cannot spend 2k on a graphics card that’s why i asked about the radeon vii with its 16gbs of vram at only 600 pounds?

[cameronacer]

my cpu runs at 3.8 ghz but i only ever use about 30-40% of my cpu ever in skyrim so i know upgrading to a 6 core 5ghz cpu will by a huge upgrade

[ENBSeries]

Old skyrim is limited to 4 gb by ram and because of how game is made, very difficult to get video memory usage much more than 4 gb, game unload textures itself, so videocard with lot of vram is useless. Actually it is useless for almost all games. Performance of skyrim is low because game is poorly optimized. If you install some mods for grass and increase lod level, then game waste more cpu time internally to do computations to prepare objects to drawing instead of draw them. But because of dx9, drawing is also slow, it is very difficult to boost cause of bottleneck well known to graphics programmers. No matter how fast your graphic card is, it's impossible to get over that bottleneck, except to try some newest platform with as high cpu frequency as possible and ram too. When programmers are bad, no hardware can solve issues. If you want faster with better scaling of performance, go for skyrim se, but it is faster only about drawing, while time to precompute things seems the same. Also if you are big fan of skyrim, try to ask some people to give you a try to play VR game, maybe it's better experience for you and price of helmet is much lower than upgrade you want. But as i know some mods do not work.