Your Graphics Research
Your Graphics Research
If you are asking yourself, what hardware components should I buy for my next PC so it can run Star Citizen then that is exactly what we will be doing in this review. Our challenge is in choosing the right priced PC items to get together an optimum build, which can meet the needs of Star Citizen. Our mission is a top end gaming solution for this game with ultra graphics settings, along with a 1440p monitor resolution. Every day we run through our carefully chosen gaming hardware and cherry pick today’s lowest priced hardware components to help us achieve this optimum PC build list.
When building a PC for a particular type of game we can get a better picture when we consider a few of the game’s specific characteristics. This PC title falls into the following Online, Shooter, Sim, Management genre grouping categories, which has been considered when selecting out the best priced components for this build, as we want to make sure the game’s specifics are catered for. . Another point of note, often overlooked, is that development would have been carried out on PC hardware from 2021 or during the period leading up to this. So the developers would have certainly been considering getting their game running for hardware that was of similar performance to some of the hardware available during that year. Some games are of course more demanding than others, and this one is not featuring on our list of most demanding games. These points help us paint a picture of the type of PC hardware we are going to put into this computer, we will now be choosing from our curated list of gamer hardware, looking for today’s best value for money parts available on the market today.
| Component | Current Price | ||
CPU |
$199.99 | ||
Graphics Card |
$689.99 | ||
Memory |
Silicon Power 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 RAM 2666MHz |
$52.99 | |
Motherboard |
GIGABYTE GA-A320M mATX AM4 |
$54.99 | |
Case |
Cooler Master MasterBox Lite 3.1 mATX |
$49.99 | |
PSU |
Corsair VS Series 650W 80+ White |
$64.98 | |
SSD |
Crucial MX500 SSD 500GB |
$53.99 | |
HDD |
Toshiba X300 HDD 5TB |
$374.97 | |
Display |
AOC 22 inch 5ms |
$90.00 | |
Keyboard |
Corsair K63 |
$59.99 | |
Mouse |
Cooler Master MM710 |
$39.99 | |
Headset |
Tritton ARK Elite 7.1 |
$69.99 | |
| Star Citizen PC Build Total Price | $1,801.86 | ||
Getting the right graphics card is a good way to start any game PC build. So lets take a look for the best price to performance gpu hardware available right now, that isnt overpowered for this game but will still run Star Citizen at 1440p ultra settings. Today’s prices for graphics cards lead us to the GeForce RTX 2080 Super Zotac Twin Fan 8GB as the smartest GPU option for this computer and one that will deliver some good frame rates at this gaming resolution at ultra. Watching this card over the past 2 weeks we have seen its price drop by $40, further supporting our selection in this hardware. Checking our records our lowest tracked price for this card was on 29th Feb 2020, which had it priced at $679.99. Todays price of $689.99 is certainly a good price for this hardware, considering the performance returns are a good match for this game.
Our graphics card will need 8GB of VRAM built into it to act as a suitable buffer between our video card and chosen CPU. This graphics card has 8GB which will be plenty for this game at this resolution.
Finding a well priced motherboard, like the one we are putting in our build today really helps tie things together in terms of performance and opens up other hardware options that become available to us later in the selection. The GIGABYTE GA-A320M mATX AM4 motherboard is at a great price point and lets us select our desired Socket AM4 cpu. As the GeForce RTX 2080 Super Zotac Twin Fan 8GB wants a suitable good pairing when looking to run Star Citizen well at this resolution. The Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core 3.6GHz is currently priced at a competitive $199.99. A low end price for this CPU would be $56.98, which we saw it priced at on 7th Jul 2020.
The awesome GIGABYTE GA-A320M mATX AM4 is highly competitive, priced at $54.99, which provides it a position today in this gamer build. Our motherboard price records put this mobo’s price on 25th Jun 2020 at $53.99.
One of the more significant hardware components in this Star Citizen build is the RAM. We are choosing some complementary and well priced Silicon Power 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 RAM 2666MHz. It is currently priced at $52.99. While among the best priced system memory for this build it will still provide us with the ability to reach our desired FPS for the 1440p ultra setting, that we have been focusing on with this PC. Lowest RAM prices were recorded for this Silicon Power 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 RAM 2666MHz when we saw it priced at $50, on 7th Aug 2020.
We reckon these hardware components in our PC build will get 105 FPS at high settings in game and you could improve the graphics up to Ultra and see a FPS of 75 at 1440p.
If we are looking for some larger screen resolutions with this computer, then Star Citizen would return 45 FPS on 4k at Ultra graphics setting. This FPS would improve to 62 FPS average at High settings.
To get a more general understanding of how our PC build for Star Citizen performs we can look in to how it copes with some of the more popular games of today at 1440p. To begin we see that Hitman 3 is expected to achieve 54FPS on Ultra and 75FPS on High graphics settings. Next up looking at Watch Dogs Legion we would find 52FPS on Ultra raising to 72FPS at High. For our last comparison, eFootball PES 2021, we would likely achieve 132 FPS on Ultra and 185 FPS on High graphics settings.
As Star Citizen falls into the Online, Shooter, Sim, Management genre group, we have chosen to increase the quality of the mouse we are adding to our PC to help better meet the needs of the game. We have opted for the Cooler Master MM710, where this particular mouse is currently today’s best price but a more high performing gamer mouse than some of the other mice we normally choose in our builds.
This title’s genre, Online, Shooter, Sim, Management, made us want to find a headset that can really capitalise on the higher audio demands the game can deliver. We therefore selected the headset from a better group of peripherals, while still looking for the best value headset. We have chosen the Tritton ARK Elite 7.1 for its clear audio and great price today. If you wish to find cheaper or better quality headsphones then use our selection list above to see some other headsets that we have found that represent good value gaming audio today.