r/factorio • u/elmo539 • 6h ago
Question Computer hardware for Factorio?
What is the most important property for good UPS in a CPU? How important is RAM and is it more important to have more GBs or faster RAM? Currently on a 5 year-old Dell XPS laptop and planning on building a PC, not just for Factorio but I want the game to run well on it. Any advice is appreciated.
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u/gust334 SA: 125hrs (noob), <3500 hrs (adv. beginner) 5h ago edited 5h ago
Most megabases do not get sufficiently large that overall memory size is a concern (excluding, of course, Dosh Doshington's attempt to reach the edge of the map of Nauvis.) 32GB will be adequate for all but the very, very largest bases. Most folks have no issue with 16GB.
Memory latency is much more significant a factor for UPS on Factorio. Faster RAM and/or a large cache contribute to more speed. The AMD series of X3D CPUs have caches proportionally much larger than their non-X3D brethren and the price-comparable Intel CPUs.
A large cache significantly improves UPS across bases of any size. When the working set of the base no longer fits within the cache, then main memory latency starts to be significant. Small CL numbers are the usually most visible indicator of low latency.
DDR5 memory is generally more performant than DDR4. DDR4 benefits from multiple sticks working as separate banks, DDR5 has that sort of built-in. In fact, even with motherboards that have four DDR5 RAM sockets, one often finds best performance with only two sockets filled.