Equipment for Star Citizen includes various tools and gear designed to enhance gameplay.
Equipment for Star Citizen includes various tools and gear designed to enhance gameplay.
For gaming mainly, keep it simple with four cores. An i7-4790k works fine. Use 16 GB DDR3 at speeds of 1600 or 1866 MHz. A SSD with 500 or 250 MB should suffice; consider an M.2 100 or 850 EVO. Install only one 980 unit until you need more. The PSU should be between 750 to 1000 watts.
The launch date for SC is expected in 2016, with better GPUs arriving then. The ATM 970 should handle it fine, but SLI or AMD crossfire might perform better. One can guess which setup will run smoothly, though the final release version hasn't been announced yet. You can still make educated guesses as much as you wish.
You'll need a compatible setup for three monitors, including your new 970 and two additional 1080p 60Hz TN panels. The arena module will help you run the game across all three displays.
Make sure you're not expecting high frame rates; 40 fps is more realistic. I’d prefer an ultra-wide shot, though that might affect the budget too.