Help me mod Skyrim?
Help me mod Skyrim?
Hello, I’ve started exploring Skyrim mods recently and discovered Confidence-Man’s Natural Lighting and Atmospherics for ENB. It looked great, but it caused my system to slow down significantly—often dropping to 10-15 FPS. Removing it didn’t help; crashes still occurred when loading games, even after disabling everything except the base game. I ended up doing a full reinstall and added mods afterward. I’m aiming for a similar visual style as ENB but without the steep performance hit. I’d appreciate suggestions for compatible graphics mods that won’t compromise speed. I also prefer avoiding the strong depth-of-field effect in ENB, though I enjoy it when used sparingly.
My hardware specs are: Intel Core i3-4160 CPU, Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H motherboard, Crucial Ballistix Sport RAM (2x4GB @ 1600MHz), MSI GTX 960 (2GB), 1TB WD Caviar Blue SSD, Seasonic ECO-430 PSU.
I’m mainly interested in graphics mods and have already installed Sounds of Skyrim, Open Cities, SkyUI, and standard character enhancement packages. Thanks for your help!
Best, Aereldor.
I would recommend you to use Mod Organizer, because if the mod is not what you want (or give you 15fps) you can easily delete it and not have any problem (high chances that when you removed the ENB you removed some game files too)
Unless it's been updated recently, ENB tools can't be arranged with it (they only handle data in the Data folder). Still, I suggest using it. You won't overwrite files directly and you can rearrange mod order to give priority to certain ones. What resolution are you using?
I was relying on Nexus Mod Manager, but it didn't support organizing that specific ENB, so I had to install and remove it myself. It seems something went wrong. Luckily, the reinstall is almost complete. You might have misunderstood the question. I realize my mistake and don’t want a solution—just a suggestion for mods that should work well on your PC, preferably from someone with similar experience.
Never experienced issues before adding NLA; it really boosted my performance. It didn’t slow me down in any game, even during a tough mid-game in The Witcher 3 when I hit 100%.
The ENB shouldn't impact you too much. Focus on texture size (with only 2gb of VRAM, aim for 1k or 2k textures max, especially for armor) and script-heavy modifications. Frostfall tends to increase processing demands significantly and can slow down older hardware like your i3. Most mods now notify you if new scripts are available. The biggest performance hit comes from grass mods—some "lightweight" options exist but often sacrifice visual quality; better choices like Verdant severely affect performance. You're free to modify anything else you wish, provided you already have climate and lighting mods, plus static mesh upgrades and texture tweaks.