Eso PC build recomendations

worrallj · February 2021

I'm thinking about splurging for a pc upgrade, and honestly ESO is main thing I'll use it for. I know what the recommended requirements are, but I was curious what PC models the game is tested on, because I figure the game might be best optimized to run on those.

I'm also interested in the option to do some streaming as well. Is there a custom build that would be recommended, or a particular off the shelf model?

TheImperfect · February 2021

I can't answer your questions properly because I don't have that information. My PC has been good so far so I can recommend the brands and types of products used. I have Asus motherboard and gpu, intel processor, ssd drive for os install. Can't remember what else is in there. I also love Microsoft products as peripherals like keyboard, mouse and headphones, very ergonomic. Razer are good too.

ThorianB · February 2021

The most important thing is to have a balanced system. If you spend $800 on a graphics card but only buy a cheap HDD, your just wasting money as you are just going to create bottlenecks.

The first thing i would suggest is using Passmark to help you compare CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, etc. The benchmarks comparisons will help you get a feel of what is better than what and if one piece of hardware is worth it to upgrade for you or not.

I would go with an I7 or or I9 processor or the AMD equivalent. Stay away from the lower end processors such as the i3 and i5. These are fine for normal PC use but gaming is very hard on a system and these processors will struggle when put under a heavy load.

For RAM 16GB is really the minimum you want to go for but 32 GB is what you want to go for if you can. Low Lat, high performance RAM is better of course.

For a GPU, this is going to be all you. I prefer Nvidia cards and of course the 30xx series is the top of the line right now. If that is not in your budget then go for 20XX series. I would only go with the 10XX series if you are really looking for bargain gaming. I run a 1070 myself and ESO looks good on it on ultra but it will start struggle above 60 FPS if i run it at 4k. That of course is the game itself some times. With nvidia cards, the 3rd number such the 7 in 1070 tells you " how good" the card is in that series. So a 1070 is better than a 1060 and 1080 is better than 1070. The higher number has more of that series features "enabled" as well. So a 1080 would have some features a 1070 doesn't and perform better in general. So higher quality.

Last is the storage device.You will want at least 500GB as Win10 and ESO take up nearly 200GB between them. You have 3 choices here:
1. HDD- The standard mechanical drives. They are the cheapest and also have the worst performance. You will see long load times with these and generally just get poor performance.
2. SATA SSD drives - These are about 2-3 times faster than a HDD( depends on models you are comparing), so you will see faster loads and over all better performance.
3. M.2 - These are the highest performing drive available. You have to have a m.2 slot on your motherboard as these are installed similar to RAM. Depending on model you can expect another 1.5 -3 X performance increase over SATA SSD drives. Make sure you research because not all of these drives are high performance. Some are barely better than a SATA SSD. I run a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO PLUS which is a really good drive for a reasonable price.