Congrats on the new PC! I can't really help with the modding side since I haven't actually modded my Skyrim installation in a long time, but I can say that installing in Program Files can cause issues sometimes. I personally had a few problems with it in the past so nowadays I have my steam folder on a separate drive altogether. GamerPoets did a pretty good video on this: 

(49) Skyrim SE : Installation & Setup : Start to Finish - YouTube

He goes into the "Program Files" topic at around 3:50 if you wanna check it out. 

>Which mod manager do you advise using nowadays?

Mod Organizer. I've heard good things about Vortex but I use MO purely out of habit.

>I heard recently it's better to put the steam forlder out of "programfiles". Is that true?

Yes. So that if you need to reinstall Windows, you can still have your games after you reinstall Steam.

I have been out of the loop long enough to not have an opinion about the rest of the questions.

Q1: MO2 is modern and works especially well for modders who have to change profiles often. It's easy to override temporarily and undo by simply unticking a mod. It's also easy to organize mods into groups with separators. I'm talking about the 64-bit SSE MO2.

Q2: Skyrim 3D mod series to complement SMIM and it's detailed enough for my taste (resized to 2K and compressed to BC7). Verdant, grass control and Waterplants for Flora. City Trees by Rogueunicorn, Realistic Water Two with Water for ENB overriding it looks fantastic, but needs some manual patching in xEdit. Shadows by HHaley for lighting (ditched ELFX didn't look back). Window Shadow Enhancer also. Sounds of Skyrim for ambience, HD voices for vanilla voices. USSEP is not necessary imo. Obscure's College of Winterhold to make it look less dead. Skyland High Hrothgar. Interesting Roads for variety. Glorious Doors of Skyrim. Ancient Pottery and Animated Clutter for clutter. High Poly Project also. Draco's beautiful clouds. Galaxy from enhanced night skyrim and HQ 4k milky way and One Sky galaxy mesh from LL.

Food: Animated Eating Redux or Eating Animations and Sounds.

Weather/ENB: using Vivid Weathers right now since it looks like home.

Characters: High poly head from Vectorplexus's site for smooth NPC heads. BHUNP body (HDT-SMP with collisions using DKnight13's xml for dem tiddies) with Fair Skin body and facetints. (SAM and) SOS for males (with glorious HDT-SMP collision).

NPC overhauls: JH skyrim (81 NPCs) overwritten by SOGS (Skyrim of Garamsilent, Serana so pretty) 6.2, which overhauls hundreds of NPCs. Looks less potatofaced than most on Nexus, suitable for fit/skinny bodyslide. Linked at Naver/Baidu request threads at LL iirc. There's one Chinese or Korean overhaul that replaces over 1k people there (NPC replacer 1103 NPCs 1.0.1, haven't activated it yet myself).

Hair, etc.: KS hairdo's with HDT-SMP wigs, SG eyebrows, SGHair (if you can find it, idk if it's up again) Smile HD, Eye of Beauty, and more

Q3: Climates of Tamriel looks a bit bland and brown to me. I switched over to Vivid weathers ENB and ENB for water. Looks crispy, doesn't kill FPS and has an MCM menu for quick changing settings.

Q4: I think it was in the recommendations for MO2 users to move Steam outside protected Window$ directories or the virtualization stuff doesn't work properly. Likely a problem for other mod managers as well to varying degrees.

Q5: Engine Fixes, Bug Fixes and SrtCrash fix are a must to stabilize SSE. Havok Fix 64 also adds stability. Net Script Framework to debug crashes. SKSE.

AddItemMenu for quick item spawning, AreYouThere for spawning/unstucking NPCs. Alternate Start and Open Cities to make life less hell. Racemenu to sculpt faces/edit PC. Larger MCM menu for SkyUI if using SkyUI. Address Library for SKSE mods. MoreHUD to see all item info without picking up/activating. Copy/paste in Console. More Informative Console to know what everything really is/last changed by. ConsoleUTIL SSE. BethINI to configure .ini files quickly.

Bodyslide to slide on bodies, SmoothCam for configurable trailing dynamic camera (something like Witcher 3 or Tomb Raider), High Heels Sitting Height Fix so those stilettos stay on the ground. Mfg fix for Expressive facial animations. Nemesis for animations, FNIS for creature animations. (delete FNIS "character" folder after generating, then enable all Nemesis stuff and run Nemesis and you get the best of both worlds.

SaveTool/FallrimTools to clean saves, Cathedral Assets Optimizer for any optimization/converting to SSE, Nifskope to edit meshes, xEdit to fix what "just works".

P.S. Skyrim is poorly optimized so CPU latency and frequency (single core) + RAM timings are important, especially for HDT and script lag even at 1440p (I am currently at 1440p).

P.P.S. I've always liked your screenshot mastery.

It also helps to have Skyrim on SSD or SSD M2 PCIe G2x4 directly connected to motherboard. Made a very noticeable difference on my rig and I also had my rig since 2011. Still runs good considering I'm running a RX 580. I can play Cyberpunk on almost full graphics but it would be nice to have better Ram and CPU. 

Just keep track of what you install and don't install too much at a time.  

Remodding Skyrim at the moment myself.

Stick with Mod Organizer, no reason to use anything else.
Check out TES general's site they have a decent arrangement of mods of different categories.

Try to set up your install without any chunky gameplay mods, then just try what seems cool one at a time.

Remodding Skyrim at the moment myself.

Stick with Mod Organizer, no reason to use anything else.
Check out TES general's site they have a decent arrangement of mods of different categories.

Try to set up your install without any chunky gameplay mods, then just try what seems cool one at a time.

Question 2 :

Which remesh/texture mods do you advice using nowadays for

Which other mods do you judge essential for gameplay (no sex here ... yet) ? ?

I use "Perfect Water Mod" which requires "Realistic Water Mod"  but  Perfect Water has this absurdly gorgeous blue

Other world mod retextures:

• Rustic Clothing Complete (2K or 4k common Skyrim clothes and robes)
• aMididianBorn Book of Silence (especially the ones for creatures and vanilla armors. He also has some landscape ground texture ones too you might want to check out).
• Noble Skyrim (building retexture)
• All of Bijins NPC overhauls (NPCs, Wives, WarMaidens)
• Ordinary Women NPC (Almost all of the Order Sisters from my Dark Ascension Book Story series are taken from this mod)

Also these "quest/new lands" mods play like DLCs, except these are much better quality and incredibly imaginative compared to what Bethesda put out.  Esp the last two (Carved Brink and Project AHO)

• Darkend
• Vigilant
• Glenmoril (think Bloodborne in Skyrim)
• Elyswyr
• Shard of Oblivion
• Carved Brink
• Project AHO

Other Mentions

• Any of Mihails Creatures that you like. He has an insane number (around 200) of very unique creatures. They also dont have compatibility issues.
• Forgot the name of the mod but when someone casts projectile magic, it casts a light as it travels across the screen.

Question 1 :

Which mod manager do you advise using nowadays?

You must use ModManager2!
As the newest one manages several of your games.

Ive used Vector for Resident Evil games and its not bad and it does store the mods initially outside of your main game folder, however just like the old ModMangers of NewVegas, it has to install the mods back into the main game folder.

The great thing about ModManager is that all of your Mods are stored outside of your main game folder and it does not need to install mods into the main game folder to work. So if somehow your main Data folder is corrupt, you always to a fresh new install of Skyrim/Fallout and not worry about your mods wiped (unless you created your own mods and they're sitting in the main Data folder). The other reason as you probably experienced with 245 mods that its easier to trouble shoot and narrow down which mod(s) are conflicting and causing game crashes.

Question 4 :

I heard recently it's better to put the steam forlder out of "programfiles". Is that true?

I definitely would.

The main reason is that if anything goes bad with your computer, you do not have to look, redownload, and reinstall all of your mods back into your ModOrganizer Folder.

And speaking of putting Skyrim/Fallout on a different drive......I strongly suggest @Jayomms advice about getting a separate SSD drive.

I went from a i5 4670K processor, with 8GB or RAM, and  a GTX 780 to my current i5 10600K processor, with 32GB RAM and my old GTX 1080ti (planning to get RTX 3080 soon)....but by far the upgrade that felt the BIGGEST DIFFERENCE  when dealing with Skyrim is moving the game folder to an SSD drive!!! Its worth the extra $100  to get a 1TB SSD drive.

4 hours ago, Jayomms said:

• It also helps to have Skyrim on SSD or SSD M2 PCIe G2x4 directly connected to motherboard. Made a very noticeable difference on my rig and I also had my rig since 2011. Still runs good considering I'm running a RX 580. I can play Cyberpunk on almost full graphics but it would be nice to have better Ram and CPU. 
•  
• Just keep track of what you install and don't install too much at a time.  

I would stick with LE first of all, mo2 is definetly the way right now. While I cant recommend mods, while there are too many, I recommend looking over sinitars mod lists for graphics and gameplay, lots of quality mods listed there! 

Hey Cema. Our corona-year is pushing you back towards Skyrim I see.

About mod managers, IMO the main points are : 

• to use a virtualized one,
• and to stay away from the problematic ones (such as Vortex).

Mod organizer is good, I personally use MO1 and never felt the need to change. ?

9 hours ago, devious-Drunna said:

Question 4 :

I heard recently it's better to put the steam forlder out of "programfiles". Is that true?

I definitely would.

The main reason is that if anything goes bad with your computer, you do not have to look, redownload, and reinstall all of your mods back into your ModOrganizer Folder.

I do agree with that. In fact I'd even recommend placing in a different virtual drive, so that if you ever need to format C:/ (or whatever your main drive is), your don't lose your programs. So it's not only away from program files, but away from your main drive in fact.

The other reason is that nowadays OS optimization went astray, so they do use way more space than they should ; and for some files (such as some savegames) you won't have a choice but to have them on your main drive. So better stay away from bloating, and use it as little as possible ! ?

Try to upgrade the RAM, for increasing the DX9 Videomemory usage.

1)  TBH we dont see a lot AMD/RTX cards in 2021 (except you are rich and throws your money on a scalper)

2) RAM is "kinda" cheap and u dont have to replace it in the near future like GPUs.

3) DX9 Videomemory calculation is: VRAM+(RAM/2)-2048 in my case 11gb+(32gb/2)-2048=25408

i can get 64gb 4000mhz RAM (2x32gb) for around 500$ which increase the Videomemory around 16gb

Thank you for the many advices.

I'm trying to tame Mod Organizer right now. If I get it right it has Loot included.

It's pretty unettling not to have the different esp in the game folder

17 hours ago, Cema said:

Thank you for the many advices.

 

I'm trying to tame Mod Organizer right now. If I get it right it has Loot included.

 

It's pretty unettling not to have the different esp in the game folder

I'm trying to tame Mod Organizer right now. If I get it right it has Loot included.

-I think the current version  is ModOrganizer v2.13 which is great if you play both Skyrim and Fallout4. I believe it also works with Fallout 3, Oblvision, NewVegas (althogh I havent tried it out).  I doubt you will download the older version of ModOrganizer as it may require you to hunt for it.

-Yes, even the older versions of Mod Organizer has Loot included as you will see something that on the right side where your esp are visible and it will say "sort". I think its the same loot program.

It's pretty unettling not to have the different esp in the game folder

1. You will get used to it pretty quick and hopefully see the benefits of having your modded esps, texture folders and such not in the main Data folder!

2. Esp textures and meshes mods that dont have an Esp is helpful with Mod Organizer as you may not realise that one incompatible texture/mesh is the cause of your crash and instead of hunting down every single, individual texture or mesh, you can just uncheck them and it deactivates them so you can trouble shoot which specific mod is causing the problem.

3. Once you have your game stable and working with your mods, MAKE SURE YOU CLICK "CREATE BACKUP" for the active mods on the left panel, and "CREATE BACKUP" for your activated Esps and Load Order!

I got a very stupid question :

I have directx12

Do I need directx 9 ?

Or is it just that directx 12 is the big brother of directx 9  and ENBs should work with it ?

29 minutes ago, Cema said:

I got a very stupid question :

 

I have directx12

 

Do I need directx 9 ?

 

Or is it just that directx 12 is the big brother of directx 9  and ENBs should work with it ?

Well, after looking into it a bit it seems Dx9 and dx12 are built differently

Downloaded the dx suite on

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35

and it fixed my problem. Snapdragon working again ! ... for now ?

Already down to 35 fps ?

Come one, after upgrading my stuff so much ? Must be something to tweak somewhere

So do they mail you out the matching track suits and white New Balances when you download Mod Organizer or is that something you're expected to supply yourself? ?

11 hours ago, SpyVsPie said:

So do they mail you out the matching track suits and white New Balances when you download Mod Organizer or is that something you're expected to supply yourself? ?

Learning how to use Bodyslide while learning Mod Manager at the same time

10 minutes ago, Cema said:

Learning how to use Bodyslide while learning Mod Manager at the same time

 

 

What about bodyslide are you having trouble with?

6 minutes ago, SpyVsPie said:

What about bodyslide are you having trouble with?

Simply never used it.

My skyrim instal was from ... 2014 I think >_<

I kept using my old sevenbase HDT body and looking for armors mods compatible with it. Every time i saw UUNP writen somewhere I was like "what is this witchery? It must be some kind of trick to deceive me"

4 minutes ago, Cema said:

 

Simply never used it.

 

My skyrim instal was from ... 2014 I think >_<

 

I kept using my old sevenbase HDT body and looking for armors mods compatible with it. Every time i saw UUNP writen somewhere I was like "what is this witchery? It must be some kind of trick to deceive me"

Well if you have any specific questions/issues with that or Outfit Studio feel free to tag me and I can probably help you out.

1 minute ago, SpyVsPie said:

Well if you have any specific questions/issues with that or Outfit Studio feel free to tab me and I can probably help you out.

Thanks mate. I will probably ask you before the end of the week, maybe tomorrow actually ?

Right now I'm not yet installing armors and stuff

I installed 95% of the stuff related to the environment and ENB + HD armors packages like amidianborn

Now I'm doing the bodies.

SKSE done

SKUI done

Ragdoll done

Racemenu done

FNIS done

XPMSE done

HDT physics done

SOS done

Male personal textures done

Bodyslides done but not mastered yet. Still I understand how to generate a body mesh. that's enough for now

I'm trying to see if BHUNP is useable in my case. not sure I'm good enough to make use of it

By the way which body mod or bodyslide preet are you using?

1 hour ago, Cema said:

 

Thanks mate. I will probably ask you before the end of the week, maybe tomorrow actually ?

 

Right now I'm not yet installing armors and stuff

 

I installed 95% of the stuff related to the environment and ENB + HD armors packages like amidianborn

 

Now I'm doing the bodies.

SKSE done

SKUI done

Ragdoll done

Racemenu done

FNIS done

XPMSE done

HDT physics done

SOS done

Male personal textures done

Bodyslides done but not mastered yet. Still I understand how to generate a body mesh. that's enough for now

 

I'm trying to see if BHUNP is useable in my case. not sure I'm good enough to make use of it

 

 

By the way which body mod or bodyslide preet are you using?

Realistic Ragdolls and Force is pretty outdated now and XPMSE now includes the same changes it makes so it's basically just redundant.

I use CBBESE (not the same as LE CBBE at all but it has been backported by some people) and all of my characters have their own custom presets.

On 1/11/2021 at 5:28 AM, Cema said:

Thank you for the many advices.

 

I'm trying to tame Mod Organizer right now. If I get it right it has Loot included.

 

It's pretty unettling not to have the different esp in the game folder

The Loot included with MO isn't very good and not recommended for regular use. It's best to use a dedicated Loot from within MO.

You should watch Gopher's Mod Organizer tutorial videos on YouTube to get a grasp on using it.

8 minutes ago, Uthan The Perverse said:

The Loot included with MO isn't very good and not recommended for regular use. It's best to use a dedicated Loot from within MO.

 

You should watch Gopher's Mod Organizer tutorial videos on YouTube to get a grasp on using it.

Well I know how to put mods in the right order manually in Mo2 so that's ok. I don't even use loot now

Maybe it's mandatory but so far 60 mods installed and running fine on SKSE