Since mods like ELFX (Enhanced Lighting & FX), Lux, Lux Orbis, Lux Via are very commonplace and most people do tweak around using them atleast once, I shall overlook them. Also, since I shall be recommending an ENB, these can be ignored as most ENBs can simulate pretty detailed and accurate outdoor and indoor lighting just fine on their own. But again if you wish to you may as well use those mods along with your choice of ENB. I should mention here that ELFX is a pretty simple mod that doesn't hurt performance at all so it can seamlessly work with ENBs, but the Lux mods are much more VRAM demanding ones that can hold back on performance when loaded along with an ENB. With these issues discussed; here are my choices (and worthy alternatives) for :-


Weather & Lighting Mods for SKYRIM SE

Vivid Weathers Definitive Edition - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2187

Alternative : Cathedral Weathers And Seasons - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/24791

^^Both these mods are two of the most well received weather mods on the Nexus Forum and have some of the highest number of unique downloads. But for me, the obvious choice is Vivid Weathers. It's lightweight, dynamic and is compatible with almost any other mods that affect lighting and vegetation. And for good measure, it has its own highly convenient MCM menu to let you toggle all the options that can be tweaked within the mod's effect on the game.




Ethereal Clouds Special Edition - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2393

Alternative : Real Clouds Special Edition - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/90566

^^Ethereal Clouds Special Edition adds a layer of realism to the skies of Skyrim that you will simply not realize unless you install the mod and see for yourself. With a wide variety of HD clouds and cloud formations that react to weather systems or climates in different areas, this is a must download. From heavy fog and mist in Morthal and the Reach plateau to high cirrus clouds on a clear sunny day from the plains of Whiterun, Ethereal Clouds Special Edition does clouds in Skyrim a HUGE upgrade. I am honestly not familiar with the alternative here as I have never found myself looking to replace Ethereal Clouds with another but it seems to be the only viable other option on the Nexus.




True Storms Special Edition - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2472

^^This mod adds new rain, snow, fog/mist and dust textures to Skyrim and also introduces actual sound of rain, thunder and wind for indoors to provide a great depth of RPG immersiveness to the game. There really isn't another mod that covers these elements with such comprehension.




Inferno Fire Effects Redux - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/29316

Alternative : Embers HD - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/14368

^^Inferno Fire Effects Redux replaces the ugly fire and flame textures for all situations in the game with a realistic fire with flame physics for fireplaces, fire spells, torches and more. Embers HD adds great detail to embers in fireplaces and smithing forges. Both these mods are compatible and work great together so I recommend install both these mods. Together, both these mods enhance lighting scenarios in the game in a very realistic way.




Desmond's Lusty ENB Redux - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/29700

Alternative : Visceral ENB - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/21779

^^Desmond's Lusty ENB Redux for me is the perfect ENB for GTX series GPUs as this ENB is so well optimised to have almost no FPS impact on the game and yet manages to provide a great overall lighting experience that leans a bit towards the fantasy-setting, while the Visceral ENB provides a certain cinematic feel to the lighting and landscapes of Skyrim, while also being quite performance friendly especially for how good the game looks running it.

For any modded build of Skyrim the most immediately noticeable difference to just how good the game looks is almost entirely down to a comprehensive landscape and flora textures overhaul. If you really want the textures to look as good as any recent AAA RPG title, then installing a meticulously designed landscape overhaul mod for textures in atleast 2K resolution and a high quality flora overhaul in atleast 1080p resolution is a MUST. AN IMPORTANT POINT TO NOTE here: flora overhauls, especially a comprehensive grass mod with high fidelity visuals and default high grass density and foliage visibility range/LOD and real 3D textures instead of 2D grass WILL AFFECT FPS more than ANY OTHER MOD YOU MAY INSTALL. But the results will speak for themselves and you may very well choose to swap out and uninstall any mod that changes lighting and weather in order to compensate for a truly high quality grass mod that complements a great landscape mod and brings your modded Skyrim to life with next-gen graphics. So here are my picks for the best :-


Landscape Overhaul Mods for SKYRIM SE

Skyrim 202X Downscale by Pfuscher - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/68307

Alternative 1 : Septentrional Landscapes SE - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/29842

Alternative 2 : MystiriousDawn's HD Skyrim Overhaul - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19421

^^The only reason why I choose Skyrim 202X Downscale by Pfuscher as my top pick here is because it is the most comprehensive and MASSIVE mod by far covering everything from landscapes to architecture (both indoor and outdoor) and countless miscellaneous other details. There simply isn't any other texture overhaul compilation in the Skyrim modding community that covers so many aspects of the game so immaculately to the finest detail and with such high fidelity graphics and resolution. The mod author actually releases a whole compilation updated for every year, but since 2022; the main compilation is only available in 8K textures..truly for RTX 30 series users. This compilation is aptly called downscale as it offers textures in 1K, 2K and 4K options. My recommendation is to go for the 2K textures.
The best thing about recommending this mod is that I won't have to bother recommending anything else for architecture overhauls as very few other mod authors do architecture as beautifully as Pfuscher, and even those do not cover so many locations and cities as comprehensively.




Now I DID mention above the ONLY reason why I recommend Skyrim 202X Downscale. And this is because if we are to categorically talk about just a landscape overhaul, then my choice without hesitation would be Septentrional Landscapes. Honestly, it's pointless to talk and better that you see for yourself JUST WHY this IS THE BEST LOOKING landscape overhaul available for Skyrim SE. So really, despite my top recommendation; a very smart choice would be to install and deploy Skyrim 202X Downscale with your mod organizer or Vortex, then install Septentrional Landscapes and deploy it, and finally resolve conflicts by choosing to load Septentrional Landscapes after Skyrim 202X Downscale. This way, you can enjoy the architecture and miscellaneous textures of Skyrim 202X with the landscape of Septentrional landscapes. Along with Septentrional Landscapes another must download (again, to be resolved of load order conflicts by loading after Skyrim 202X) by the same mod author is :-

Northern Shores SE - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/27041

Alternative : Serene Shores by MystiriousDawn - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/85036


Image by mod author of Northern Shores SE


^^Another great alternative to either of these is MystiriousDawn's HD Skyrim Overhaul which again looks stunning in its detail but it does not cover architecture and miscellaneous textures as comprehensively as Skyrim 202X so some minor indoor and outdoor locations will look too ugly and vanilla.


Image by mod author of Serene Shores


With all these covered, lets move on to :-


Grass Overhaul Mods for Skyrim SE

Verdant - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2296

Alternative 1 : Folkvangr - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/44899

Alternative 2 : Veydosebrom - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26293

^^If you would rather install your landscape, architecture and most other overhaul mods in 2K resolution textures, then you will certainly experience FPS drops with a grass mod that will make Skyrim vibrant and magical..for instance Folkvangr will turn your Skyrim into a stunning fantasy setting with unique grasses, shrubs, flowers and much more in every different region in Skyrim. Veydosebrom takes that to even greater degree with separate textures and meshes for different regions and climate conditions across Skyrim.




But Folkvangr still manages to do all that and still occupies less GPU VRAM at it. Both truly exceptional in their application, but you may also opt for a simple and modest plugin like Verdant which barely effects FPS and gives the grass a very vanilla overhaul, but in much higher resolution than vanilla grass.




So that brings us to the last part of this section, which is :-


Tree Overhaul Mods for Skyrim SE

Skyrim 3D Trees and Plants - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/12371

Alternative : Simply Bigger Trees SE - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/5281

^^Skyrim 3D Trees and Plants simply has no equal when it comes to tree mods, despite there being tons of very popular mods from Skyrim Flora Overhaul to Happy Little Trees but none of these really achieve anything remotely close to how well this mod does it. With over 300 high quality 3D texture replacements for trees, shrubs and many flowers, choosing this mod over the others is a no-brainer. You may also opt for Simply Bigger Trees which really does make the land so much more vibrant by just making all trees in the game bigger, making the forests look so much more dense. In case you do choose this one, be sure to install :-

Tree Bark in High Definition - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20336

^^This mod replaces the textures of all vanilla trees to high quality ones and is fully compatible with mods like Simply Bigger Trees, Skyrim Flora Overhaul and other tree replacers making those mods a more viable option.

Image by mod author of Dave's UFHD Mountains SE


Personally I have found about half a dozen of very high quality mountain and rock texture mods which look just great without Majestic Mountains as a base. I tried it once and found Majestic Mountains to be just a pointless waste of disk space. Though there are quite a few, I can without hesitation recommend these two :-

Rock & Mountain Texture Mods for Skyrim SE

Dave's UFHD Mountains SE - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26662

Alternative : 8K Mountains by MystiriousDawn - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/24204

^^Either of these two mods are really good, its basically just down to personal taste. Note that for mountains and rock textures, installing 4K textures should not put much load on the GPU so you may want to try installing 4K files and check how the game handles itself. Dave's UFHD Mountains actually offers texture files upto 16K incidentally and DOES mention that 4K textures are the native textures while the 2K is performance focused; both mods mentioned here offers choices for texture quality so you can play around to find your ideal one.


Image by mod author of 8K Mountains SE


Roads are an ever-present sight to the Dragonborn's eyes as they roam across Skyrim and therefore play BIG part in affecting how the game looks. So overhauling the poorly designed low quality vanilla road textures is a must to make your Skyrim look much more easy on the eye when exploring. Since 2017, the massively downloaded and acclaimed Blended Roads mod has been a staple of all modded Skyrim builds. But in recent years there has been a handful few mods or overhauls that have either perfected Blended Roads or simply done a better job.


Image by mod author of Blended Roads Redone SE


So to make the roads in your Skyrim SE look pleasant and inviting for a stroll or a journey across the province, I recommend any of these two :-

Road Texture Overhaul for Skyrim SE

Northern Roads - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/77530

Alternative : Blended Roads Redone SE - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/26270

^^Northern Roads completely retextures all roads and adds stunningly lore-friendly viking style bridges to Skyrim, effectively transforming the very look of the outdoors in the game. There simply isn't any other mod that can compete with it. But in case you DO wish to stick with the vanilla look of roads in Skyrim, then you can first install Blended Roads and then overwrite that with Blended Roads Redone SE and load it after Blended Roads.


Image by mod author of Northern Roads


In recent years I have only found myself switching between only two mods for snow and just one for ice textures since all others seem sub-par to me. So I can easily recommend these :-

Snow & Ice Overhaul Mods for Skyrim SE

Snow - HD Texture Replacer with Parallax - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/82819

Alternative : Hyperborean Snow SE - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/29283

Just Ice - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/9444

^^Snow - HD Texture Replacer with Parallax by MystirirousDawn is by far the best parallax snow texture overhaul there is. But then again, this mod only came out this year and until recently I have always used Hyperborean Snow SE as my snow overhaul mod; so I can easily recommend either of them. For the ice overhaul though, Just Ice is really the only option that is not ugly to my eyes.


Image by mod author of Snow - HD Texture Replacer with Parallax

The final part of making your Skyrim look and feel next-gen has got to be in the NPC's and the fine details of many everyday items and objects as these are all around you and unless you make the effort to ensure they match the fidelity and quality of their environments everything seems out of place and just an immediate turn off. For NPC replacers there simply is no competition to one specific mod author :-

Pandorable - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/users/41216925

^^ I highly recommend you to go to their page and actually download all available NPC replacers the mod author has to offer, since the big NPC replacer collections I'm about to share does miss out a few NPC's here and there which the author has published as separate mods. That said, these are the recommendations I would make for :-

NPC Replacers & Overhauls for Skyrim SE

Pandorable's NPC'S - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19012

Pandorable's NPC'S Dawnguard - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/24135

Pandorable's NPC'S Dragonborn - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/30680

Pandorable's NPC'S Males - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/42043

Pandorable's NPC'S Males 2 - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/50617

^^Pandorable's NPC'S overhauls 85 females across Skyrim, the Dawnguard mod covers all females and males from the Dawnguard DLC and likewise the Dragornborn mod covers all NPC's from the Dragonborn DLC. The two mods for male NPC's together cover 120 male NPC's in the base game. As I have mentioned above, do check out and download more from this mod author as there are many separate mods for individual NPC's that are nevertheless important to the game like Pandorable's Black Briar Ladies, Pandorable's Serana and Pandorable's Valeria among many others.




For mods that re-meshes the vanilla bodies, my recommendation wont be any different from anybody else's as there can be only one truly install-worthy :-

Body Re-Mesh Mod for Skyrim SE

Caliente's Beautiful bodies Enhancer - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/198

^^Simply the best there is and there really is no cause for explanations for this one.

To finish off NPC'S and player overhauls I recommend these :-

Skin Re-Texture Mods for Skyrim SE

BnP - Bits N Pieces Female Skin - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/65274

Alternative : Diamond Skin - CBBE and UNP Female Textures - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/45718

Tempered Skins For Males - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/7902

Alternative : BnP - Bits N Pieces Male Skin - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/65402

^^All the above recommendations make all characters in game look stunning in their smallest details and support or require all the latest movement animation physics, and facial expression mods which allow and enhance the sexiness of all characters and also allow you to install all your favourite sexy mods...of which I shall not talk about since those have nought to do with aesthetics. Also, for this section I have decided to not provide any images that displays a full nude body as I want to keep this guide fairly SFW, so I will only share this image with a character in moderately revealing outfit so that you can get an idea of the skin mod I used.




As a bonus I shall also list a few miscellaneous mods that also enhance the character creation experience to create sexy player characters as well as a mod collection that replaces vanilla textures for a wide variety of in-game objects and items that does bring a big difference to the gameplay. I wont bother to list and talk about mods like SMIM since it would be redundant in 2023 as such mods are staples of a modded build. So finally here is a list of the last few :-

Miscellaneous Character Overhaul & Object Re-Texture Mods for Skyrim SE

KS Hairdos SSE - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6817

The Eyes of Beauty AI Remastered - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/70263

Bits N Pieces Eye Overhaul - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/76567

Koralina's Makeup Tweaks- https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63024

Koralina's Freckles and Moles - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/62508

Forgotten Retex Project - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/7849

^^These miscellaneous character creation mods will surely give you a fun time playing around with lots of options to create your character down to the finest details and really should not be overlooked as they don't affect gameplay performance. Forgotten Retex Project re-textures a plethora of objects and items in the game like I mentioned already but also introduces new meshes for many of these as well. It really is a gem. Make sure to download the high quality file option!

With all this, this lengthy guide is at its end. Ofcourse if you're a true modding enthusiast you will surely search for other options beyond my recommendations and choose for yourself what works and looks best. Which really means this guide is more aimed to show you how good modded Skyrim SE can and rightly should look on GTX 16 series GPUs and what options you have to make it so. Cheers & Enjoy!!