there is hundreds of mods and as a newbie it's literally impossible to know which ones are the 'must have' ones.
Inconsequential NPCs' aims to add more NPCs to Skyrim in unintrusive ways that will allow them to blend immersively into the social fabric of the land
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/36146/?Ewis High ini and prefs files for GTX 660 or better
Crashing at logo can mean missing master file. One of your mods needs a .esm that isn't there.
What are people running mod wise that seems to eat VRAM? You hear all the time about modded Skyrim being an apparent VRAM killer but I can't see it? Least not at 1440P. I'm running half a dozen 4K texture packs, SSAO in slow mode with ENB, FXAA etc and it's barely touching 2.5GB. Looks amazing though, really enjoying getting back into this.
SKSE has got a new alpha up with the memory patch built in