• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

At Last, upgrade time!

rpjkw

Charter Member
Buying components to replace 7+ yo system. I'll keep the full tower, two WD 250 GB HDDs, and the one year old Thermaltake 550w PSU. I'm hoping I can use my existing NEC 19 inch monitor.

I've bought an AMD Phenom IIx4 970 BE and a Cool Master Hypo 212+ CPU cooler.

Next on the list:

Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ MB.
Asus GT430 Fermi 1GB 128bit DDR3.
G.Skill Ripjaws 8GB (2X4) 1333 memory.
Microsoft Win7 Home 64-Bit.

I am, however, interested in suggestions or advice that won't cost an arm and leg. I'm also considering a 64-90 GB, or so, SSD strictly for Win7 and, perhaps, FS9. Eventually, too, I may add a Saitek yoke and rudder pedals. Not sure since I really like a joystick.

This has been done piecemeal on a budget and, while I may try FSX, I'm very happy with FS9. I'm an old dog and not interested in learning new tricks. I know FS9 will run much better than what I have now (AMD Athlon 64 3200+, one gig of ram, and a nVidea GeForce 6200, 512mb) and I think I'll be very happy with FS9 when all is said and done.

Thanks,

Bob
 
Bob, I'm running my OS [Win7/64 U] on a 250G SSD and several versions of FS9 on a 600G WD Raptor 10,000 rpm drive, while FSX has its own dedicated 250G SSD.
With a 120G SSD you have around 111G effective capacity under W7, so you might be pushed for space, based on my first SSD experience.
As it stands, FS9 is brilliant with my system, other than the usual FS9 scenery restrictions it rivals FSX and runs at 60FPS locked.
Might be worth going the 90G SSD [minimum] route and shopping around for a WD Raptor, prices are pretty keen right now.
Rather, prices a keen here in Australia anyway, 300G Raptor is A$285.00 and the 600G A$369.00, less loose change.
As for your Mobo choice, make sure it has SATA 3 ports, they make a big difference to your SSD performance.
PS:Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 AM3+, 970+SB950, DDR3, PCIe 2.0, RAID, SATA3, USB3, ATX, A$114.00 from my supplier of choice.
:kilroy:
 
Thanks, Wombat. That advice convinces me to get as SSD before I start to assemble. Better now than after Win 7 and FS is installed.

Bob
 
Wombat has given some good advice. I've considered upgrading to SSD drives, but my motherboard only supports SATA 2, so there would be little benefit. SSD drives need a motherboard that can handle the data transfer rate and SATA 2 falls short. My next computer build, whenever that occurs and it might be a long time, will make use of SSD drives. No defragmenting with SSD drives, don't even attempt it, they have their own routine for keeping things tidy.
 
Back
Top