FsX Gold

[Roger]

Came home to find my on sale copy of FsX Gold by my front door tonight. In to storage as part 1 of FsX pc #2.
I decided that I'll leave my existing FsX on this pc as back-up along with all the add-ons. So now to get some input as to the build.
I want to overclock to 4.5gHx or more so water cooling will be a must. Solid state drives of what ever size I can afford and Win 7 64 bit as my os. Video card 680 4gHz ram. All or any suggestions welcome...

 

[Firekitten]

Out of interest, why did you get another copy? I put the same copy on both my laptop and PC....


As for the build, make sure the individual clock speed on the cores is high, fsx... yeah, multicore past a point is largely useless to it, but it is for other apps running along side. Ram... many is good

Hard drives; the way I do it, is SSD for the OS, fs on a separate drive on its own... lower read times, ssd it if you wish too... but that gets expensive.

As for water... look at Arctic Cooling's series of CPU coolers, they have some crackers, I run a freezer pro 64 on my machine and its keeping it below 45c with fsx running full tilt on a 3.8 overclocked machine.

 

[Roger]

Thanks for the reply Firekitten. I bought Gold as it is as per the MS eula but I agree with all your suggestions.

 

[Lionheart]

Roger,

I would wait several months for Prepar3D Mark II. It will be 64bit and should run like water on a typical, standard clocked quad core.

Thats my input.


Also, SSD HD's, those are the way to go. My new rig has 3 in it, C Drive, FS Drive, Graphics. Be sure to get Read/Write at at least 500/500. If you get 500/120, that will be slow.



Bill

 

[Naismith]

SSD's are great aren't they. My PC boots up so fast now, but here's the rub. I get to the W7 password screen and have to wait whilst the USB for the wireless keyboard and mouse catches up. If it ain't one thing it's another.

 

[wombat666]

SSD's are great aren't they. My PC boots up so fast now, but here's the rub. I get to the W7 password screen and have to wait whilst the USB for the wireless keyboard and mouse catches up. If it ain't one thing it's another.

Maybe a wireless mouse and keyboard are not a good idea.
Almost all the really serious 'Gaming' peripherals are Hard Wired, and I mean 'HARD' wired.
I'm using a Corsair Vengeance K90 keyboard and a Sensei Steelseries mouse, the K90 uses two USB ports alone, no lag time on booting up and very precise operations with this combo.
Then again, I'll readily admit to disliking wireless peripherals for as long as they've been around.

 

[wombat666]

It comes down to how much do you want to spend, just like cars, the faster you want to go the more it costs. The prices listed are all in $A which are trading higher than the $US, but we do (for some obscure reason) pay higher prices in Australia for equivalent PC gear than the US.




CASE:
Cooler Master Cosmos II, Black, mATX/ATX/eATX/XL-ATX/SSI CEB,/SSI EEB , No PSU, USB3.0, 1x eSATA - $369.00

PSU:
Corsair AX-1200i Digital ATX Power Supply, 1200w, 80 PLUS Platinum, Modular, 6x 6+2Pin PCIE, 16x SATA, 12x 4Pin Molex, Corsair Link Compatible - $399.00

MOBO:
GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UP7 MB, Intel Z77, 4x DDR3, 3x PCI-E 3.0, 6x SATA III, 6x USB 3.0, HDMI, D-Sub, DVI, 7.1CH, 2x GBLAN, xfireX, SLI, EATX - $439.00
or
ASUS MAXIMUSV-EXTREME MB, Intel Z77, 4x DDR3, 5x PCI-E 3.0, 6x SATA III, 4x USB 3.0, HDMI, DP, THUNDERBOLT, 7.1 CH, GBLAN, RAID, BT,Extended ATX - $439.00

RAM:
G.Skill 32GB Kit (4x8GB), PC-12800 (1600Mhz DDR3), RipjawsZ, 10-10-10-30-2N, Dual Quad Channel Kit - $225.00

CPU:
Intel Core i7 3770K (3.50Ghz / 8MB / LGA1155 / Quad Core / Overclocking Enabled) - $339.00

COOLING:
Corsair Hydro Series H100i Extreme Performance CPU Cooler with Built-In Corsair Link Functionality - $155.00

PRIMARY HARD DRIVES:
OCZ 512GB SSD, Vertex 4, SATA III, Read up to 560MB/s, Write up to 510MB/s - $459.00

SECONDARY HARD DRIVES:
Western Digital 1TB WD VelociRaptor, SATA III, 10000RPM, 64MB - $265.00

GRAPHIC CARDS:
Gigabyte GeForce GTX690 (915Mhz), 4096MB (6008Mhz) GDDR5, Powered by Dual Geforce GTX680, PCI-E 3.0, Triple DVI, Displayport. - $1,299.00

SOUND CARD:
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD PCIe, 122Db SNR, 24-bit/192kHz Digital-to-Analog, Swappable OPAmp, 0.001% distortion, EAX® 5.0, Dolby. - $219.00

This was my suggestion to someone who was asking about a system and had a reasonable budget, no idea what came of it as I never received a reply.
Probably appears as overkill at first glance, but it can be pared back in the initial phase and additional drives etc loaded over time.
You could get away with running the two SSD drives (OS on one and FSX on the other, or even a 250GB drive for the OS) but you will certainly find a VelociRaptor (or two) very useful in the future, and yes, I know you could opt for a 2TB drive but I prefer them smaller, the big ones take forever to de-frag, even the 1TB drives take more time than I like.
A single GTX690 is pretty hot stuff, a pair in SLI are really fast but one is a good starting point, and not such a shock in the wallet.
Liquid cooling is a must IMHO, efficient, quiet and space saving.
The Intel Core i7 3770K overclocks quite happily, and 32GB of DDR3 RAM is cheap, so if you are running W7/64bit (another must have IMHO) you can use all of that memory.
Either of the Motherboards noted have plenty of SATA III and USB 3 ports, another big plus.
A sound card???
Not really a necessity but nice to have.

 

[Firekitten]

Odd Rodger... Microsoft themselves said it was ok... I actually called them to activate it, to them, its one user, personal use... falls under the EULA. But I digress.

Mm, on the point of serious cooling and the wet stuff, you seen the termaltake cases? We just got one of their level 10 GTs, and with 200mm fans, it comes fitted out ready for water also. Plus space for 6 HDDs is useful fThe thing creates so much airflow, so quietly, you could use it as a wind tunnel for bats.

 

[Roger]

Thanks peeps:ernae: and Wombat I'll use your list as a starting point and see what I can afford and what I cannot!