PC had died - system recommendations please!!

Here's the specs for my gaming rig (still in the box -- just arrived):

PowerSupply: 1200 Watt
Asus Rampage IV Extreme (MB)
Intel Core i7 3970x 3.5 ghz processor
Liquid cooling
1866 mhz 4x8GB (32 gig) memory
Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3 gig
Creative Recon 3D Fatality Pro
Crucial M500 SSD 960 gig
WD 4 TB
WD 4 TB
Asus 12x Bluray Reader
Asus 12x Bluray Writer
Windows 7 Pro
 
Odie said:
Here's the specs for my gaming rig (still in the box -- just arrived):

PowerSupply: 1200 Watt
Asus Rampage IV Extreme (MB)
Intel Core i7 3970x 3.5 ghz processor
Liquid cooling
1866 mhz 4x8GB (32 gig) memory
Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3 gig
Creative Recon 3D Fatality Pro
Crucial M500 SSD 960 gig
WD 4 TB
WD 4 TB
Asus 12x Bluray Reader
Asus 12x Bluray Writer
Windows 7 Pro
Click to expand...
OUCH! And I thought mine was nuts expensive. That Baby is gonna rock. :cool::cool: ...Don
 
About ready to hit the "buy" button on this custom build from Scan Systems and grateful for any comments on the spec:

Intel Core i7 4770K, 1150, Haswell, Quad Core, 3.5Hz, 3.9GHz Turbo, 1250MHz GPU, 35x Ration, 84W – (professionally overclocked/tuned to 4.4Hz)

Corsair H80i Hydro Series Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

Asus Z87-K Motherboard

650W Corsair Enthusiast (single graphics card) PSU

3GB EVGA GTX780 PCIe 6008MHZ, GDDR5, GPU 863MHZ, Cores 2304 (professionally overclocked)

8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro Series Silver, PC3-17066 (2133), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-11-11-31, XMP, 1.65v

2 x 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s

1 WD TB Caviar Green 3.5” HDD SATA III 64mb cache (storage drive)

LG x24 DVD+R

Windows 7 Professional 64bit​
 
expat said:
About ready to hit the "buy" button on this custom build from Scan Systems and grateful for any comments on the spec:
Intel Core i7 4770K, 1150, Haswell, Quad Core, 3.5Hz, 3.9GHz Turbo, 1250MHz GPU, 35x Ration, 84W – (professionally overclocked/tuned to 4.4Hz)

Corsair H80i Hydro Series Performance Liquid CPU Cooler

Asus Z87-K Motherboard

650W Corsair Enthusiast (single graphics card) PSU

3GB EVGA GTX780 PCIe 6008MHZ, GDDR5, GPU 863MHZ, Cores 2304 (professionally overclocked)

8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro Series Silver, PC3-17066 (2133), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-11-11-31, XMP, 1.65v

2 x 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s

1 WD TB Caviar Green 3.5” HDD SATA III 64mb cache (storage drive)

LG x24 DVD+R

Windows 7 Professional 64bit​
Click to expand...

Thats a good compination, i personally would think about looking at a larger watt PSU than 650 (corsair PSU is a good brand anyway), i did a quick calculation on PSU Calc and without OC'ing the wattage came to 460. Im not sure what the OC wattage would come out at but a larger PSU will give you room on the watts and less likely to pack up on you in future...

Secondly, is the 1TB for FSX or you planning on using a SSD for FSX?
 
I plan to use one SSD for FSX, the second SSD for Windows and other programs, and the 1TB mechanical storage drive for addon scenery, mesh, aircraft hangar (v big), music, photos and other non system storage.

I also think a 650w psu may be a bit light here but Scan's configurator doesn't let me select the 850 watter, which seem a better match. I plan to speak with their tech guys about a swap while they are building it.
 
The Corsair "Enthusiast" 650 that is offered is the 650TXV2UK. It has 3.3V @ 25A, 5V @ 25A, 12V @ 53A, so, it will have plenty of capability for a steep overclock, tons of added cooling, and your GTX 780(42A @ 12v Req'd)...Don
 
Thought I'd throw in my 2 cents, as I've just built a Haswell fsx rig less than 2 months ago. My specs are an i5 4670k OCed to 4.3(highest I could safely hit and stabilize at). This is with a $30 hyper 212 evo air cooler. Temps are perfectly fine. 8gigs 1600mhz RAM. GTX 770, at 200 bucks cheaper than the 780, and I run orbx scenery, extremely dense autogen, Rex weather, locked at 30 fps. It is capable of going higher, but I prefer the vsync stuff to try to get consistent smoothness. I'm elated with my setup.

Im running windows 8 on a 1tb, fsx on the 250 gig 840 pro. With win 8 on the hdd, my system still boots in ~15 seconds. Fsx like lightning. I think a 780 is overkill for fsx personally, but you certainly won't be disappointed. Also the i7 is overkill for fsx, you'd only need hyper threading if you edit videos and other, non fsx CPU intensive stuff. I've got a 750 watt psu, and a z87 gigabyte mobo.

a great website to help you choose parts.... www.pcpartpicker.com highly recommended to lose some time and money lol

ps. Check If there are any microcenter stores near you, they have killer deals on CPUs and mobo combos
 
Thanks guys. Sounds to me like this is a runner (thanks Don for the steer on the PSU - I had no clue re the amperage match) and maybe slight over kill, which is a first for me - LOL. Probably will get bored of and quit simming and take up bingo after splurging on this. :icon_lol::icon_lol:
 
Im not sure you should go for a green drive for the 1TB as this will be a 5400 rpm drive...

Scan can be very occomodating so im sure you'd be able to purchase a seperate PSU (if you wanted to) and use this?
 
Not sure what the green actually means. I want a big - 1tb should do it drive - internal mechanical drive that won't have any system or progamms installed on it for storage. They have WD 1tb "system" HDD's and WD 1tb "storage" drive and they are almost the same price. What rpm spec should I be looking for?
 
expat said:
Not sure what the green actually means. I want a big - 1tb should do it drive - internal mechanical drive that won't have any system or progamms installed on it for storage. They have WD 1tb "system" HDD's and WD 1tb "storage" drive and they are almost the same price. What rpm spec should I be looking for?
Click to expand...
A WD "Green" is a drive that has IntelliPower(a low power mode) when not in constant use. Do not use one for anything but storage. Especially not for active FS files.
The Reds also have IntelliPower and are for networked storage.
Blue versions have a lesser warranty. 2yrs vs 5 for the Black.

My preference is 7200rpm, with 64MB cache. The WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB is tough to beat...Don
 
expat,

I'm currently getting together all the components for a build and you and I are tracking pretty closely....same RAM, same processor....same power supply (I'm going 750w though) same HDD, although I'm dumping Green and going Blue.

I keep going back and forth on the multiple SSD consideration. I plan at least one SSD and I have one in the current system (love it). Current SSD is the Samsung 840 series at 256 Gig. I just checked and I've got over 168 Gig available.

I intended only Windows 7 on it....but my wife keeps dumping stuff on the drive (I've tried to explain this Data Storage versus Program Execution over and over again and have just given up).

Incidentally the i7 is overkill for FSX....GPU matters more, but I'm doing video editing (well, my daughter is doing video editing) and the processor is key for that.
 
My "state-of-the-art" system is a Dell GX260 desktop that I bought about 5-6 years ago from EBay.

It has a 3.0 GHz processor, a 60 GB HD, 3GB RAM, runs Win XP Pro and has an Nvidia GT6200 512 MB video card. FSX Acceleration runs well on it. Sometimes, the video has to catch up on complex views and aircraft but I can live with it. I only paid $150 for it back then and it is still running strong with no signs of deterioration -- yet.

You gets what you pay for.
 
...Incidentally the i7 is overkill for FSX....GPU matters more...
Click to expand...
Sorry, but, that's backwards. FSX, being primarily a single threaded app, is more dependent on CPU speed. The faster the better.
An i7 4770K starts with a 100MHz head start over the i5-4570K.
The HyperThreading capability of the i7 chips is of little to no value, so, most of us turn it off. A higher, stable, overclock is usually accomplished with HT off rather than on.
With my rig running at only 4.9GHz, and using the affinity mask tweak, highly detailed scenery with the default 738(17-23FPS, Locked at 30), I can drive 3 of my 4 cores to near 100% load constantly.
In that situation GPUz reports my HD 7970 is running at 50-60% GPU Load...Don

View attachment 92579
 
The i7-4770K costs 35% more than the i5-4670K for 3% higher performance in single-threaded programs (stock clock comparison).
 
I fully agree with Don, it is CPU clockspeed that matters. I run my i7 3770K at 4.2GHz, HT off and with any CPU load, my NVidia GTX670 does never exceed 65% load. I did a test with my GPU overclocked but it did not make any difference for FSX so I am using the default clockspeed now.
 
Wife and kids (college age) have ganged up on me and said I should buy instead a Mac (ugh). What are the best arguments against this (aside from optimally running FSX, which they suspect is my main objective!)?:icon_lol:
 
expat said:
...What are the best arguments against this...
Click to expand...
For FSX? Compared to the capability of the PC outlined here? Slow.
Overclock a Mac? The only Mac that has EVER been overclockable(without hacking) was the Old Core 2 Mac Pro.
Lack of, or, severly limited, hardware upgrades available.
Lack of drivers(very limited but, getting better). Some drivers are version specific and require OS changes.
Your sim will require a copy of Windows and BootCamp at additional expense.
Cost. A Mac Pro version(Still can't OC), that is upgradeable, rather than replace, is gonna be very expensive and then upgrades will be limited to what is available that works with the Mac OS X.
FSX
FSX
FSX
FSX
While the Macs are great for most other computing needs, stick with a PC for any kind of gaming/simming. :icon_lol: ...Don
 
Mac vs. PC? I'd have to say #1 is the cost. I have an iPhone, iPad, and iPod and like them all. Would like to have a Mac computer to learn, but the cost is just too high.

I'd go with Don, for gaming it's probably less troublesome with a PC for the reasons he listed.

As for the FSX gpu vs. cpu, my own experience was that my current gaming machine (not the new one) is an i7 2.9 and I was having trouble with Classic Hangars FW-190 and the stutters even at modest slider
settings. After working with CH support, we determined that the CPU was the culprit. It just couldn't carry the load. I did a simple O/C to run at 3.1 and that was all it took to clear the stutters. Just that little boost gave
FSX the horsepower it needed, as well as some other games that were bound to the CPU. Now the sliders are where I like for the eye-candy (I spend more time outside of the cockput than inside).
 
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