New PC

[Dash8captain]

Hello Guys, I am looking for a new Flight sim PC and just wanted some suggestions as to where an what pc would be a good buy to run FSX at its best i have a budget of $1800 pc only (I have a decent monitor already)

I would be keen to go for and I7 setup and an SSD drive as well, I don't have the time to build a PC so I want to buy a system already good to go

Any suggestions guys? - help would be muchly appreciated

[omitchell]

Unless your looking at an HP or Acer (Which personally I wouldn't), $1800 pre-built gaming rigs are few and far between. Something like

http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=WKSPB6005W&name=PB-6005W-Intel-New-Haswell-i7-4790-Quad-Core-3.6GH

As a rough idea, lots of PC shops do gaming rigs. Alternatively you can get one custom built with an i7 4690k, 16Gb Ram and a GTX960 graphics card, gaming motherboard, 120Gb SSD. There's plenty of guys on here that can put one together...

[Agent X20]

^^ What he said but...

I'd say don't pay for a "gaming" motherboard with shiny heatsinks and flashy bits you won't need/use. Get something more "OEM", which is going to perform just as well and might let you spend a wee bit more on the CPU. FSX is ALL about the CPU.

[Kelvinr]

Hello Guys, I am looking for a new Flight sim PC and just wanted some suggestions as to where an what pc would be a good buy to run FSX at its best i have a budget of $1800 pc only (I have a decent monitor already)

I would be keen to go for and I7 setup and an SSD drive as well, I don't have the time to build a PC so I want to buy a system already good to go

Any suggestions guys? - help would be muchly appreciated

You're always going to pay a premium for prebuilt pc's. If you need someone to help build it and if you're in Auckland then let me know as I have built many PC's over time (and certified) we could save you some cost to put into the hardware which I would recommend focusing on CPU + GPU + SSD being the most relevant pieces of hardware.

Geographically, where are you located?

Cheers,

Kelvin

[omitchell]

^^ What he said but...

I'd say don't pay for a "gaming" motherboard with shiny heatsinks and flashy bits you won't need/use. Get something more "OEM", which is going to perform just as well and might let you spend a wee bit more on the CPU. FSX is ALL about the CPU.

A Gigabyte Micro ATX Gaming motherboard is just over a hundred bucks and takes more advantage of the processors power and distribution than an OEM of the same price...

[Agent X20]

Yup and some of those gaming boards consume way more power (tens of watts) with no discernible performance improvement.

My point was many of the so called gaming features won't provide much value over a good 'conventional' board.

[omitchell]

Yup and some of those gaming boards consume way more power (tens of watts) with no discernible performance improvement.

My point was many of the so called gaming features won't provide much value over a good 'conventional' board.

We could argue that all day. If you're running a gaming build and you OEM the motherboard, there actually is a noticeable difference. It's one of the most critical parts of a PC, it's not one to go budget on. ASRock certainly made themselves famous for budget boards and plenty of RMA's as a result. Fortunately Gigabyte came along and make very good quality gaming boards for the same price as your OEM's with far better quality and results

[mfraser]

^^ What he said but...
I'd say don't pay for a "gaming" motherboard with shiny heatsinks and flashy bits you won't need/use. Get something more "OEM", which is going to perform just as well and might let you spend a wee bit more on the CPU. FSX is ALL about the CPU.

^^ What he said but... remember that regardless of how much money you throw at new PC hardware to run FSX, it simply WON'T use much of it as it was never optimised well enough to take advantage of multi-core, multi-threading, 8GB+ RAM, modern graphics cards etc. My advice would be yes, go ahead and upgrade, but invest an extra $50 for Prepar3D which WILL take advantage of that shiny new PC! If you don't want to upgrade to Prepar3D then I would say save your money because the disappointing performance gains you will see simply aren't worth the investment.......

[dbcunnz]

It is much cheaper to do a whole new upgrade IE; MB, CPU, and Memory than build a new one if you already have a good case PSU and Graphics card.

[Ian Warren]

I've been watching this , don't sell the other PC , two PCs are great to have , the modules and sorts .. course the backup.

[Dash8captain]

Thanks for all the awesome help guys, but I think I might just upgrade my current one as it already is a new mobo and processor etc so I might just get a bigger case and a better G card and an SSD drive, what would people recommend for the best G card? I definitely want to keep using Nivida as well

[Dash8captain]

I'm thinking this?

http://www.warehouse1.co.nz/epages/shop ... ucts/65623

[Agent X20]

I've got one of them. Way overpowered for FSX - but runs everything else great!

[Ian Warren]

Looking a G/cards one thing pointed out the CPU would be the primary for FSX so gives you a little extra for that area.

[Dash8captain]

Looking a G/cards one thing pointed out the CPU would be the primary for FSX so gives you a little extra for that area.

Yep well I have a new I7 processor so thats sorted

[mfraser]

I've got one of them. Way overpowered for FSX - but runs everything else great!

Yup - I like the look of that bad boy. I have a 2GB GTX670 and P3D screams along at high settings. Any thought about switching sims?

[omitchell]

Looking a G/cards one thing pointed out the CPU would be the primary for FSX so gives you a little extra for that area.

This is true, FSX still only operates off one or two cores so i7's are plenty of power. It's real limiting issue is VAS. P3D on the other hand is a little different, the boys over at Lockheed Martin managed to shift some of the graphical requirements over to the GPU but FSX is still CPU intensive and it doesn't even use the full CPU..

[Dash8captain]

I've got one of them. Way overpowered for FSX - but runs everything else great!

Yup - I like the look of that bad boy. I have a 2GB GTX670 and P3D screams along at high settings. Any thought about switching sims?

I had thought of that but I have so many addons in fsx that I want to keep it, thanks for the feedback guys

[ScottyB]

Hi Dash8Captain;

I was in precisely your situation about a year ago. I was 90% happy with my FSX setup, however I just needed slightly more power (ie: a gaming rig like the one you are wanting to build). I was also set on keeping FSX.....until I gave P3D a good go.

I will never, ever go back to FSX and seriously, if I was in your situation, I would make the jump. I am running P3D with addons such as REX, ORBX NZSI, NZNI, Australia, PNW, Global; Fly Tampa Sydney, Dubai; PacSim Rarotonga, Carenado 1900D, Majestic Q400, etc etc, and I am getting 40-70FPS on very high settings (many maxed out).

This was all achieved on a system that I build for about $1500, specs as follows:

CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.40GHz Ivy Bridge
RAM: 8GB Dual Channel DDR3
Motherboard: ASUStek P8Z77-V
Graphics Card: 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 (ASUStek Computer Inc)
Storage/Hard Drives: 1TB Seagate ST1000DM003-9YN162 ATA Device (SATA); 74GB INTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC ATA Device (SSD)
PSU: 750 WATT
OS: Windows 7

So in essence: I would say make the jump to P3D - you ont experience the crashing and frustrations of FSX, not to mention the dynamics of the flight models and weather etc are far superior, plus constant support and updates. And, build a cumputer somewhere in line with my specs above (or better if you can!) and you will KNOW that it'll run seamlessly.

PS: On the same PC with FSX I was getting 20-25 FPS.......

[ScottyB]

Have a look at my screenshot threads to see the results:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=24952

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=24944

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=24946&p=8376065#p8376065