New PC build

[BigBird]

Hi guys


It's been a while since I posted. Been busy going through the house buying process and still settling in. Have been keeping an eye on the site... especially the fantastic screenshots.

Now that I'm in my own house, I would like to build a high spec PC primarily for running FSX with REX2, ORBX (laptop is just not up to speed anymore ) with sliders set on the high side whilst getting decent frame rates... is this even possible?

A mate who is a gamer, has put together what in his words is a " hell machine"

I'm not too much up to play with the latest gear and half of the terminology... okay 95% of the terminology makes little sense to me.

I thought I would share with you his list for the build (just the juicy and interesting bits) in no particular order;


Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatality Professional soundcard

Logitech G510 Gaming Keyboard

AOC Razor E2343FK 23" LED 1080p Full HD Monitor

Thermalright Venomous X heatsink

ASUS P8Z68-V LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200.12 SATA3 6Gb/s NCQ 32MB 7200RPM Hard Drive OEM

OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-2SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal SSD

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3-1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Sandy Bridge Optimised F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM

EVGA 015-P3-1580-KR GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Intel Core i7 2600K Unlocked Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz 8MB Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Hyperthreading Processor

Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit OS


Be keen to hear opinions on the above choices.

Will be using this machine primarily for FSX and Photoshop. Laptop will be used for everything else.

[deeknow]

Hey great timing, sounds like there's a few of us shopping around right at the moment.

Specs wise that rig looks great. Windows7 64bit, the SATA3 drive, a heatsink and a monitor are pretty much standard right so we dont need to critique those. Here's some feedback from me about the remaining components based on some reading I've been doing this week

• RAM wise I'm not sure its worth laying down the premium for the G.SKILL Ripjaws stuff, it has only slightly less latency than other brandname memory, certainly looks the part though.
• Am not convinced a discrete sound card is required, that m/b will have onboard sound and the CPU is grunty enough that you shouldnt need to offload sound processing
• CPU wise there doesnt seem to be a great difference in performance between an i5/2500K and an i7/2500K, not sure FSX is gonna make any more useful use of those additional threads
• the GPU is an awesome beast so you cant ciriticise that, but will FSX take advanatage of it? I'm not convinced. I wonder if for that money ($800) you'd be better buying two lesser cards and setting up as a pair in SLI or Crossfire
• SSD or not to SSD, I know theres a few lads here with SSD in their rigs, some mixed feedback about the benefits, are you sure its really worth the price, they'll come down in price over time now but seem steep to me right now. I'm gonna go or a pair of WesternDigital (Caviar Black) HDDs
• I haven't looked at that motherboard, at the moment I'm kinda shopping around for P67 chipset based m/b as dont need the onboard video but do want RAID0, o/clocking and lots of USB, SATA and PCIe options. and can save a few $$$ over the equivalent Z68 chipset m/b.

Would also love to hear from others about these items. If money is no object then I guess why not just buy all the stuff your gamer mate reccomends, it'll be kick-arrrsssee and you will be future proofed for a couple of years anyway.... and who knows what demands the next FSim will place on h/w, but I guess you wanna know if its money well spent right.

[BigBird]

Cheers Deeknow, that's just the kind of feedback I'm after .

Whilst my mate is big on his shoot 'em ups and the sound of warfare pumping out through his subs (which is amazing), he's not too familiar with FSX. And I would like to be able to question any of his recommendations which might be overkill for what I require.

His suggested wish list (including items such as casing, fans, DVD writer, mouse etc that I haven't listed) comes to a total of around $3.5k.

[deeknow]

Hey BB have just been reading up on SSD 2nite, for FSX theres evidence that apart from improvement on initial load time the actual in game benefit is negligable, no fps change and possibly some anti jitter improvement but even that can be config as much as performance, e.g. See this thread at avsim
http://forum.avsim.net/topic/331137-fsx-pe...e__pid__1951877

[cowpatz]

Dean have you settled on a mobo yet?
I am leaning towards the Asus P8P67 Pro B3 (not sure exactly what the B3 does). The P8P67 Deluxe does not seem to have any advantage over the Pro that I can see and comes at a significant premium.
I would prefer a board with wifi but haven't come across one yet in my initial search.

[BigBird]

Thanks for the link Deeknow. Some interesting points in that.

[deeknow]

Snap Steve , yeah I'm looking at the same board but the Pro vs the ProB3. Take a looksie at the Asus comparison tool and you'll see the differences:
http://www.asus.com/Compare/

Looks like the B3 has the following (and I'm not sure that any of this is critical to be honest)...
an updated PCIe controller
Intel® LAN- Dual interconnect support
an NEC USB controller (Pro has AsMedia)
a Powered eSATA 3Gb/s port

update: have just noticed this, looks like there was an Intel firmware fix that all B3 boards include, might be sensible to get one (although there is a BIOS update for the older boards)...
http://event.asus.com/2011/mb/Identify_B3_Motherboards/

here's my shopping list at PriceSpy: http://pricespy.co.nz/mypage.php?a=deeknow&k=41545

[cowpatz]

Ahhh one problem is that the non pro board doesn't support Nvidia SLI

[deeknow]

Yeah thats why I'm shootin for the Pro board, does SLI and Crossfire (most boards seem to do one or tother), even though I'm not likely to be running two cards for some time, it seems like a decent future proofing measure for MS-Flight

[NZ255]

You need to get the B3, that's the latest revision and has addressed the initial issue with SATA III performance degrading over time

Other than that looks great, I'm looking at the exact same thing, expect I think I'll hold off with the SSD for now.

I'm going with a GTX 580, some of the guys at the Orbx forum said they saw a massive performance going from the 570 to the 580, it's only a couple hundred more....

[deeknow]

QUOTE (NZ255 @ Aug 25 2011,6:40 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You need to get the B3, that's the latest revision and has addressed the initial issue with SATA III performance degrading over time

Good to know, cheers Nick. Oh and damn you re the 580!!!
I just know I'm gonna have to get a new GPU whether I like it or not, just dunno if I'll have the $$$ left over

[BigBird]

Was my bro inlaw's birthday yesterday, so we went around to their's for pizza and drinks. 3 of the guys there were into their gaming, so naturally the talk started when they headed outside for a ciggy and started talking about Battlefield 3, that's being released some time soon, I think it was.

I whipped out my list and they had a read through. They were pretty envious to tell the truth. I didn't try and talk tech stuff because like I said, I am not up to play with what most of it means. They did mention watercooling, although one has overclocked the same to 4.2GHz with just air cooling (I think that was the figure he stated).

There were a few things they didn't agree on with each other, like the vid card because they all have their favourite brand etc. They all agreed that SSD was the way to go.

With regards to the sound card one of the guys agreed with you Deeknow, that it wasn't necessary, however one of the others said that having a dedicated sound card meant the processor had slightly less work to do.

The one thing they highly recommended was going larger on the monitor.

Lots of things to think about, but this gives me more time to sort the dosh out and read up about things. Price wise, I'm happy spend that amount and a little more if necessary.

[cowpatz]

I was looking at the Corsair HD60 or 70 water cooler but from my reading they tend to become inefficient at high clock speeds/temps as the water starts to warm up the cooler components making it more difficult to dissipate the heat.
A high end air cooler, like the Coolmaster V8 seems to be just as good and is cheaper....only problem with it is that it is huge! I thought my Thermalright ultra 120 was large.

[NZ255]

QUOTE (cowpatz @ Aug 26 2011,10:37 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was looking at the Corsair HD60 or 70 water cooler but from my reading they tend to become inefficient at high clock speeds/temps as the water starts to warm up the cooler components making it more difficult to dissipate the heat.
A high end air cooler, like the Coolmaster V8 seems to be just as good and is cheaper....only problem with it is that it is huge! I thought my Thermalright ultra 120 was large.

Try the Noctua NH-D14 for huge! Although it's silent. I'm thinking NH-U12P SE2

[BigBird]

Until last night, I didn't realise the casing was so important. I just thought as long as everything fits in it that it's sweet. The case my mate has chosen is really good aparently. Plenty of room for additional fans etc.

[deeknow]

BB, great to hear you're getting lots of feedback, sometimes though it just seems to make things harder huh Soundx like your happy with the budget which is cool coz it'll be an awesome rig, enjoy!!!

I've decided to get an air cooler, the "Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus", nice price and is well regarded. Not a hard-core o/clocking option but nice and quiet for an air-cooler.
Have also chickened out of the Asus P76 boards after reading about lots of probs (pre and post the B3 fix), sounds like if you get a good one your ok, if you get a cr@p one it lasts a couple of months and you have to send it back. Eventually you get a stable one, I just cant be bothered with the fuss. Am gonna get the Z68 based board after all, nice feature set and similar price:
http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=888825
Good times huh

[AndrewJamez]

Go H2o. My 1st i7 870 had a huge Scythe mugen tower air coole that was so heavy it twisted the MB and 2 of the cores seemed to run quite a bit hoter than the other 2. After propiing it up with a wooden stay, the temps evened out. Problen was even at a pultry 3.8 ghz the temps started to get up there in the summer heat often into the 70's and when you forced hyper threading on she went up over 80 (only did that once) So when i put my i5 2500K together I bolted on a Corsair H60. SUPER quiet while not gamming and only pulls high 40's running FSX clocked at 4.0ghz.
The main issue with water cooling is case cooling. If you have a case with a traditional top mounted PSU then forget it. The PSU must idealy be bottom mounted and the top side of the case should be perfarated and able to accomadate 2 fans. The reason for top exhaust fans is that water cooling fans are designed to draw air in, not out as most pc fans are set to do. This case cooling setup is key to the sucsess to water cooling buy keeping case temps down and has worked well with my systen. its worth it in the end.
Somone mentioned H2o temps get up there - yes they will if you dont get the case cooling setup right. Get the basics set up right then the sky's the limit.

[deeknow]

QUOTE (AndrewJamez @ Aug 26 2011,4:09 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So when i put my i5 2500K together I bolted on a Corsair H60. SUPER quiet while not gamming and only pulls high 40's running FSX clocked at 4.0ghz.

Holy cow, that thing looks like the radiator out of a Caterpillar bull-dozer
Real interesting info re the case design and H20 coolers tho Andrew, cheers mate, gives us something else to consider