How would FSX run on this?

>Hmm, interesting points, but I read on Speed-geek.com that>the guy running the site OCed a Q6600 leaving it on the casing>cooling. Maybe I misread it or something. Would you recommend>extra cooling even for a small OC? Say to 3 or 3.2 GHZ?>Thanks!>MattiHi Matti, I need to be clear about the differences between CASE cooling and CPU cooling, which are done by two separate mechanisms. (I'm going to try to keep this relatively basic, so apologies if you're already aware of some of this.) CPU COOLING: If you buy the "Retail" version of an Intel CPU, a "stock" heatsink and fan are included inside the box. These "stock" coolers are adequate for running at the CPU's rated speed but simply aren't powerful enough to remove the heat associated with overclocking. If I remember correctly, the q6600 needs to dissipate around 29 watts at idle and 102 watts when stressed when running at the "stock" voltage of 2.4GHz, but this can increase to a whopping 172 watts on a relatively modest 3 GHz overclock. This translates into a LOT of heat that your heatsink and case will need to dissipate! The job of the heatsink/fan combination is to remove heat from the CPU, which ends up inside your case unless you have an exotic rig and/or watercooling. The next step is to move that heat (along with the heat from all your other system components such as graphics cards, hard drives, motherboard chipsets, RAM, etc.) from inside your case so your entire system runs cool. But the bottom line regarding CPU cooling is that you want a QUALITY heatsink/fan if you're planning to overclock, because the stock heatsink/fan simply isn't designed to handle the challenge of overclocking. It might be able to handle a small overclock (although that's debatable) but not much else. CASE COOLING: If you take a look at some of the more recent case designs, most will use at least one 120mm fan in front of the case, which brings cool air inside the case enclosure (the fan blows inward). There's typically another 120mm fan at the rear of the case whose job is to remove hot air from inside the case -- this fan blows outward. Depending on the case design, there are often additional vents and fans on the top or sides of the case to further assist in removing any hot air. (Take a look at the Antec P180 series and the Cooler Master 690 case for two examples of good recent case designs.) To answer your question, a well-designed case SHOULD be able to remove enough hot air using the standard case cooling fans. (Many cases are designed to allow you to add extra fans if you so desire.) But no matter how good your case design might be, it is still not a substitute for having a good heatsink/fan combination that directly cools your CPU. First, you need to make sure you've got a good heatsink/fan that's up to the challenge of overclocking the CPU. Then, you need to have a well-designed case that's up to the challenge of dissipating the heat from all of your various system components. There are plenty of good options to choose from in today's market that aren't terribly expensive. If at all possible, you should try to find out what type of case the computer shop plans to use for your build, and take a look at some online reviews to see how well it performs with a quad-core CPU and a hot video card such as the 8800GTX. One final point: if you're buying a quad-core CPU specifically for FSX, you probably won't see much benefit of all four cores until FS11 comes out in a few more years. At the moment, FSX does a decent job of using two cores, but its performance really doesn't improve with two more cores. But quad-core technology is the current state-of-the art, and it's probably going to be what you'll want to have in the future. (Unless 8 cores becomes the state of the art by then!) :-) Hope this helps, - Lee