Hi AllHaven't been simming for a while - time restraints - but have decided to get back into it. Unfortunately I asked around for the best system and went out and bought what I was advised but things haven't worked out according to my ideas so I am asking for some advice here.My new system is outlined in my signature with my goal being to have the best simming experience I could get. being a real world recreational pilot I always missed being able to just quickly glance out the side windows in FS when turning from base onto final etc. I tried the TrackIR but couldn't get use to it. I am now trying the Matrox TH2G but I have been bitten by the monitors I that were suggested to me (widescreen don't work) and the performance hit by having so much.So if I start again what I would very much like to know is if there is anything in my new system as outlined in my sig that is very wrong in creating an ultimate Flight Sim experience - the goal is more important to me then the cost (within reason)I would very much like to hear qualified comments like:"If you replaced the ??? with a ??? you WILL get better performance and quality"Thanks in advance (please don't lead me up the garden path as I have already been there) :)RegardsIan1 x Gigabyte GA-EX38T-DQ61 x Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo Processor4 x Corsair DDR3 XMS3 DHX 1333MHz 1gig Ram blocks1 x XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 1.0GB DDR3 Black Edition5 x Western Digital 320Gb 7,200rpm 16Mb buffer SATA11 hard Drives in RAID01 x Antec 850W TruePower Quattro Power Supply3 x Samsung 226BW 22" wide screen LCD's1 x Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital edition to drive the monitors1 x Saitek Cyborg Evo Force Feedback Joystick1 x Saitek Pro Flight Yoke System1 x Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals1 x Saitek Eclipse 2 Keyboard1 x Saitek GM3200 Laser Mouse1 x Logitech Z5400 5.1 Dolby/THX Sound System1 x XFX X-Gear Gaming Rumble (vibration) Headset1 x Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit

Want the real deal? Try three 37/42"ers with that matrox box. Really. With those five drives in raid zero, you are probably SATA II buss limited. Run HDTune and see what your xfer rate is. SATA II tops out at about 325MB/sec (3.0Gb/s = 375MB/s with 50MB/s for overhead). If you are in the low 300s, take one drive out of the raid and use it for a backup. I'm running a 3 drive raid and getting about 300 MB/s. I might have (speed) room for one more, but four drives would definitely top out my SATA II buss' capability. If you are looking for speed, the 5th drive is almost certainly waisted. You might think about a raid 10 with the 4, then a data backup on the 5th. What's your CPU cooler? Without a CPU overclock, that rig is waisted.

If you replaced the E8500 with nothing (just overclock it to 3.5-4.0GHz) you WILL get better performance [del]and quality[/del]If you replaced the 3x22" widescreen LCDs with 3x19" 1280x1024 LCDs you WILL get better [del]performance and[/del] quality.Edit: Oh and 5 drives in a RAID0 array - you sure have increased the probability of a total array failure for minor performance gain, since it all goes down if only 1 drive fails. With that many drives, I'd use one of the raid modes that combines performance and redundancy.Gary

You could replace the E8500 with the Q6600 and overclock it.

Thanks very much so far guys. Went out and got 3 x LG L1954TQ 19" monitors (2m/s and 3000:1 contrast) and an incredible difference straight away - anyone want a 2hr old 22" Samsung Monitors :-lolI will take one of the drives out - I can use that elsewhere.Now, I know the XP vs Vista debate has been going on for some time but talking to a colleague who said to go back to XP as it is lighter and should improve performance but he wasn't sure about quality but also said that my graphics card should make up for it. He also said don't worry about 64 as XP SR3 that is coming out in June will recognise the 4gig of ram.Any other thoughts - and thanks again for your help! RegardsIan1 x Gigabyte GA-EX38T-DQ61 x Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo Processor4 x Corsair DDR3 XMS3 DHX 1333MHz 1gig Ram blocks1 x XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 1.0GB DDR3 Black Edition5 x Western Digital 320Gb 7,200rpm 16Mb buffer SATA11 hard Drives in RAID01 x Antec 850W TruePower Quattro Power Supply3 x Samsung 226BW 22" wide screen LCD's1 x Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital edition to drive the monitors1 x Saitek Cyborg Evo Force Feedback Joystick1 x Saitek Pro Flight Yoke System1 x Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals1 x Saitek Eclipse 2 Keyboard1 x Saitek GM3200 Laser Mouse1 x Logitech Z5400 5.1 Dolby/THX Sound System1 x XFX X-Gear Gaming Rumble (vibration) Headset1 x Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit

I'm no expert here and probably shouldn't say anything, but nonetheless I find this thread interesting and am interested in hearing what others have to say. Just going off of articles from Tom's hardware review, and posts from users I would consider doing the following:-switch out the 9800gx2 for the 9800gtx. -Overclock your E8500 to 4.0-4.5 GHz on a good air cooler. If you want even better performance go quad.-XP will be slightly faster but If you want DX10 then you have to stick w/Vista.

>You could replace the E8500 with the Q6600 and overclock it.Why? The only advantage the Q6600 has, is four cores. In all other aspects, it is outclassed by the E8500 in all respects.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

Ianmy 2 centsWhat you have, is fine. As Sam said, you need to overclock that cpu, otherwise there is no point to it. You've got the DDR3, you've got the X38 board, you have the 45nm cpu, so go for it. Even a mild, mild overclock can get you in the high 3's (3.5-3.8 ghz) range.The only thing that stood out to me in your specs list is the 4 memory modules vs. 2. It would be better to have 2 2gig modules rather than all four mem slots populated, but then that's a small matter unless you are really planning a super overclock. You should still be quite able to do a decent o/c with that.And besides, in my opin it's not financially feasible nor worth the effort to replace 4x1 sticks of DDR3 with 2x2 sticks, assuming you already have 4x1's.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

The only way to recognize > 3 gigs of ram is to run a 64 bit op system. XP/32/SP-anything won't do it.

Yeah, and he's running Vista64 already, so he's good-to-go with 4 gigs.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

Thanks again, spent some time on the sim and at long last it was enjoyable (FPS in the 60s in VC on default flight but with A341), although still just out-of-box install - will have to work on setting things up when I get the h/ware right.Any suggestions on a good cooling fan setup for the E8500? The 850w PS should handle a reasonable OC however I was again told on another forum that the E8500 with my motherboard and ram will not OC any good or am I on that garden path again?Again, thank you for your honesty in your help :)RegardsIan1 x Gigabyte GA-EX38T-DQ61 x Intel E8500 Core 2 Duo Processor4 x Corsair DDR3 XMS3 DHX 1333MHz 1gig Ram blocks1 x XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 1.0GB DDR3 Black Edition4 x Western Digital 320Gb 7,200rpm 16Mb buffer SATA11 hard Drives in RAID01 x Antec 850W TruePower Quattro Power Supply3 x LG L1954TQ 19" LCDs(2m/s and 3000:1 contrast)1 x Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital edition to drive the monitors1 x Saitek Cyborg Evo Force Feedback Joystick1 x Saitek Pro Flight Yoke System1 x Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals1 x Saitek Eclipse 2 Keyboard1 x Saitek GM3200 Laser Mouse1 x Logitech Z5400 5.1 Dolby/THX Sound System1 x XFX X-Gear Gaming Rumble (vibration) Headset1 x Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit

>>Any suggestions on a good cooling fan setup for the E8500?You're in luck. I just built/am building an E8500 system for myself. I installed an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro on it last night. The machine has gone past POST, and into the BIOS. It reports a cpu idle temp (Tcase) of 38degC after burning in for 30-40 minutes. Sounds good to me so far.I do not have any load tests yet. No OS on the box yet.Good cooling fan setup? Well, with my Arctic Cooling Freezer, I like it so far, but I can't really say how it will go once I install FSX and start overclocking it--I've never used Arctic Cooling brand before; also the Thermalright Ultra 120 was a finalist in my search, too. I am also partial to Zalman cpu coolers, but I didn't use one this time.>The>850w PS should handle a reasonable OC however I was again told>on another forum that the E8500 with my motherboard and ram>will not OC any good or am I on that garden path again?>Hm, possibly whoever told you that, was concerned about you having all four ram slots populated. That can be an issue with overclocking, but I would say you still ought to be able to get some sort of reasonable overclock going, especially with DDR3 and the X38 chipset, and also you've got a dual-core--they tend to be less finicky in overclocking because the FSB tends to be able to go higher.As far as the Gigabyte board goes, I did not research that particular motherboard (I am using an ASUS P5E3 X48 board). In my experience though, any mid-level mainline motherboard (mainline = Abit/Asus/DFI/Gigabyte/etc.) will allow for at least some overclocking. If you want a big overclock then you have to pay for the high-level boards by the above makers.>1 x Saitek Cyborg Evo Force Feedback Joystick>1 x Saitek Pro Flight Yoke System>1 x Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals>1 x Saitek Eclipse 2 Keyboard>1 x Saitek GM3200 Laser Mouse>1 x Logitech Z5400 5.1 Dolby/THX Sound System>1 x XFX X-Gear Gaming Rumble (vibration) HeadsetI like the FS peripherals you have :) you have a neat setup.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian