While my current E6600 based system has served me and FS9 well, I am now about to upgrade to an i7 based system.This is what I am about to order:Mobo Asus P6T Deluxe V2CPU Intel Core i7 920 with a Noctua H-C12P on top of thatCorsair Dominator Intel Core i7 6GB Kit PC3-12800, 1600MHz, 3x240 DIMM 6GB Kit(3x2048MB)I will at the moment keep my MSI 8800GT OC video card and see in what price range the ATI5800 series will end up (or I might go for the ATI 4890 since it's so cheap).My question really is, while I intend to keep my Samsung F1 1TB as the OS disk would the Velociraptor 300 GB or a OCZ Vertex Series SATA II 2.5" SSD be the better choice for running FSX on? The SSD disk is only 300€ - 210€ = 90 € more expensive. I kinda lost track of the hardware scene after I bought my Intel 200 MMX "a few years" ago...

SSD's (Intel and the new Indilinx based ones) measureably speed up general OS/application tasks like booting up, general app loading times etc so for me it would be a question of where do I spend more time: in sim or working with apps? Given that I work a lot more on the same machine I am also looking at an SSD, but for my main OS drive. TRIM support will be important when Windows 7 ships (no TRIM support planned for Vista it seems?).My understanding is that for FS an SSD will not provide signifcantly better in-flight performance over a 10k Vraptor (with the exception of loading times perhaps). Others will no doubt confirm this either way.

SSD's (Intel and the new Indilinx based ones) measureably speed up general OS/application tasks like booting up, general app loading times etc so for me it would be a question of where do I spend more time: in sim or working with apps? Given that I work a lot more on the same machine I am also looking at an SSD, but for my main OS drive. TRIM support will be important when Windows 7 ships (no TRIM support planned for Vista it seems?).My understanding is that for FS an SSD will not provide signifcantly better in-flight performance over a 10k Vraptor (with the exception of loading times perhaps). Others will no doubt confirm this either way.

Ok, thanks for your input Konrad. The computer is dedicated to gaming although I also do some video editing with it since I have the 25,5" screen there and a smaller 22" on the "serious" computer. The noise factor of course also come into play although as far as I understand it the Velociraptor really isn't that bad and the sound from MSFS will anyway drown it. I will probably go for the spinning one then!

Have you considered added a SAS controller with fast (15K) sas drives in a raid config?Just a thought...

The noise factor of course also come into play although as far as I understand it the Velociraptor really isn't that bad and the sound from MSFS will anyway drown it.

I suspect the sound from your graphics card fan will be enough to drown it out...

Have you considered added a SAS controller with fast (15K) sas drives in a raid config?Just a thought...

Actually the mobo I ordered comes without the SAS-controller. In the updated v2 version it was removed and the price reduced.

The reason I mentioned the SCSI drives and controller was that a friend built a rig based on the i7-920 with an ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard that supports SAS (V1 not V2 mainboard). He added a pair of Seagate Cheetah 15K 146gig drives in raid 0 mode off the SAS on-board controller simply for SPEED! He has a raptor 300gig drive for data and backups.Fooling around with the last build of Win 7 before it went RTM, we were able to run FSX full sliders right at 30fps. This was only the demo but it ran fluidly and quite well. Video was a sapphire 4850X2. The i7-920 was not over-clocked at the time. The system was purely built to experiment with. We threw everything at it and it became affectionately known as "The Beast". Couldn't slow it down. He may even buy FSX and run it once he's got a final build on it. Keep in mind, we were not running any anti-malware or security software other than what Microsoft ships and installed in that release of Win 7.