Hey all,As my existing Athlon 64 setup starts to show its age, and since the real world obligations that have kept me away from this hobby for six years have let up a bit, I'm looking at getting a new setup that will do justice for Flight Simulator X and possibly some yet-to-be-determined games. This will be a homebuild (my first), and after spending the last couple of weeks researching and digging up everything I knew to dig up, I have come up with a list of components that should total about US$1,100.I have just a few questions related to them:1) Is there any reason to suspect any of these components may be incompatible with any others? I've done the research I know to do, but it would still be nice to have some voices of experience chime in.2) The RAM is of a lesser-known brand that I picked based on glowing, if sparse Newegg reviews and its unusually good latency numbers for the price point. Does anybody have any experience, positive or otherwise, with Mushkin?3) Would anybody suggest any different parts than the ones I have listed below?4) Not sure if this question belongs in this forum, but I have a 40" 1080p LCD TV that I was hoping to use when I ran FS. Would there be any significant trouble doing that on this setup (or a similar one)?Here's a list of the applicable hardware:CPU: Intel Core i7-930Motherboard: EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 X58RAM: Mushkin Enhanced Redline DDR3 1600 3x2GBPower Supply: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650WVideo Card: EVGA GTX 460 1GB 256-bitHard Drive: WD Caviar Black 500GB for the OS and programs. I might also rip the two 200GB hard drives out of my current computer for data storage and backup, but that wouldn't affect FS in terms of where the files are stored.Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bitAny feedback and assistance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Hey all,As my existing Athlon 64 setup starts to show its age, and since the real world obligations that have kept me away from this hobby for six years have let up a bit, I'm looking at getting a new setup that will do justice for Flight Simulator X and possibly some yet-to-be-determined games. This will be a homebuild (my first), and after spending the last couple of weeks researching and digging up everything I knew to dig up, I have come up with a list of components that should total about US$1,100.I have just a few questions related to them:1) Is there any reason to suspect any of these components may be incompatible with any others? I've done the research I know to do, but it would still be nice to have some voices of experience chime in.2) The RAM is of a lesser-known brand that I picked based on glowing, if sparse Newegg reviews and its unusually good latency numbers for the price point. Does anybody have any experience, positive or otherwise, with Mushkin?3) Would anybody suggest any different parts than the ones I have listed below?4) Not sure if this question belongs in this forum, but I have a 40" 1080p LCD TV that I was hoping to use when I ran FS. Would there be any significant trouble doing that on this setup (or a similar one)?Here's a list of the applicable hardware:CPU: Intel Core i7-930Motherboard: EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 X58RAM: Mushkin Enhanced Redline DDR3 1600 3x2GBPower Supply: Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650WVideo Card: EVGA GTX 460 1GB 256-bitHard Drive: WD Caviar Black 500GB for the OS and programs. I might also rip the two 200GB hard drives out of my current computer for data storage and backup, but that wouldn't affect FS in terms of where the files are stored.Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bitAny feedback and assistance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Question 1: They will work fine togetherQuestion 2: I have it, it's fast, it's stable and I recommend it.Question 3: Splurge to get a good heatsink for the CPU. If you wish to stick to a 7200 rpm drive you might switch to the 640g WD 64 cache Black Caviar edition. My answer for question # 2 applies.Question 4: Have no idea!Overclock the daylights out of the CPU and the GPU. They are made for it.Good luck

The mobo is OK. Be aware that the other pci-e slots are not 16x and the specs list the ram max supported mhz at 1600 so no room to upgrade to ddr3 2000mhz ram later but overall will workget a good aftermarket heatsink for that cpu to overclock. FSX pretty much requires you to oc to get decent performance vs image quality which you'll want with that 40" lcdram is good with low timingsthat vid card is too new to know much about. I'm running a 32" lcd at 1080p and higher antialiasing is a must, in my opinion. might consider a more powerful card to handle higher aa. psu is ok as well. my experience has been that higher wattage helps all around. you dont want to be running at 620watts on a 650watt psuuse this as a rough estimate http://www.antec.outervision.com/index.jspDefinitely have a second HD dedicated to only FSX. The velociraptor harddrives have come down in price and work well. A SSD is a good choice too.Good luck in your build. :(

SpiritFlyer - Thanks for the assurance on the Mushkin RAM. It's nice to see someone else who has it and can agree with the reviews on Newegg. I also found a reasonable heatsink, so I went ahead and threw that into the mix too. Can't hurt, and based on what I've seen posted here and elsewhere, it appears overclocking is well worth my while for FSX. Also, as it happens, the WD Caviar Black 640GB drive is actually cheaper than the 500GB because of some promotion, so I might as well jump on that while I can.wckbones - Thanks for the input. I tried to strike a balance between price and features on a motherboard that supported the LGA 1366 CPUs, and that was the one that looked to best fit my needs. Unless I decide to SLI later (not likely), I think I can live with just having the one PCIe 16x slot. As for the RAM, I figure that when the day comes that 24GB at 1600 can't do the job, it'll be time for a new motherboard anyway, haha. Besides, there don't appear to be many out there that support higher speeds on an LGA 1366; maybe that has to do with the voltage requirements. Regarding the PSU, I've done some fiddling with those calculators and am thinking about spending the extra money on the 750W version, just to make sure there's enough breathing room for OCing and such. Would the extra 100W be overkill? Thanks also for the tip on a dedicated HDD; I did some looking and the reasoning behind it appears to be solid. I think for now I'll just use one of the old 200 GB 7,200 RPM ones to see how well it does the job and spring for a 10,000 RPM later if I decide it'd be worthwhile.Thanks again for the help guys!

What cooler have you decided to get? No the 750W corsair psu is not OC. I would have recommended it anyway because 650W is probably a stretch when OCing. The 49" tv should be no problem, i sometimes connect my comp into a 50" plasma. In my opinion, I think that the GTX460 is a bit underpowered an might bottleneck your system. If you can, go for the 470.

oh chris come on :( the gpu is not going to be the bottleneck in FSX. besides the 460 overclocks greatly and performs just as well as a 470 when overclocked. it's smaller runs cooler and less power hungry. I still think that a 260 is more than enough for FSX and you won't need a beefy PSU

If you can, go for the 470.

GTX470 Is very energy efficient and doesn't need a "beefy psu". Also I wasn't saying that it would be a bottleneck in FSX, I was saying in general in othe games that are more graphics based. But thankyou anyway for trying your best to start anothe arguement on these forums.

Chris - I'm looking at this Cooler Master Hyper N 520 on account of the reviews and its reasonable price. It's also included in several combo deals with other components I'd be interested in, so that helps too. I've looked at the benchmarks for the GTX 400 series, and the GTX 470 is certainly appealing. But since I'm trying to balance price with power, I don't think I could convince myself to part with the extra $100 when the GTX 460 is already high up there in terms of performance and FSX is more heavily dependent on the CPU. Besides, if I'm overclocking the CPU, I might as well do the same with the GPU; would that ease any potential bottlenecks?Also, there is one other motherboard that I've considered: this Asus Rampage III Gene. It costs a little (but not a lot) more, and it has SATA 6.0GB/s and USB 3.0 capabilities, as well as a second PCIe slot and the capacity to run RAM at higher speeds. I guess I leaned towards the EVGA because it was under the $200 psychological barrier, but this one was my second choice and I may well end up with it. One question, though - is there any reason to avoid microATX?Thanks!Edit: Sorry, the last two posts hadn't been entered when I started writing this one. The GTX 470 is worth considering, but since at this point I don't have too many newer PC games (and a PS3 to keep me happy with newer ones), I may just stick to the 460 for now. I also looked at a 260, but since the difference in price between the 260 and 460 isn't that big, I'm leaning towards the 460.

That cooler doesn't look sufficient to me for ocing. It has 2x 92mm fans, you need something with 2x 120mm fans to provide cooling for an OCd i7. Look around more and look at specs. Also look at airflow. 41cfm isn't very much, due to the small fans. Keep looking for another cooler.

I'd get the TX750 psu instead...You want a great cooler like this:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608018It's really big so make sure your ram doesn't have huge heatspreaders and make sure your case is roomy enough

SpiritFlyer - Thanks for the assurance on the Mushkin RAM. It's nice to see someone else who has it and can agree with the reviews on Newegg. I also found a reasonable heatsink, so I went ahead and threw that into the mix too. Can't hurt, and based on what I've seen posted here and elsewhere, it appears overclocking is well worth my while for FSX. Also, as it happens, the WD Caviar Black 640GB drive is actually cheaper than the 500GB because of some promotion, so I might as well jump on that while I can.

There are a lot of really great coolers, and it would be hard to pick one out, but if I did, it would be the Prolima Tech Megahalems Rev. 2 Cooler which tops many benchmark reviews. Here it is at work in my CoolerMaster Storm Scout caselocated at:ProlimaTech Megahalems Revision 2 CoolerKind regards,Stephen

Noctua NH-D14 is currently worlds best air coole closely followed by megahalems rev 2.

Thanks for the continued help. I think I'm going to go ahead and grab the 750W Corsair PSU and the WD 640GB hard drive tonight since I've found good deals on them that end soon. I'll wait a couple of weeks to see if any more parts go on sale before getting the rest. Seems they like to run a lot of good deals on these things, but for a very short period of time.As for a CPU cooler, I stumbled across this Xigmatek Dark Knight-S1283V REV.W yesterday. It looks to move a lot of air and fetch a lot of good reviews without breaking the bank. Thoughts?

Looks good but you'd want to stick another 120mm fan on the other side.

I don't know about that xigmatek, but this one is great value for the money http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=arctic+cooling+freezer+7