Guess it's time to slooowly start thinking about switching to win7 (especially due to the upcoming ie9) and a new system. As I don't like the whine and noise of the PC fans, even my present PC is already almost a silent system with heatpipes and slow rotating fans.After looking at a few companies the following questions remain.Due to the heatpipe cooling I think that OC the CPU and/or GPU is out of question.My old core 2 duo E6850 runs at the default 3.00GHz so switching to an i7 with 2.8GHz doesn't make much sense.Guess going for the i7-960 with 3.2GHz is best ? (as everything else is too expensive).Are 6GB RAM enough, or are 12GB significantly enhancing win7/FSX.For the GPU only rather 'slow' ones are available due to the fact that they need to be passive cooled.The Radeon 5750 or 5770 or the GT220? However, any of these will be better suited for FSX / Win7 than my GeForce 8800GTSMainboard either the GA-X58A-UD7 or the P6X58D-E ?With the rather low powered GPU, 550W should be enough or even 450W? No need to go for 750 I assume.Last but not least the SSD question. Either from Super Talent, Intel or Corsair.Thanx in advance for your help :)Best regardsBernt

i7 950 would be best, any i7 would be better because they are quad cores and newer technology. Don't pay the rediculous price for the UD7, get the Asus P6X58D-E. 6GB DDR3 1600MHz trichannel ram with latency of 6 or 7. A GTX470 recommended, they are not loud, very quiet fans. If you are worried about noise, get liquid cooling. The Corsair H70 is good, and quieter than big air coolers. Get a decent 750W modular PSU for headroom (corsair, cooler master etc). A 120GB corsair or Intel SSD for FSX and the OS, and a large WD caviar black for all other data.

In a review I read recently, the stock fans on the H70 are very loud, so if you go that route, better to replace them with better fans. You need quite a lot airflow through that radiator though, so 1900rpm fans are recommended.I've my i7 920 cooled by a megahalem heatsink with a scythe s-flex fan which is also very quiet, even overclocked to 3.8 Ghz.

These are the best fans you can get http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185091&cm_re=gentle_typhoon-_-35-185-091-_-ProductVery effective and silent. There's a 1800 rpm version too, but those the 1450 rpm will do the job tooLOL they're cheaper here in Spain, I think it's the first time I see this

So buy the corsair H70, buy about 5 of the above fans. Replace the 2 on the H70, and replace any noisy case fans with them also. Nice quiet an well cooled system.

1500-1900RPM? My present system runs the fans at 300 and in the 'worst case' at 800RPM. And still I can hear it.There's a high performance system available which doesn't have any fans at all (on the water cooled systems I was told you can hear the pump running) so I guess that a low-power-Radeon/GeForce is needed.Higher powered GPUs are offered as well, but only with active instead of passive cooling.Thanx for the input concering the RAM and the i7. Forgot that FSX is still a 32bit program and hence 12GB don't make any sense at all.Also after my experience with the last 5 rigs I tend much more towards the Asus board!

As I mentioned earlier, the fan on the GTX470 & 480 is very quiet. I can hardly hear my 480. When I had 3 480's in SLI, I could only hear them if everything was on mute.