Hi folks,I haven't been around in a while and have in the past few years become strictly a mac person (laptop, due to my real world job where I'm travelling all the time). I'm in the process of testing/developing some training software that only runs under FSX, and would like to upgrade my old pentium machine from 2003. I'm looking specifically at the "build your own" schemes that ibuypower and cyberpower uses, and comparing them to what's available at newegg.com or tigerdirect.This cyberpower machine piqued my interest:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229183Tigerdirect has this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6089755&CatId=1886What I've seen is this from reading the forums:Highest CPU speed is best, thus i7 980x 3.33 mHz...GPU makes no difference between Nvidia or ATI, the advance ATI 6870 works well now...Overclock a little bit, with some liquid cooling involved...DDR3 1600mhz 8GB is plenty. Budget is $2500 on/about. Any suggestions? I do realize there are many posts about "best system," but since technology is always in a state of change (as well as prices), these threads are always a good to keep refreshing.

I also was interested in what people thought of the:Paladin XLC V2Intel® Core™ i7-960 ProcessorAsetek 240mm Radiator Liquid CoolingPowerDrive Level 2 OverclockingASUS P6T CrossFire Support MB6 GB DDR3 1333 Memory2x 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA-II HDD RAID 0NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1.5GB Video Card24x Double Layer DVD+/-RW8x Blu-ray/HD-DVD/DVD Reader Combo7.1 Channel 3D Surround SoundiBUYPOWER Subwoofer Speakers10/100/1000 Network LANCoolerMaster HAF 922 Mid Tower CaseWindows 7 Home Premium 64-BitUpping the processor and downgrading the bells and whistles (blu-ray, 1 HD instead of 2, switching to ATI RADEON gpu, etc) keeps it at/under the $2500 mark.

What I've seen is this from reading the forums:Highest CPU speed is best, thus i7 980x 3.33 mHz...GPU makes no difference between Nvidia or ATI, the advance ATI 6870 works well now...Overclock a little bit, with some liquid cooling involved...DDR3 1600mhz 8GB is plenty. Budget is $2500 on/about. Any suggestions? I do realize there are many posts about "best system," but since technology is always in a state of change (as well as prices), these threads are always a good to keep refreshing.

Highest speed is best... true... but you don't need to drop 1000 bucks on the 980 to get a fast speed. You can get an i7 950/930/920 and overclock it to 4+ GHz with a quality aftermarket AIR cooler. You don't need liquid nowadays unless you're aiming really high.I'd still go with an nvidia card - a great fast budget card is the GTX570. Granted it's not cheap, but it's much cheaper than the 580 and also beats the older GTX480.With the i7 920/30/50/80 you want to get triple channel ram - usually 6GB or 12GB.Finally, if you can build your own it would be much better than that ibuypower system (mainly because you can buy quality parts and learn about the innards of your PC). Their system in your first link is decent but I'm not sure how good their power supplies are and if they use quality aftermarket coolers. Also, 2 AMD 5850's in crossfire is a waste for FSX. The cyberpower from Newegg is much better.

Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEMCase: Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, comes with Three Fans-1x Front Blue LED 120mm Fan, 1x Top 140mm ...Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare DriveIntegrated Wireless: ASUS PCE-N13 PCI Express Wireless AdapterGraphics Card: SPARKLE SXX5801536D5NM GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video CardPower: CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power SupplyMemory: CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C9Motherboard: ASUS Rampage III Gene LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel MotherboardCPU: Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80601960OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEMCooling: CoolIT SYSTEMS ECO-R120 Advanced Liquid Cooling (ALC)Total came to 1944.99... well under what I thought it would be. Would this all be compatible with each other?Thanks again for your help, I know this isn't the most exciting topic to discuss!

Yeah... I'm not quite sure of that cooling solution. Maybe someone with liquid cooling experience can chime in.

Yeah... I'm not quite sure of that cooling solution. Maybe someone with liquid cooling experience can chime in.

First and foremost, I highly recommend building your own computer. With that said, I second the suggestion to forget the $1000 980X processor. Pick up a new i7-2600k when it's released next week instead. It won't be quite as fast as a 980X, but it will outperform the 920, 930, and 950 at a quarter to a third of the cost of the 980X.It should run much cooler as well. Whereas heat really limits current i7-9xx chips, voltage will be the limiting factor for Sandy Bridge. No water cooling will be necessary, so pick up an h70 and be done with it.

I wish people would stop saying "wait for sandy bridge". We are predicting it will clock better and have less temps, but we don't know for certain. Until someone on this forum actually has a sandy bridge system, who can prove that it can OC higher than a 1366 system, and runs better in FSX, stop recommending it. For all we know, it could run FSX worse than what it runs in a 1366 system. Let's not jump to conclusions when we don't even have any evidence to support what we are saying. Yes Intel may claim that it is better than their old 1366, but what people claim isn't always what is correct...

I wish people would stop saying "wait for sandy bridge". We are predicting it will clock better and have less temps, but we don't know for certain. Until someone on this forum actually has a sandy bridge system, who can prove that it can OC higher than a 1366 system, and runs better in FSX, stop recommending it. For all we know, it could run FSX worse than what it runs in a 1366 system. Let's not jump to conclusions when we don't even have any evidence to support what we are saying. Yes Intel may claim that it is better than their old 1366, but what people claim isn't always what is correct...

Personally, I wish 1366 owners would stop getting so annoyed with Sandy Bridge suggestions. Nobody is claiming that it's a worthy upgrade from 1366. But for those of us with older systems, there are many reasons that 1155 is probably the best upgrade path - hopes of future 22nm socket 1155 chips, for example. Regarding FSX performance, I don't see why we shouldn't expect improvements from Sandy Bridge. Like 1366, the i7-2600k is a 4C/8T chip, but with several architecture improvements, namely an improved cache structure and integrated memory controller. Add to that the fact that it has been fairly well proven that it overclocks well beyond what 1366 chips are capable of and I don't see why "waiting for Sandy Bridge" is such a bad suggestion. Sure, it would be wise to see how things actually pan out for FSX performance, but purchasing a 1366 system shortly before the release of Sandy Bridge would be a pretty bad move at this point, don't you think???PS, several people on overclock.net do have Sandy Bridge. Go read up. In the mean time I will continue to recommend waiting.

I never said purchase a 1366 system at all, I said don't go rushing in to buying a 1155 system as soon as they are released, wait and see how they perform in FSX, then make the decision of 1155 or 1366. While the sandy bridge processors may have more improvements and added features, what's to say FSX will use these features? Look at hyper threading. Thats supposed to be a big feature of the i7 9xx range, yet in FSX it does very little. In fact, many users switch hyperthreading off in the BIOS when overclocking.

I never said purchase a 1366 system at all, I said don't go rushing in to buying a 1155 system as soon as they are released, wait and see how they perform in FSX, then make the decision of 1155 or 1366. While the sandy bridge processors may have more improvements and added features, what's to say FSX will use these features? Look at hyper threading. Thats supposed to be a big feature of the i7 9xx range, yet in FSX it does very little. In fact, many users switch hyperthreading off in the BIOS when overclocking.

Ok, so being clueless about computers, the machine I have suggested above is not an 1155 system? If I wait for a sandy bridge (who knows how long), I'd need to get a new motherboard to fit it? Or could I use the same and just swap chips?Or maybe go to an AMD system so I won't have to deal with the confusion? My goal with this new system is to improve on what I have from 2003 to run FSx acceptably, frame rates in the 30s consistently all the time (cities, rural, with AI traffic, 3rd party aircraft, etc...). If the i7 970 can do it, then why not get that which already has been proven?

Ok, so being clueless about computers, the machine I have suggested above is not an 1155 system? If I wait for a sandy bridge (who knows how long), I'd need to get a new motherboard to fit it? Or could I use the same and just swap chips?Or maybe go to an AMD system so I won't have to deal with the confusion? My goal with this new system is to improve on what I have from 2003 to run FSx acceptably, frame rates in the 30s consistently all the time (cities, rural, with AI traffic, 3rd party aircraft, etc...). If the i7 970 can do it, then why not get that which already has been proven?

Sandy Bridge is supposed to be released on the 9th, so just 7 more days. I imagine it won't take long for somebody on these forums to check it out and report back on FSX performance. It's socket 1155, so yes, it will require a different motherboard. If you can get a good deal on the 970, then I might agree with your logic on sticking with what is proven. The 970 is 32nm, so it should run cooler and be able to overclock higher than other 1366 chips. The problem is that the 970 is really expensive, 2x to 3x what the top Sandy Bridge chip will be. Also, Intel will not be coming out with any more chips for 1366 systems, other than the 990X I believe - so 1366 is done as far as CPU upgrades are concerned. I'm not really sure what kind of performance 1366 owners are seeing - but I don't think they're getting 30 fps in busy cities.The problem with i7-920/930/950 chips is that it's sort of a crapshoot as to how high they will overclock. Every chip is different. Some people can't even get an i7-950 beyond 4GHz. While I wouldn't expect every i7-2600k to clock to 5GHz, 4.5 to 4.8GHz should be easily attainable even without a watercooling system.Chris is right - we don't know for sure how FSX will perform with Sandy Bridge. We do know for certain, however, that Sandy Bridge will clock much higher and run considerably cooler than 1366 chips. Several claims have also been made that it's faster clock for clock than i7-9xx chips and countless benchmarks run so far have shown that to be true. With that said, Sandy Bridge has the potential to bring considerable improvements to FSX. Either way, socket 1155 or socket 1366, you should have a great system - expect to see massive improvements from whatever you have from 2003. Just don't buy an AMD system to avoid the "confusion". AMD is also coming out with a new socket in a few months, so there's no less confusion going that route.

Look at hyper threading. Thats supposed to be a big feature of the i7 9xx range, yet in FSX it does very little. In fact, many users switch hyperthreading off in the BIOS when overclocking.

Then pick up the i5-2500k. It's basically the i7-2600k without hyperthreading. Saves you $100! I had just read on these forums that HT does help, though.

I didn't think Intel were still going ahead with the 990x, I would've thought that as they were discontinuing the 1366 socket, they'd focus on 1155, especially with sandy bridge 6 and 8 cores down the track.