Ive been reading this forum for 3 weeks now lots of good info, Please help witha few things before i order my parts. Here is my plan of attack to play the sim at full sliders with add-ons and have stutter free performance and good fps. and at a later date to run dual or triple monitor setup. i7 2600k w/ asus p8p67 pro mobo (when available)8GB Mushkin Redline 1600MHzWD Velociraptor 10,000 RPM 150GB (2 of them) GTX 460, 480 or 580 Win 7 64bit 1) Im not sure which brand nvidia gpu to buy and if the 580 is worth the extra hundred bucks.2) Cant decide between coolermaster haf x case or antec 1200 or any other you may recomend I dont see any watercooling in my future at this point. 3) What brand and size power supply do I need4) Need advice on a good CPU cooler 5) Also this is my first build on my own and diving into overclocking Im pretty confident on hardware install, but overclocking and playing in bios is another story is it pretty easy to learn or should I have a pro set it up?6) Will I need a larger HD for FSX plus addons.Any other advice or recomendations would greatly be appreciated, Thanks for all help.

150GB velociraptors are LOUD!!! Consider picking up an SSD drive instead. I imagine a 120GB would be large enough for most people - would be for me at least.For power supplies, Seasonic makes the very best. Check out the X650 and X750 Gold. Newegg seems to have them on sale fairly often. 650W is probably plenty, but it wouldn't hurt to have the 750W unit for future flexibility.For coolers - Corsair H70, Noctua NH-D14, Thermalright Silver Arrow are all very good. Any of them will take your CPU to 5GHz... well, depending on whether or not you have HT enabled. But without going custom watercooling, that's probably your best options.For cases, I have my eye on the Corsair 600T... Personally I don' t like gamerish looking cases. The 600T looks really clean and has excellent cable management. But that's just my personal preference. Get into a store and feel them up... see which one feels better quality. Normally I don't like cases with windows, but this 600T mod pulls it off without looking to gamer-ish/geeky:SOURCE

Thanks for the reply I like the simple case too just looking for one with good cooling characteristics Ill check into that one.

heres my 2 cents are you going to overclock the i7 2600k ?if yes would you really need to pay another £100 odd pounds when in the latter you would be paying £100 for a feature you will be turning off anywaypersonally i would spend the extra £100 if you dont need the HT on either a ssd or get a better gfx card like the gtx580personally i have looked at this for 2months and have ordered the following rig antec 1200i5 2500k OC @ 4.5ghzp8p67 pro motherboard8gb corsair vengance dual channel 1600mhzgtx580 superclockednoctua nh d14corsair 1000w60gb ocz 60gb for windows 1tb for fsx and other stuffhave you got a budget as mine was £1700 and came in at £1642i would spend my money on the 2500k and with the extra money upgrade the hardrive to either a ssd and a 1TB slave drive as 150 x2 raptors wont last long with fsx and os trust me you will need a 1TB aswellhope this helps and everything goes smooth my pc arrives on thursdai so will be try and get some vids or fsx benchmarks with the i5 2500k and the gtx580 happly flying mate,good luckhayden walker

heres my 2 cents are you going to overclock the i7 2600k ?if yes would you really need to pay another £100 odd pounds when in the latter you would be paying £100 for a feature you will be turning off anywaypersonally i would spend the extra £100 if you dont need the HT on either a ssd or get a better gfx card like the gtx580personally i have looked at this for 2months and have ordered the following rig antec 1200i5 2500k OC @ 4.5ghzp8p67 pro motherboard8gb corsair vengance dual channel 1600mhzgtx580 superclockednoctua nh d14corsair 1000w60gb ocz 60gb for windows 1tb for fsx and other stuffhave you got a budget as mine was £1700 and came in at £1642i would spend my money on the 2500k and with the extra money upgrade the hardrive to either a ssd and a 1TB slave drive as 150 x2 raptors wont last long with fsx and os trust me you will need a 1TB aswellhope this helps and everything goes smooth my pc arrives on thursdai so will be try and get some vids or fsx benchmarks with the i5 2500k and the gtx580 happly flying mate,good luckhayden walker

For what reason did you order a "Pro" P8P67 mainboard? It's only advantage is SLI as I gather... or am I missing something else?

And 1000W :o

Those Seasonics (and the Corsair 600T) are so over priced. Corey, you're dead set on getting one of those 600Ts! :Drooling: Corsair's modular PSUs are wonderful and top notch, and not over priced. Thermaltake's Toughpower series aren't too bad, and my OCZ is perfectly reasonable and darn quiet! I couldn't think of a reason for the overly large and expensive 1000W unless you're sticking 3+ cards in there...As for cases. If you're going mid-tower (good choice), keep it in the $80-$110 range! Coolermaster makes a wide array of cases and they are all affordable, albeit heavy. Some are tacky but still some are very classy.For a first build I suggest you stay away from overpriced hyped up products! Just my .02...