Hey guys,I'm planning to build a new system and would love to hear everyone's 2 cents about the components. I use my system for photoshop and digital photography as well as flight sim.I will be adding SATA drives, HT Omega sound card, and DVD from my old system.New system:ASUS P8P67 Deluxe MotherboardEVGA GTX 570 Video CardIntel Core i7-2600KCorsair H70 CPU CoolerCorsair Vengeance 8GB (2 X 4GB) DDR3 1600 MemoryOCZ Vertex 3 120GB SATA III SSDMicrosoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bitCooler Master HAF X 942 Full Tower ATX CaseCooler Master 1000W Power SupplyInterested in thoughts about SSD. It sounds like best use is for operating system (boot drive). Then, budget permiting, a second SSD for FS?Looking forward to comments.Thanks,Don

A few points, Don. Some of these are simply my own personal preference, so take them with a grain of salt.1. Z68 motherboards will be out Wednesday, May 11. While they shouldn't provide any benefit for FSX, I would definitely look into going that route. Basically, they combine H67 and P67 + some extra features. First of all, they will allow use of the onboard GPU (which is EXTREMELY good at video encoding). On top of that, some of them will allow seamless switching between the onboard GPU and your GTX570, reducing heat, power consumption, and noise when graphics demand is low.2. No question about it - use the SSD as your OS and program files drive. Install FSX on a seperate HDD - mechanical is fine.3. Not sure how aware you are of available cases, but I would recommend looking at the Corsair 650D before you buy the CM HAF X 942. I'm not necessarily saying it's better, but it's just a different look.4. I'm not a big fan of Cooler Master PSUs. You might look at a Seasonic X-850, or the Corsair AX850 (best two PSUs available in my own and several other's opinion). Honestly, 750W will be more than enough if you only plan to run a single GPU.5. I would strongly consider the MSI GTX570 as it comes with a really good stock cooler.6. If your HDDs are a few years old, I would definitely recommend replacing them with new ones on a new build (1TBs are cheap these days). Would hate for you to lose any of your photography.

A few points, Don. Some of these are simply my own personal preference, so take them with a grain of salt.1. Z68 motherboards will be out Wednesday, May 11. While they shouldn't provide any benefit for FSX, I would definitely look into going that route. Basically, they combine H67 and P67 + some extra features. First of all, they will allow use of the onboard GPU (which is EXTREMELY good at video encoding). On top of that, some of them will allow seamless switching between the onboard GPU and your GTX570, reducing heat, power consumption, and noise when graphics demand is low.2. No question about it - use the SSD as your OS and program files drive. Install FSX on a seperate HDD - mechanical is fine.3. Not sure how aware you are of available cases, but I would recommend looking at the Corsair 650D before you buy the CM HAF X 942. I'm not necessarily saying it's better, but it's just a different look.4. I'm not a big fan of Cooler Master PSUs. You might look at a Seasonic X-850, or the Corsair AX850 (best two PSUs available in my own and several other's opinion). Honestly, 750W will be more than enough if you only plan to run a single GPU.5. I would strongly consider the MSI GTX570 as it comes with a really good stock cooler.6. If your HDDs are a few years old, I would definitely recommend replacing them with new ones on a new build (1TBs are cheap these days). Would hate for you to lose any of your photography.

Thanks Corey,Many good recommendations, and I will check them all out. Is there any reason to be skeptical about a brand new motherboard?

I don't think so. Aside from a couple new features, the chipset is practically identical to the P67 chipset - so it's quite unlikely that they will introduce any new errors. If anything, there's a chance they ironed out any minor issues (if there were any) from the P67 chipsets.

I don't think so. Aside from a couple new features, the chipset is practically identical to the P67 chipset - so it's quite unlikely that they will introduce any new errors. If anything, there's a chance they ironed out any minor issues (if there were any) from the P67 chipsets.

Corey,Sorry for my ignorance, but I don't understand how the graphics are shared between the board and your graphics card. Does the monitor need to be connected to the motherboard as well as your card? And if so, how does that work?Don

I don't fully understand it either, but I believe this article (this page specifically) may clear some of that up.

In order to achieve what (in theory) should be a seamless transition between the integrated graphics processor and the discrete GPU, Lucid implements a proprietary software that directs workloads. Basically, there are two options here: the iGPU mode where the main display is plugged into the integrated graphics controller and the dGPU modeIf the software detects a 3D application when in iGPU mode, it will bypass IGP, allow the AMD or NVIDIA card to render and then output the image through the processor’s video memory and then towards the motherboard’s onboard display connector. This has the potential to cause a performance penalty but as the software matures, any overhead should be gradually reduced. Meanwhile, for 2D loads and media playback / conversion, the information is sent directly through the IGP.Alternately, if the monitor is plugged into the discrete graphics card through dGPU mode, the benefits of lower idle power consumption will be nullified. This is because the less efficient graphics card will be in charge of 2D and Windows Aero rendering rather than Sandy Bridge’s smaller on-die engine. Here is Lucid's rundown of the two modes:

• i-Mode provides users with near zero performance overhead on 3D graphics games, while enjoying Intel Sandy Bridge media features and power saving options when no 3D gaming is used. As this mode allows the added-on VGA cards to stay under idle for most of the system up time, the power consumption is also relatively lower.

• d-Mode is provided for demanding 3D gamers to achieve 3D performance of discrete GPU installed in the system. In this mode, Virtu allows user to utilize Intel special features such as transcoding, while display is connected to discrete GPU.