My personal preference is Asus as per my sig. Very OC friendly, especially for the beginner.Regards,

ASUS P8Z68-V LX

I think this will be it.

I am not really going to get into the SLI part anyways...FSX does not use it, and my 560ti 2GB will be more then enough for what I do for a while.

I really only want to start doing single cards.

This board says it offers simple and easy OC and along with the i7 2600k, I think I should have no issues.

What you guys think? This board any good?

ASUS P8Z68-V LX

I think this will be it.

I am not really going to get into the SLI part anyways...FSX does not use it, and my 560ti 2GB will be more then enough for what I do for a while.

I really only want to start doing single cards.

This board says it offers simple and easy OC and along with the i7 2600k, I think I should have no issues.

What you guys think? This board any good?

Why did you go for the i7?OK, that board is nice.

If that board is anything like my P67 board you will be very pleased. Although i have the 2600k cpu, i would recommend the 2500k if only for FSX. As i have said in several earlier posts, that was a mistake on my part because i didn't ask for advice before i bought.Use the $100 you save, and buy yourself a nice CPU cooler like the one in my sig (of course). Just be sure that you pick a good case that will accept that cooler.Regards,

I used to have a i7 2600k system with a gtx 580. Was good, but way to buggy. When I say buggy, i mean that the results varied. The sliders were not even full, I had orbx australia loaded, pmdg 747, level d 767, carenado planes, rex. Frames depending on where I was ranged from 60+fps 1-15fps around heavy airports(ORBX Brisbane even on a sunny day would cripple my system and that's with most unnecessary options off). I spent countless hours working my way through problems, trying different setups(******* tweak?) etc to no avail. Ended up taking the pc back(3 month trial period!!!! which was nice of the shop owner but lost 10% of the total cost. Fair enough...) and giving up....Im now missing fsx. I have the ngx installed on a low end laptop I use for work. Not wanting to spend what I did on the last system and just end up thinking its a waste of money because of unreliable performance. Maybe I had my expectations to high. I dunno. Im thinking if I can get an i5 2500k, gtx 560ti, for half of what i spent on the last system and still have okish performance, ill be happy. Any suggestions?

I cant recommend the Asus P8P67 PRO enough. Whats great about it is the UEFI interface that replaces older BIOS designs. It supports mouse use and the layout is much more user-friendly than the older designs, makes it a breeze to overclock that CPU.. Asus has a very good guide that I used in their forums to achieve solid stability at 4.5Ghz.

I cant recommend the Asus P8P67 PRO enough. Whats great about it is the UEFI interface that replaces older BIOS designs. It supports mouse use and the layout is much more user-friendly than the older designs, makes it a breeze to overclock that CPU.. Asus has a very good guide that I used in their forums to achieve solid stability at 4.5Ghz.

+1. Very user friendly board.

Liquid cooling will be hard

The all-in-one liquid CPU coolers are very easy to install. I'm not familiar with the Asetek one, but have installed two different Corsair models that were a cinch and which have worked flawlessly.If you're concerned about the cost of an SSD, and will stick with a "conventional" HDD, an option you might consider is the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3, which has an on-board m-SATA connection so that you can install a small m-SATA SSD (say 30GB) which is then used for caching purposes. I used it in a new rig for my son, and was amazed at the improvement in boot time. You need to configure the BIOS to get it to work, but the instructions were simple, and there's plenty of info out there on the subject. Here in Oz, a 30 GB OCZ NOcti m-SATA SSD was about $90, but may well be much cheaper elsewhere.regards,jeff