Hello all,I'm putting together a new FSX system with the following:Asus Socket AM3+/ AMD 970/ Quad CrossFireX/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&GbE/ ATX Motherboard (M5A97)AMD FX 8120 8-Core Processor 3.1 8 Socket AM3XFX HD-685X-ZCFC Radeon HD 6850 Graphic Card - Eyefinity software to run 3 monitorsCORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)Thermaltake Case and 750W power supplyAsus 24x CD/DVD RWSo far so good I think, but I'm running into the wall about what to do regarding HD's. Does anyone have thoughts about using say a 64GB SSD as the c drive for the OS, and running FSX and nothing else on a couple of 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda's in a RAID 0 configuration. Also probaly have a 1 TB or higher storage drive, but that shouldnt affect FSX.Any ideas? Better setup? Fabian

Fabian,I am putting together a new FSX system as well and after exhaustive research I found that an Intel CPU based system will outperform and AMD system by a long shot. As you read the posts of many that are in this forum and the different mixes of their systems (in their signatures) you will see this as well. Read my recipe in my signature as a guide.Good luck with your build in any case.

I would avoid AMD on both GPU and CPU side if I was building a system specifically for FSX. I'm not saying that AMD's products are bad, just that Intel+nVidia are a lot better if you only have FSX in mind.But if you specifically want eyefinity or 3 screens driven from one card AMD is the only option GPU wise. But be prepared for poor performance in clouds.The only possible advantage a AMD FX8120 could have over an Intel 2500K could be the time it takes to load a flight. And I said possible as I am not sure how the FX processors "special" cores affect FSX. FPS will however be a lot lower compared to the Intel 2500k

Harddrive: You may want to put the OS on the Raid 0 harddrives. A few benchmarks show that a single SSD is faster then 7200RPM in Raid 0, to help FSX use the SSD. Stick with Intel SSD's. The 520 Series has been well tested and will prove more reliable. The OCZ have almost a 50% fail rate over 6 months.Processor: The AMD kills the Intel in multithread, however, FSX is not multithread. If you want to save some cash, an i5-2500k w/ a Nice Heatsink will get you 4.4-4.7GHzRAM: GSkill is nice ram. You could do 8GB in a 4 x 2 setup. Then upgrade down the road to 16GB with another 4 x 2 kit. I have had Photoshop, Dreamweaver and FSX open at one time, and still had over 3GB's free out of 8GB.Motherboard: GigiaByte or ASUS z68 ChipsetPowerSupply: Corsair, Seasonic, or OCZ. Thermaltake is good, but they do not make there own PSU's often they are cheaper rebranded Seasonics.Video Card: Again, I love AMD, but with FSX, Nvidia comes out on top. Anything from a 560Ti will do great with FSX

Hello all,I'm putting together a new FSX system with the following:Asus Socket AM3+/ AMD 970/ Quad CrossFireX/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&GbE/ ATX Motherboard (M5A97)AMD FX 8120 8-Core Processor 3.1 8 Socket AM3XFX HD-685X-ZCFC Radeon HD 6850 Graphic Card - Eyefinity software to run 3 monitorsCORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)Thermaltake Case and 750W power supplyAsus 24x CD/DVD RWSo far so good I think, but I'm running into the wall about what to do regarding HD's. Does anyone have thoughts about using say a 64GB SSD as the c drive for the OS, and running FSX and nothing else on a couple of 7200RPM Seagate Barracuda's in a RAID 0 configuration. Also probaly have a 1 TB or higher storage drive, but that shouldnt affect FSX.Any ideas? Better setup?Fabian

Put the OS in an SSD and FSX in a 1TB drive. Avoid Raid0 with FSX.

I chose to put my OS on the SSD, and run FSX on a Raid-1 conventional disk setup. This is a new PC (built a month ago) and I have been happy with the setup and performance.