I downloaded X-Plane on the Ipad for fun a few months ago and have become OBSESSED with flight simulation. I have been looking to purchase a new desktop, and I will be designing it with with FSX in mind. I plan to run it with saitek gear and a 42 inch plasma television. Can you help me decide if this setup will run FSX while maintaining a decent FPS simulation environment? This build will cost around 1700 dollars, and I already have the monitor and saitek gear. Please let me know what you think I should change while staying in the 1600-1800 dollar range.

Case: * Coolermaster HAF-X Gaming Full Tower Case w/ 1x230mm Fan, 1x200mm Fans, 2xFront USB 3.0 Port [+124]

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-2600K 3.40 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1155 (All Venom OC Certified) [+116]

Freebies: None

Venom Boost Fast And Efficient Factory Overclocking: Extreme OC (Extreme Overclock 20% or more) [+49]

Cooling Fan: Corsair Hydro Series H60 High Performance Liquid Cooling System 120MM Radiator & Fan (Single Standard 120MM Fan)

Coolant for Cyberpower Xtreme Hydro Water Cooling Kits: Standard Coolant

Motherboard: [CrossFireX] Asus P8Z77-V LX Intel Z77 Chipset DDR3 ATX Mainboard w/ IRST, Lucid Virtu MVP, 7.1 HD Audio, GbLAN, 2x PCIe x16 (1 Gen3, 1 Gen2), 2x PCIe x1 & 3 PCI (Extreme OC Certified)

Memory: 8GB (4GBx2) DDR3/1333MHz Dual Channel Memory [+18] (Corsair or Major Brand)

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1.5GB 16X PCIe Video Card [+486] (Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA [-20])

Power Supply Upgrade: * 750 Watts - Corsair Professional Series CMPSU-AX750 Gold 80 Plus Power Supply [+143]

Hard Drive: 1TB SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 32MB Cache 7200RPM HDD (Single Drive)

Optical Drive: 24X Double Layer Dual Format DVD+-R/+-RW + CD-R/RW Drive (BLACK COLOR)

Your post will probably get bounced to the hardware forum, but to quickly answer... Nice specs on your computer build! That system will run FSX very nicely-- IF you overclock the CPU (which your cpu will do easily). That said, my i7 2600k overclocked to 4.6 runs FSX with just about every addon on max detail (except for a couple killers like shadows,etc) at around 28 fps in dense airports like JFK and goes up from there everywhere else. I don't have XPlane, but I would think it would run well also.

 

Good luck and congrats on catching the flight sim bug.

U could save a little dough by going with a 2500k instead with a good air cooler. I would get faster RAM and possibly a second hard drive dedicated for fsx only. I also wouldnt waste the money having someone overclock it for u. It is very easy to do yourself. Have u considered building your own pc?

Thank you for the replies! I'm so excited to get a computer that will run this baby smoothly. After learning a little bit more about overclocking, I will definitely do it myself. The only thing holding me back from building the computer myself is my very limited knowledge of how to do it. My software engineer dad keeps telling me building is a pain in the butt, but everyone on this forum makes it seem quite easy. I'm not completely sold on having someone else build it, so we'll see.

 

I will exchange the current memory for a corsair vengeance 8 gb. I wasn't sure if I needed to get the second hard drive or not, but I'm going to look into it now that you have made the recommendation.

Check out the pinned hardware and software guide by Word Not Allowed. Follow his recommendations on computer specs and setting up fsx and u will be set to go. He has done alot of testing and has really helped alot of us get alot better and smoother fsx experience. Building your own system isnt to hard just take the time to research it. Lots of good guides on the web.

Exactly what I needed. Thank you!

Very nice specs!

 

But i should take a 2500 K instead of a 2600 K, in FSX you won't notice a framerate difference since FSX does not use Hyperthreading and you can overclock both equally.

 

Taking 1600 Mhz DDR3 RAM instead of 1333 is a bit safer for overclocking;

 

Buy an SSD : a 120 GB is perfect for both FSX and your operating system.

 

(Or at least a 64 GB for FSX only. Of course the bigger the better, except for your wallet)

 

Very fast computer boot and FSX loading times, not the slightest stutter with FSX constant scenery loading.

 

I have an 160 GB SSD and can't imagine doing without it anymore !