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Hi guys, i am currently in the process of pricing a new setup for FSX, my current one is OK but i don't get any performance at the heavier airports and i do not run AI or autogen so i've decided it is time to upgrade. I have about £400-£500 to spend, i already have a good ATX case (NZXT Lexa Blackline) although it'll need a good dust down with a new setup, i currently have and plan to keep W7 64bit, 550w Corsair PSU and Gainward 1GB GTX 460 GLH and four hard drives, my current plan is to upgrade the CPU, motherboard, memory and go for a watercooling unit so that i can overclock the CPU really well.

 

At the moment i have my eye on the following

 

Intel 2700k & thermal compound - ~£230

Asus P8Z77-V LX2 - £80

Corsair DDR3 Vengeance 1866MhZ PC3-14900 - £50

Corsair Hydro H60 - £60

 

That gives a final total of £420/$630 which is acceptable to me, i'd maybe push for a better case but the one i have now (NZXT Lexa Blackline) already has the watercooling ports etc so i can't justify buying another unless i need too, will this system run FSX well? I haven't built a new PC for at least 5 years so it's a bit of a challenge for me to build and not only get the best parts for the money i have, plus i am hoping to get at least 4GHZ out of that processor and the cooling setup i am investing in.

 

Any advice would be great cheers!


Lawrence Ashworth

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Hi G.

The 2700K gets pretty hot when overclocked as I recall, so the H60 water cooler will probably only just suffice, you can get air coolers somewhat cheaper that´ll do the same job. Go H80 in push-pull or even H100i if you want cooling that makes a difference under stress.

What´s the rest of your hardware? PSU, GPU, HDD/SSD?

Concider an SSD for at least your sim, if you don´t already have it.

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PSU is 550w by Corsair, might upgrade as it's old (2+years), graphics wise i have a 460GTX 1GB by Gainward which is pre-overclocked and as it's often as expensive as a new CPU i don't plan to upgrade it just now, i have standard 4 7200rpm HDD's so may consider a SDD, just depends how much i can stretch the budget! :(


Lawrence Ashworth

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Yeah, the money pit...

Keep the 460, got the same thing a little while longer, golden edition, 2 gigz though, good for multiple screens. Why not see how far you can go OC wise with the stock cooler?! Or if you want a cheap but very efficient and silent air cooler I can recommend Scythe Mugen II, perhaps there´s an even more recent edition. It is a tad big, but you can just offset the fan a bit to fit your ram, if they collide. And it´s not very heavy, won´t bend your board.

The PSU could limit your OC, but you´ll have to see how it performs. OCCT has a PSU stress test, that will show if any of the lines underperform, if one of them do, your OC could get messed up. Once wasted a whole week of overclock attempts, because my 5 Volt line was not good enough. A new psu helped...

On a tight budget you could dedicate an SSD to FSX, depending on amount of add-ons. An SSD likes to have approx. 25% of free space to function properly, so will 120ish gb be enough?

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Yeah, the money pit...

Keep the 460, got the same thing a little while longer, golden edition, 2 gigz though, good for multiple screens. Why not see how far you can go OC wise with the stock cooler?! Or if you want a cheap but very efficient and silent air cooler I can recommend Scythe Mugen II, perhaps there´s an even more recent edition. It is a tad big, but you can just offset the fan a bit to fit your ram, if they collide. And it´s not very heavy, won´t bend your board.

The PSU could limit your OC, but you´ll have to see how it performs. OCCT has a PSU stress test, that will show if any of the lines underperform, if one of them do, your OC could get messed up. Once wasted a whole week of overclock attempts, because my 5 Volt line was not good enough. A new psu helped...

On a tight budget you could dedicate an SSD to FSX, depending on amount of add-ons. An SSD likes to have approx. 25% of free space to function properly, so will 120ish gb be enough?

 

Yeah i have the 1GB Goes like hell version and it runs things very nicely, just missing the CPU performance really for FSX at the moment. Thanks for that, i think i'm going to leave it a bit and save some more cash, there isn't much point in skimping and not getting the performance which is something i'm worried about so i think i'll wait a little and get a solid 700w PSU and the H100i to keep things ticking nicely then hopefully a SSD big enough to fit my 120GB FSX folder. :D


Lawrence Ashworth

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A 120 gigz worth of FSX (and always more to come) B), not too shabby. So, to keep SSD running fast with enough empty space, you're looking at a 256 GB volume. Price wise not out of reach for a mere mortal ^_^

Good idea to save for a decent rig, I started in late August or so last year, month by month acquiring bits and pieces. And along the way refining my choices.

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If you're going to wait then Haswell will be out in the next few months (early June) so you can either get yourself a cheap Ivy Bridge setup or a potentially better performing rig based on newer tech. Any reason why you've listed a Sandy Bridge i7 as your chosen CPU? If you're on a budget and your rig is based on gaming then an i7 makes little sense given that they cost consderably more than i5 processors that overclock to the same levels and most gaming benchmarks show if anything better performance with i5s. i7s still only have the same 4 physical cores, in some situations (not usually gaming) spare resources on the 4 cores can be used to simulate 8 cores for software designed to make use of multicore CPUs.

 

If you're not going Haswell then the lower end of the Asus P8Z77-V boards are not brilliant I'd consider the Gigabyte UD3H at the budget end, make sure that your chosen ram goes with your chosen board.

 

I don't know the dimensions of your case but closed loop water coolers are not the be all and end all, on a budget you can get a decent air cooler that will allow decent overclocks for ~£40.

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