Over the past few weeks / months I have gone dark on the idea of building a new computer, mainly due to being too busy.

 

I have re-awoken the idea and now have decided on my system. I am posting the specs here to see what you guys think, If it can be improved in anyway and so forth...

 

- Case: BitFenix Colossus Full Tower

- Power Supply: Corsair GS 600w PSU
- CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K 3.40GHz @ 4.40GHz Ivybridge CPU
- Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LX2 Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard
- Cooler: Corsair H60 Water Cooler CPU Cooler
- RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
- Hard Drive: 500GB HDD
- Graphics Card: KFA2 GeForce GTX 660 2048MB GDDR5
- Sound: Realtek 7.1 Channel Sound (On-Board)
- Optical Drive: OcUK 24x DVD+/-RW SATA Drive
- Wireless: Asus USB-N10 Micro USB Network Adapter Wireless-N 150Mbps
 

This is not so much a custom build by me, but by overclockers.co.uk

The graphics card is extremely insufficient

The graphics card is extremely insufficient

Yes I know it "was" but I have swapped it for the KFA2 GeForce GTX 660 2048MB GDDR5.

now I notice you already have a GTX460. You could reuse that if it's an option

now I notice you already have a GTX460. You could reuse that if it's an option

Unfortunately it isn't an option, but I would prefer to pay for a new.

Then the 660 is fine. Nice system, great value, you'll love it.

If anything you could contact them and ask if they could swap the RAM kit for a 2400MHz one for a little extra boost. Shouldn't add more than 30 - 40 pounds to the total price

Couple of thoughts or so. What is your ultimate goal? That is all this system going to be used for is FS? If so, my thoughts:

 

I have your old video card. Really does the job. You get more points for having more than 1GB on the GTX660 rather than any speed boost. Folks might save a bunch of money remembering that FS was a product of 2007 and CPU intensive. Amazing how far we've come since then. FS ran just fine on my old Q6600 and a GTX 260 while taking the time and patience to tune it properly. Secret to success has come down to say nVidia Inspector holding the fps to 30 and run FSX unlimited. It is a 2007 product and this tweek makes it run smooth as butter...or smooth as something. The board you picked is also is PCIe 3.0 which will, on the other hand, work well the GTX660. Again, an observation. Haven't seen anything to suggest that the faster buss of PCIe 3.0 gives you any return on investment. So think about keeping that GTX460.

 

The Ivy bridge is getting long in the tooth. I say this as Haswell is coming next month. Hope is that it will run cooler. In any event might suggest that you go with the Corsair H80. Mine is doing the job with an i5-2500K. A sweet processor. Run it at 4.6GHz without any fancy overclocking. Wouldn't have minded the H100. All that said, the 3570K is going for $10US less than the 2500K. I wonder why the 2500K is holding its value? Still trying to figure out what the advantage is of having an awe inspiring CPU while paying the price if you get past the point of deminishing returns. Unless a CPU could give me 6 or more processors NOT operating with HT and NOT $999US, then i5-2500K overclocked is enough. I have as much as anyone hung off my FSX..as in goodies...and can no longer peg the system. Again all in the tuning. You would be amazed at the care and consideration you need to run HT. FSX is just not there. 8 threads waiting on i/o completion is not pretty. Now if you are playing games...not FSX, a simulation... then you can pretty much trash my response here. Hell feel free to trash it anyhow.

 

You might be on the low side with 600W. If you can afford the cushion, 850W is sweet. Have a SeaSonic 850 Gold that is running well. As all the parts are slowly becoming more efficient my hope is that 850W will be the most one will ever need. I can hope.

 

500GB HDD? With flight sim, besides putting a load on the CPU, you are killing the I/O subsystem. Suggest a couple of Samsung 840 250GB SSDs. Run cool, unbelievably fast and take up little space, oh and they don't run hot. Nice to keep the 500GB for storing all the goodies and backups and thus running any flight planning software and anything else you use in flight prep. Keep the SSDs for pounding from FS itself, your weather software and W7. Add things like Radar Contact and if flying for a VA, your VA's ACARS program. I've got W7 and my weather, ASE, on a 80GB Samsung 830. Use a Corsair 120GB Force GT for FSX, all the fancy scenery, planes and airports and everything else FS. Once you go SSD, you don't look back. I/O becomes a non-issue when running them on Sata III. I'm sold on no moving parts, efficient, cooler and smaller. Highly recommend Samsung. you'd be just as well off with their 830 series and save some money. Compared to a HDD ANY SSD is stupid fast.

 

Don't think you need more than DDR3-1600. Really. Having 16GB is nice but 8GB is more than enough for W7 and the system you've scoped out. Deminishing returns.

 

I did mention W7? Reading on the boards W8 is the kiss of death. Why M$ would put a tablet GUI on a desktop? Makes no sense. Give me Aero any day and leave the underlying opsys the hell alone. In fact I bought another copy of W7 just in case...my original W7 did not come with SP1.

 

My assumption is that you are going to stay with FSX? If P3D then much of my comments do not apply as there is no telling how far they will go to modernize FSX. Am not a fan of upgrading everything all at once. Nail down what will get you the most bang for the buck. With FSX it's the CPU, up to a point and moving huge amounts of data from your drive. The nice thing with running something like FSX is that it is mostly read-only. The dream load for a SSD. Again, what is your goal? Bang for the buck, pound, euro? Or a kick &@($* system on which to run FSX. Or more?

 

My 2 cents, euros or whatever. Have built my own machines since the 486 and have over 3000 hrs real time on FS verson 1 through 10. I try to save money when it won't give me a return and spend that money on the great planes and eye candy, e.g. weather, airports and scenery. YMMV. Wish you well.

I would go for a beefier PSU (You never know when you might want to upgrade certain components - gives you good headroom), and swap out that graphics card for a GTX670, although the GTX660 should be perfectly sufficient. Also, in this day and age, an SSD is a must in a high powered gaming PC. Among the benefits being snappier texture loading for FSX and overall much faster boot and loading times. Otherwise, everything in that build looks great. 

Couple of thoughts or so. What is your ultimate goal? That is all this system going to be used for is FS? If so, my thoughts:

 

I have your old video card. Really does the job. You get more points for having more than 1GB on the GTX660 rather than any speed boost. Folks might save a bunch of money remembering that FS was a product of 2007 and CPU intensive. Amazing how far we've come since then. FS ran just fine on my old Q6600 and a GTX 260 while taking the time and patience to tune it properly. Secret to success has come down to say nVidia Inspector holding the fps to 30 and run FSX unlimited. It is a 2007 product and this tweek makes it run smooth as butter...or smooth as something. The board you picked is also is PCIe 3.0 which will, on the other hand, work well the GTX660. Again, an observation. Haven't seen anything to suggest that the faster buss of PCIe 3.0 gives you any return on investment. So think about keeping that GTX460.

 

The Ivy bridge is getting long in the tooth. I say this as Haswell is coming next month. Hope is that it will run cooler. In any event might suggest that you go with the Corsair H80. Mine is doing the job with an i5-2500K. A sweet processor. Run it at 4.6GHz without any fancy overclocking. Wouldn't have minded the H100. All that said, the 3570K is going for $10US less than the 2500K. I wonder why the 2500K is holding its value? Still trying to figure out what the advantage is of having an awe inspiring CPU while paying the price if you get past the point of deminishing returns. Unless a CPU could give me 6 or more processors NOT operating with HT and NOT $999US, then i5-2500K overclocked is enough. I have as much as anyone hung off my FSX..as in goodies...and can no longer peg the system. Again all in the tuning. You would be amazed at the care and consideration you need to run HT. FSX is just not there. 8 threads waiting on i/o completion is not pretty. Now if you are playing games...not FSX, a simulation... then you can pretty much trash my response here. Hell feel free to trash it anyhow.

 

You might be on the low side with 600W. If you can afford the cushion, 850W is sweet. Have a SeaSonic 850 Gold that is running well. As all the parts are slowly becoming more efficient my hope is that 850W will be the most one will ever need. I can hope.

 

500GB HDD? With flight sim, besides putting a load on the CPU, you are killing the I/O subsystem. Suggest a couple of Samsung 840 250GB SSDs. Run cool, unbelievably fast and take up little space, oh and they don't run hot. Nice to keep the 500GB for storing all the goodies and backups and thus running any flight planning software and anything else you use in flight prep. Keep the SSDs for pounding from FS itself, your weather software and W7. Add things like Radar Contact and if flying for a VA, your VA's ACARS program. I've got W7 and my weather, ASE, on a 80GB Samsung 830. Use a Corsair 120GB Force GT for FSX, all the fancy scenery, planes and airports and everything else FS. Once you go SSD, you don't look back. I/O becomes a non-issue when running them on Sata III. I'm sold on no moving parts, efficient, cooler and smaller. Highly recommend Samsung. you'd be just as well off with their 830 series and save some money. Compared to a HDD ANY SSD is stupid fast.

 

Don't think you need more than DDR3-1600. Really. Having 16GB is nice but 8GB is more than enough for W7 and the system you've scoped out. Deminishing returns.

 

I did mention W7? Reading on the boards W8 is the kiss of death. Why Microsoft would put a tablet GUI on a desktop? Makes no sense. Give me Aero any day and leave the underlying opsys the hell alone. In fact I bought another copy of W7 just in case...my original W7 did not come with SP1.

 

My assumption is that you are going to stay with FSX? If P3D then much of my comments do not apply as there is no telling how far they will go to modernize FSX. Am not a fan of upgrading everything all at once. Nail down what will get you the most bang for the buck. With FSX it's the CPU, up to a point and moving huge amounts of data from your drive. The nice thing with running something like FSX is that it is mostly read-only. The dream load for a SSD. Again, what is your goal? Bang for the buck, pound, euro? Or a kick &@($* system on which to run FSX. Or more?

 

My 2 cents, euros or whatever. Have built my own machines since the 486 and have over 3000 hrs real time on FS verson 1 through 10. I try to save money when it won't give me a return and spend that money on the great planes and eye candy, e.g. weather, airports and scenery. YMMV. Wish you well.

My main goal is FSX. I also play other Simulators and shoot-em-up games.

 

I have wondered about an SSD, passed on one and got a 750GB HDD for my late 2012 MacBook Pro (regret my decision now) but its easy enough to install one myself. The one thing putting me back on getting an SSD for my new build is the price. The 250GB are reasonable, any higher are a bit pricey. I will consider it!

 

As for W7: I am sticking with it for another couple of years, or at-least until MS release something stable and descent enough to use. Hate W8, hated it when it came out. Its just not made for your day to day gaming computer IMO. MS are going Tablet oriented in their OS?!

 

I have also wondered...: Is there any benefit from having an i7 over an i5? I'm sure I read somewhere that the i5 doesn't have HT (correct me if wrong) as HT might not give much of a significant boost in performance, is it still worth having? Plus the overall performance on the i7 compared to the i5, how does it compare?

Big difference between MSFS and say Bioshock or any of the newer titles for that matter. To stay on top of the curve for THAT kind of processing, which, unlike FS is profoundly graphics intensive, then right now you get no better bang for the buck than the GTX 670 with more than 1GB if you can. 2GB is sweet. Now you are talking bucks however and with a 670 you are far beyond the requirement for FS. You need a competent video card for FS, not a spectacular card. Always remember what hardware was available when MSFS was written. Seems like the last ice age. If you do not get hungup on framerates you are better off. My requirement is to run ALL my add-ons, run them without tearing and without stuttering. Think that means smooth. To what end does running the system at 60fps when you bunch frames up and the rates go up and down like a yo-yo. I run nvidiaInspector to clamp FS to 30fps and have frame rate set to unlimited within FS. My frame rate NEVER dips below 29, FS reports 29 through 31. Good by me. Smooth. I have TrackIR and can spin my head around...maybe not as well as in the Exorcist...but around and no tearing, no stuttering. Just smooth. Can run cars at 20%...trying now at 25% jury out but so far so good (who doesn't like LOTS of snarling rush hour traffic?). So my advice is to hold off on the video card. Have tweaked my EVGA GTX460 a bit, including some clock speeds and a tad of voltage. Works well.

 

Here is the deal on SSD's. They are the next "thing" and as such are inherently expensive. Right now, you reach diminishing returns after 250/256 GB. A 500GB/512GB is far too expensive today. Intel in its limited wisdom only provides 2 Sata III ports for its processors. WHY INTEL??? Ok, can't fight Intel, so get 2x256GB drives and run them on the SATA III ports. Any HDD(s) that you add can run on the SATA II ports. With the Samsungs you get in excess of 80,000 iops. Even if it were half of that you are blowing away HDDs. Intel has another option. think its IRT (Instant Response Technology?..feel free to correct me on the feature name) that allows you to put a 60GB or less SSD as a kind of cache for the HDD. So far, toooo many problems with the drivers and I'm not willing to sacrifice my data yet.. I like what they are doing but IMO not ready for prime time.

 

I hate W8, businesses are not compelled to upgrade to W8 and even more telling, Wall Street is not impressed with W8. Again, as for so many years, there are calls for Steve Ballmer's resignation. Expect it is hard to be the head of a software giant. If they had a clue what they were doing, Apple and M$ would switch positions in the marketplace. That said Apple is really sucking with investors as I write this. Below $400/share? The mighty doth fall. To the point. M$ has indicated that they want a single operating system to run on the PC, mobile phone and tablets. Hooray! Hmm, doesn't that sound like Linux??? Indeed Linux is used to run just about anything you want. The word is scaleable. Now IF, the underlying engine on W8 were the exact same as W7 I could die happy. Then the issue would be a crappy GUI. Me thinks there is more. When Aero was ripped out of W7 the result was not good. W8 should be renamed T8 for M$ Tiles 8. I grew up using the windows metaphor and it has made Billy Gates stupid wealthy. DON'T FIX SOMETHING NOT BROKEN. Looking back W8 is like Windows version 1. Windows 1 did not have overlapping windows kinda like W8, history has come full circle. The desktop is NOT a tablet and hope to goodness it never becomes thus. Note to M$: Anyone listening??? Anyway, running FS on top of W8 may in fact NOT be the same as running FS on top of W7 (or XP-64).

 

i5 vs i7. Don't talk about religion, sex or politics. Add i5 vs i7. I programmed for 35 years. The amount of work to make an i7 hum is considerable. If you can make an app that is designed to be massively parallel. Wow. That is awesome. Your I/O's perform well. You process to the strengths of the built in caches and life is wonderful. Really awesome. Then there is FS. While massively parallel was still on the drawing board, FS was written to be MILDLY parallel. A handful of threads instead of hundreds. In fact FS was designed to run on less than 4 threads. M$ thought that they had the process of scaling understood such that adding more engines to a processor would work to the advantage of FS and it pretty much does. But HT is a different beast. You can have it. FS will run on it. Do you get a return? I maintain you don't. Sure, there will be those that argue and I'll put my configuration of my i5 against theirs any day. For FS, i5-2500k was a match made in heaven. Heavy duty processors, no waste of HT and FS runs very well indeed. If AMD's processors weren't so inferior to Intel, I would run the FX-8350 with lots of processors. If FS wasn't designed for HT, why have and pay for HT? A 4.5 or 4.6GHz OC on the i5-2500K is enough. The jury is obviously out for the upcoming Haswell. I don't expect it to mean anything for the M$ version of FS. Maybe it will have something for P3D if that fork of FS continues to advance. Am on the fence on P3D for now. For now. Now, for modern games the switch has come to the ability to reproduce fantastic graphics. FS is a simulation and it is not of cinema quality. A Ford Focus will get me from point A to point B. So will a Lexus. How do I wish to travel? Better than a Focus but far shy of the Lexus. Give me money to spend at my destination. Leave some money to buy SOFTWARE. How many fret over hardware. Get what you need. Get no more. Cool to brag up your rig, but for me cooler still to brag up my planes, scenery and airports. i5 will do the job with room to spare. My humble opinion.

 

Have I said too much? No doubt. But want you to think through the process in which you are engaged. Spend money if it gets you where you want to go and save the rest for goodies.

Have 2 SSD's in my rig and would never go back to a spinner drive. No defragging and the ability to fill to 90% capacity with no performance loss is reason enough to opt for one, to say nothing of the load time improvements. If its going to be just for Fsx, I would suggest a 120 gb drive for your OS and a 250gb one for Fsx.to save some money. The Samsung 840 series are IMO the best value out there. Some prefer the 830's but I see no benefit for Fsx as its primarily a read only application. To parrot previous posts, Fsx is all bout raw CPU clock speed. Whether its on a 4 core CPU or an 8 core one, makes no difference. The 2500K or the 3570K are more than capable when overclocked and are solid choices. Your PSU choice should be adequate. Make sure its a quality one with a 80+ gold rating. 750 watts is more than enough for a single GPU setup. Ram is also important when overclocking. The difference between budget RAM and top shelf RAM like the Corsair Vengeance series is quite small so it makes no sense to skimp on it. The higher the mghz of your ram, the less you have to OC your CPU to gain your desired clock speed. Good luck!