Anyone know if this i 7 4770K will be necessary or if I can stick with the i5 4670K? The price ranges are very different so I assume the i7 makes a huge difference? Anyone know what I'd be missing out on?

I have already started building this, I just wanted to know how well this will run with all of the FSX addons... ground scenery, airports, weather and clouds, traffic, etc. 


Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
Corsair H80i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Asus MAXIMUS VI FORMULA ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Video Card
NZXT H440 (White/Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
Corsair RM 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
 

From my experience core i5 3570 k and i7 3770k there is almost no performance difference and definitely not enough to justify price difference. I'm overclocking every hardware which lands in my rig and to be honest I run FSX with only some options decreased (autogen to very dense and no cars) but not because of performance but OOMs.

 

Question is what addons will you use. You can see mine in the profile and I am getting stable 30fps especially after release of dx10 scenery fixer 2.0 which boosted my performance with some tweaking. I saw FSX performing on 3770k clocked to 4.7 ghz so 100 MHz faster than my i5 and the difference was not there but offcourse it used slightly different addons. I know that some guides recommend i7 but I don't see a reason for it from my tests and from tests which I found online. FSX offcourse is not like other games where i5 and i7 always go on par. In the end this is a matter of your budget but with some proper approach and not excessive tweaking you can choose i5 and be happy. This is just my opinion. In the end it is your call - I don't know how it is where you live but here I can return the hardware I bought online in 10 days from receiving it. That way I have got my i5 which is able to go 4.6 with voltage no higher than 1.223v and rock stable under prime95 running for 12 hours. but this is just a digression.

 

Ok I've just checked the two mentioned specification and the only difference is ht and 2 mb more of l3 cache on i7 so clock to clock both will go on par and end of story.

 

What I don't understand is why you buy mediocre liquid cooler instead of investing into good air one. H80 is a joke quality wise (again my experience). I get the same performance with enermax ets t40ta and it's quieter. With your budget you can go for high end and dead quiet CPU coolers (air).

 

 

What I don't understand is why you buy mediocre liquid cooler instead of investing into good air one. H80 is a joke quality wise

The case I picked, NZXT H440, is a mid tower case and has limited airflow. So I figured the liquid cooling would be more efficient for the setup. Should I spend an extra $20 and get the Corsair H100i instead? 

None of them performs well IMO. I bought cm haf 912 plus added some fans and don't need such solutions