Hi all,

 

I'm looking at building a computer, mainly for use with FSX, with the usual add ons (PMDG's, Active Sky Next etc) I'm looking at about a £650 budget and have this in mind: 

 

 

Intel Core i5-4690K 

Corsair H55 CPU Cooler 

 

MSI Z97 PC MATE Motherboard

 

Mushkin 8GB DDR3 1600 Memory 

 

Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200rpm (For Windows and everything but FSX)

 

Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB (For FSX)

 

GeForce GTX 660 2GB

 

Corsair CX  600W 

 

Corsair SPEC-01 Case

 

 

Just wondering what others think, and if it would run FSX pretty decently.  I would most likely look at overclocking to around 4.3/4.4ghz, so I wasn't sure if the cooler would be best.  I am also wondering if the PSU is significant enough, or if I will need a higher Wattage. 

 

 

Any feedback would be brilliant.

 

Thank you,

 

Ryan

If you are on a budget, this is not a bad list...

 

Personally, I would spend a little bit more and go for the 4790K, and upgrade the PSU to a TX650.

 

I sent my CX600 back since it was noisy... the TX is  a slightly better quality unit.

From all the research I have been doing the last several weeks, Just stay with the i5, no reason to get the 4790k, since FSX and a lot of other games do not use hyperthreading yet.  Plus with your cooler you should be able to get a very good overclock out of your i5...possibly 4.6 or higher.  But it is your money and spend it as you want.  I personally bought a very similar system such as yours, and it should be here tomorrow or the next day and I will be able to provide first hand info. 

I actually have HT off, but the i7 gives you both a higher clock and larger cache.. but if you are on a budget, the i5 will indeed do the job..

Looks ok.  See if you can stretch to the GTX760 or 770 instead of the 660.  Also, I would also recommend switching out the fan on the H55 for 2 aftermarket ones (am using the Akasa Apache Blacks).  Will really help cooling and keep noise down.

Thank you all for the feedback, I am going to stick with the i5, I will however look into the TX650 PSU instead of the CX600 and I will also look at replacing the fan on the H55 especially if it will keep the noise and the temperature down!  

I will however look into the TX650 PSU instead of the CX600

 

Forgot to mention.. mount it with the fan up (not down) to keep it cool and happy = quiet..

Thank you all for the feedback, I am going to stick with the i5, I will however look into the TX650 PSU instead of the CX600 and I will also look at replacing the fan on the H55 especially if it will keep the noise and the temperature down!  

 

Make sure you get 2 fans!

My opinion is everything but the GPU looks good, to me you need to go to a 700 series card.

 

Regards,

What exactly is wrong with the 660?

 

I am still using my 460 (with a 4770K CPU) and it performs quite nicely..

What exactly is wrong with the 660?

 

I am still using my 460 (with a 4770K CPU) and it performs quite nicely..

Hello Bert, no doubt the 660 is a decent card but from personal experiences, when you get too far ahead with more and more powerful CPUs and leave your GPU it seems to get that old bottleneck problem.

 

Had that problem with my present build, when I overclocked my Ivybridge but still had poor performance. Yet although FSX is supposed to be CPU intensive, my upgrade to a 770 solved my problem without any different NVI or FSX settings, so I can only put it down to bottlenecking.

Regards,

Much of a GPU's performance increase or demise seems to depend upon the levels of AA settings and cloud complexity one wants to achieve.

But in my case, when I upgraded my GPU, I did not touch any settings and yes, it handled my existing AA settings much better, but it increased my FPS. That was going from a 1.5g GTX 580 to a 4g GTX 770.