Guide to building a PC?

[martin-w 3,234]

You might like this video. JJ from Asus and a PC Part Picker guy provide lots of info and in the second half of the video, a PC build guide.

 

 

[Gary A 8]

Follows NickN's Guides. IMO the very best Build and optimization guide for FSX Available :-)

 

NickN is about as warm and fuzzy as a prickly pear cactus, which is where 99.9% of his naysayers come from.  You can bet these individuals rightly had their limbs trimmed by Nick for spewing silly nonsense and have had their butts hurt.  Their only retort and retaliation is their lame attempts to discredit him in another forum like here.  Tisk tisk for being so petty and little.  Nick has forgot more about flightsim and computers than most could ever even hope to have learned in their lifetime.

 

Personality aside, I have tried to prove Nick wrong on many occasions.  I did this because I follow no one blindly and I am certainly not any bodies follower but I wanted to see if it made a difference for myself.  I never was able to prove Nick incorrect on any point that he ever made.

 

Of all the silly nonsense on the internet and misinformation generally coming from "Google Quarterbacks" (those that convey what they find on Google as their own), Nick lives, breathes and knows emphatically what he recommends.  I have even seen Nick post that he takes responsibility for advice; how many Google Quarterbacks have you seen offer that. 

 

Nicks guides and continued helpfulness are second to none and I would encourage anyone looking for real and professional PC advice to follow Nick's guide and other posts on his forum.

[captain_adf 16]

I actually agree with both sides here regarding Nick N's guides. On one hand, he is *the* go-to authority for gearing up your rig. OTOH, some of his recommendations do seem "over the top". I would say I followed about 75% and the rest I decided wasn't for me.

 

The references provided here, like the Asus videos, are mainly focused on hardware. But the most dangerous part is the OS. Given that Nick's guides are a few years old and geared for fsx, I would love to see some fresh recommendations for modern systems and P3D. LM still recommends win7 for p3d, but I bet Nick's guides could be refreshed even for win7, to be more suited for P3D. Anything out there that would be a good, recent guide for P3D?

[turner112 52]

 

 

would love to see some fresh recommendations for modern systems and P3D.

 

This is what I'm mostly concerned about. I can follow/interpret advice regardless of who it's coming from... just wondering how much change there might be.

[Guest]

Look, lets put it this way windows 7 is still the go to OS for any version FSX/P3D. NickN's recommendations for selecting hardware are every bit as relevant today as when he wrote them. Note the difference between 'hardware recommendations' and 'hardware selection recommendations'. There is no big difference between the BIOS setting guide for today's hardware and the i7 4770k which was cutting edge at the time Nick wrote the guide under 3 years ago. Bios setting guide is the same and overclocking procedure is the same and memory selection calculations are the same. etc. regarding the difference between FSX and P3D common sense dictates that you should follow the guides to the letter until you get to the FSX installation and optimization section if you are installing P3D V2 or V3. Some of it is still relevant but in the case of P3D much is obsolete. But one read through that section in advance of doing anything will make it very clear what you should do and not do.

 

Nick suggests himself that the hardware selection, overclocking and windows 7 optimization guides are universally beneficial to performance for all demanding windows programs. He also suggest that the windows 7 optimization guide is an all or nothing process. i.e. many of the actions taken are interdependent. So hypothetically let say that 10 steps in the guide are interdependent and you carry out only 9 of the ten or less you get none of the benefit.

 

I followed the guide to the letter for FSX and then later is followed guide from scratch from the windows 7 install after I scrapped FSX and installed P3D V2 only. On both occasions based on comments I got on youtube I achieved what was obviously far superior to others with the same hardware at the time and better hardware later from people who didn't follow the guides. If you plan to go to the trouble of building an FS system you owe it to yourself to a least give NickNs guide a complete read through before you do anything.

 

Again some supporting evidence and I owe this completely to following Nicks guides. Sorry for all the videos but I just want to prove once and for all the whether its FSX or P3D NickN's guides deliver obviously superior performance and I challenge anyone to reproduce this raw footage performance on the same system or indeed a better system without using Nicks optimization guides:

 

FSX 2.5 years ago:

 

FSX 2.5 years ago:

 

FSX 2 years ago:

 

FSX 2 years ago:

 

FSX 2 years ago:

 

P3D V2.3 1.5 years ago:

 

P3D V2.4 1.5 years ago:

 

P3D V3 4 months ago:

 

P3D V3 3 months ago:

 

And lastly P3D V3 1 months ago:

[martin-w 3,234]

NickN is about as warm and fuzzy as a prickly pear cactus, which is where 99.9% of his naysayers come from.  You can bet these individuals rightly had their limbs trimmed by Nick for spewing silly nonsense and have had their butts hurt.  Their only retort and retaliation is their lame attempts to discredit him in another forum like here.  Tisk tisk for being so petty and little.  Nick has forgot more about flightsim and computers than most could ever even hope to have learned in their lifetime.

 

Personality aside, I have tried to prove Nick wrong on many occasions.  I did this because I follow no one blindly and I am certainly not any bodies follower but I wanted to see if it made a difference for myself.  I never was able to prove Nick incorrect on any point that he ever made.

 

Of all the silly nonsense on the internet and misinformation generally coming from "Google Quarterbacks" (those that convey what they find on Google as their own), Nick lives, breathes and knows emphatically what he recommends.  I have even seen Nick post that he takes responsibility for advice; how many Google Quarterbacks have you seen offer that. 

 

Nicks guides and continued helpfulness are second to none and I would encourage anyone looking for real and professional PC advice to follow Nick's guide and other posts on his forum.

 

 

NickN is about as warm and fuzzy as a prickly pear cactus, which is where 99.9% of his naysayers come from.  You can bet these individuals rightly had their limbs trimmed by Nick for spewing silly nonsense and have had their butts hurt.  Their only retort and retaliation is their lame attempts to discredit him in another forum like here.

 

That's very insulting to be honest Gary. It seems you have a similar attitude to his! 99.9% of his naysayers don't at all come from the "had their limbs trimmed" camp and are simply retaliating, that's a hypothesis based on zero evidence. 

 

It is possible to have a differing opinion, without insulting those that disagree with you.

 

I for one have had no run-ins with him. In fact the first conversation I had with him many years ago was rather polite and friendly. 

 

Nicks guides and continued helpfulness are second to none and I would encourage anyone looking for real and professional PC advice to follow Nick's guide and other posts on his forum.

 

No problem, I have no issue with that.... but my advice is to be prepared to think for yourself and reject aspects of his "bible" that are unnecessary, over the top, or outdated.  That applies to pretty much any source of information, use your common sense, accept what you find valid and reject that which you don't.

 

I have been a moderator elsewhere for a decade, and in that time I have come across many individuals who regard his advice as containing unnecessary steps... and the majority aren't idiots or those that have a grudge. 

 

 

I actually agree with both sides here regarding Nick N's guides. On one hand, he is *the* go-to authority for gearing up your rig. OTOH, some of his recommendations do seem "over the top". I would say I followed about 75% and the rest I decided wasn't for me.

 

 

 

 

Precisely! 

@ Avidean.

 

Nick suggests himself that the hardware selection, overclocking and windows 7 optimization guides are universally beneficial to performance for all demanding windows programs. He also suggest that the windows 7 optimization guide is an all or nothing process. i.e. many of the actions taken are interdependent. So hypothetically let say that 10 steps in the guide are interdependent and you carry out only 9 of the ten or less you get none of the benefit.

 

 

 

My experience... Quiet a while ago, followed his advice "to the letter". Compared to my own previous set-up, no appreciable difference.

 

His favouring of O&O Defrag: Myself and other individuals followed his advice to the letter. Compared to standard defrag methodology, we found no appreciable difference.

 

And no, we didn't do something wrong, or miss his vital steps. We were all experienced with hardware, one of us could have been regarded as an "expert".

 

However, if your rig functions in a godly fashion then that's great. With all things we must make up our own minds.

 

 

If you look at this post form here on Avsim, from two years ago, you can see the identical debate was engaged in. Some favouring his advice, some not, with one individual following his advice to the letter and ending up with worse performance. Most that were successful with his methods used some of his tweaks but not all!

 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/432508-nick-needhams-pc-tweaks/

 

 

 

My advice now is to move on. I don't think it's beneficial to the OP or anyone if we spend all day arguing about our favoured experts. Both sides have made their opinions known!

[turner112 52]

Thanks for all the insight everyone!

 

Well, you can't say people aren't passionate about this...

 

 

 

Look, lets put it this way windows 7 is still the go to OS for any version FSX/P3D.

 

I happen to be running Windows 7 on my "gaming" computer currently; however, the computer is not used for flight simming alone, so, ultimately, this is an unsustainable approach for me.

[martin-w 3,234]

Well, you can't say people aren't passionate about this...

 

 

 

Daft really isn't it? And all we're doing is pretending to fly a plane on our computers.

 

For my Skylake rig I opted for Windows 10. No W7 for me. Granted I don't sim so much these days, but by 2018 none of us with the latest builds will have a choice. Microsoft won't support W7 on Skylake after 2018.