Life Expectancy of a Sim PC

[Bob Scott 7,720]

I probably rebuild things every 3 years on average.  My last four flight sim computers, going back to a dual-core Conroe X6800 rig I built in 2006, are still running (but dedicated to other things now, like ham radio, older games or running older 32-bit hardware that won't work on an x64 box now).

Regards

 

[Paraffin 2,197]

It varies, but it's usually something like a full computer upgrade every 3 years, with a GPU upgrade somewhere in the middle of that. It depends on circumstances and finances. I've gone 4 years between full computer replacement, and much shorter with a major motherboard failure. But that's the general plan. I stay a little behind the bleeding edge because I have other hobbies to support.

I used to build my own computer but gave that up years ago. Now I just buy a mid-range "gaming" computer from whatever this year's reputable builder is (the current rig is a Lenovo).

My wife is supportive because she uses a laptop on a longer, but still expensive, upgrade cycle. She upgrades her smartphone more often than me. It works out about the same.

Also, not to proselytize or anything , but with X-Plane I've only spent something like $300 in payware planes and maybe $150 for utilities in recent years, I spend almost nothing on payware scenery because it's either free or self-generated. This lets me put more money into hardware upgrades over time. 

[coa1117 53]

I think "life expectancy" has two meanings. It's about (1) a PC's physical durability and (2) the equipment's capacity to effectively run more recent and demanding software. In many instances "effectively" is a subjective evaluation based on the expectations and satisfaction level of the user. My sense is that the retirement of flight simulation computers or their components has most to do with the fact that increasing expectations of performance causes many users to "outgrow" their machines long before the hardware actually breaks or is unable to perform to software specs. I have no hard statistics to back this perception, only what I've cumulatively read from simmers over a number of years.

For example, after a lot of research on components and peripherals I built my WIN7-64/i7-2600k/GTX580/8GB rig from scratch in August 2011 and immediately overclocked the cpu to 4.7GHz. It was my first and only PC (I'm a Mac guy) and was built exclusively for simming. Except for recently swapping-in a couple of 4TB drives for more storage and backup, it's all still 2011 tech and it works just fine. I fly only PMDG aircraft along with ASN, Rex TD-Soft Clouds, GSX, many mega-airports and several terrain/scenery enhancing utilities. With sensible settings and zero AI traffic (I fly IVAO/VATSIM, so no need) FSX Acceleration routinely performs at 25-30fps even at complex airports.

I had a couple of VAS crashes on transatlantic flights soon after the 777 release but, with a bit of tweaking on my part and updates from PMDG, not a single one since. On average my 2-4 hour flights end with ~1GB of available VAS. The OS and all apps run on a 512GB Crucial SSD, CPU temps hover between 54-59c with Antec water cooling while running FSX, and the box boots in 40 seconds. I list all of these specifics about my rig and performance only to make the point that, on both an objective and subjective level, its "life expectancy" is far from over.

I'm nowhere near ready to hop onto P3D. If I suffer a major hardware incident or a complete FUBAR of my FSX installation I may consider updating the hardware and moving to the emerging 64-bit sim technology. But I've got mega money invested in add-on aircraft and scenery as well as countless hours creating/tweaking my "flight swimming world." Just the thought of doing it all over again on another platform makes me sweat profusely. However, most importantly, my expectations have not yet outrun the hardware's ability to perform. 

So, what's the life expectancy of a flight sim rig? I suppose it all comes down to need vs. want and there are too many objective and subjective factors for a definitive answer. What I ask myself is, will it keep functioning for another several years? Will it eventually be out-paced by my evolving expectations? Who knows. But for now, six years in, my satisfaction remains at cruise level and this "middle-aged" rig keeps humming along at mach-8. :)

[Guest]

20 hours ago, coa1117 said:

My sense is that the retirement of flight simulation computers or their components has most to do with the fact that increasing expectations of performance causes many users to "outgrow" their machines long before the hardware actually breaks or is unable to perform to software specs.

I would agree this is probably the majority case, hardware failures do happen and will vary based on the environment the PC is in (i.e. heavy smokers or particulate matter, highly charged environments, humidity, excessive heat, close proximity to radiation and/or heavy equipment, etc. etc. can all trigger early failures for hardware).  I've had very few failures of hardware "at home" ... in fact I can't think of any failure I've had over the last 10 years.

VAS, OMG Jev, get with the program ... no one uses 32bit simulators any more ;)  ... software is always much slower at catching up with hardware and leveraging everything there is to leverage on the hardware front ... be it x64 instruction set to multi-core optimizations to latest graphics APIs (DX12 or Vulcan/Metal).  It's somewhat ironic that the push to provide HAL (hardware abstraction layer) to give a level of agnostics is actually NOT what end users want for performance ... DX12 is giving back some of that "direct access" allowing for software to fully utilize the hardware ... HOWEVER, that comes at the cost of increased development time/work and complexity, increase complexity and you reduce stability requiring R&D and longer debugging/testing cycles ... with that comes increased product costs.

Cheers, Rob.

[Jude Bradley 659]

23 hours ago, w6kd said:

I probably rebuild things every 3 years on average.

 

Nice rig you've got there, Bob.

 

[coa1117 53]

1 hour ago, Rob Ainscough said:

VAS, OMG Jev, get with the program ... no one uses 32bit simulators any more ;)

Haha, Rob. Yeah, I'm almost always a slow adopter. Riding the bleeding edge doesn't interest me at all. :) 

The only thing I've done relative to P3D was to visit the LM site to check out licencing. While reading I started thinking about  those scenes in horror flicks where someone starts descending the stairs into an unlit basement, and I immediately clicked that browser tab closed. No thank you .. I'm just peachy where I am .. for now.  :)

[soerennielsen 35]

On 02/08/2017 at 11:28 PM, Cactus521 said:

I've had my machine for eight years.  The cpu fan died so I cool the cpu with a desk fan.  I have so many add-ons that I have installed that I can't think of migrating them to another PC.  I'm happy with what I have and won't upgrade until I have to.

John

John, you are not the only on one in that situation, and today my system is absolutely low end, but with Steve's DX10fixer, my very old and outdated PC have got new life.

Well, I have added another DD, new RAM and another absolutely not latest GPU, but I think that what I have is running FSX not bad at all. Not a lot of FPS but it is running without stutters. And for the moment I have to be happy with what I have.

 

 

[mtrainer 136]

 As someone who has built their own custom rigs since 1995, I can say you can only upgrade a system to a point until you encounter that "weakest chain in the link".   I have bumped up in my latest system the RAM (6 GB to 24 GB), Video Card (Some POS to NVIDIA 1050), and added a SSA drive but I feel I've bought one year at best.  Next spring, an all new system which I describe to my fellow programmers (BEST -1)....meaning top shelf parts minus one downgrade.

Mark Trainer

 

[mikea76 184]

On 8/2/2017 at 5:28 PM, Cactus521 said:

I've had my machine for eight years.  The cpu fan died so I cool the cpu with a desk fan.  I have so many add-ons that I have installed that I can't think of migrating them to another PC.  I'm happy with what I have and won't upgrade until I have to.

John

Lol, CPU fans are pretty cheap

[TheFamilyMan 280]

On 8/2/2017 at 1:51 PM, mabe54 said:

Now is when this PC die it will get replaced. The years of a better and faster PC motivation is long gone now.

Cheers,

Same thoughts here. Dropping $1.5k or more for a 15% or so FS performance increase over my 4 years old current system isn't reasonable IMO.  It will take either a 6Ghz clock, a compelling FS that really can push 8 or more cores to their utmost advantage, or a dead computer before I'll be looking at an upgrade.  Before this build, it was about every 3-4 years (the good ol' days).