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Stroman81

New desktop needed

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Hi,

As my old custom built laptop has display problems, and I was intending to replace it by a desktop anyway, now is the time.

I'm on a tight budget (+- 1500€) and found this one:

HP PAVILION 560-P123NB AZERTY 1399€

Intel® Core i7-7700 Processor (3,6 GHz - 4,2 GHz)

12GB DDR4 RAM (2133Mhz)

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (3GB)

256 GB (SSD) + 1.000 GB (SATA (HDD), 7.200 rpm)

What do you guys think. I'm currently using P3Dv4 which is, I must admit, struggling on my old laptop running minimum settings (eg. no cloud shadows and no MSAA)

Another option is a custom built desktop, but when choosing the above mentioned components, but a bit faster RAM and a 7700k I end op paying 1650€ without having a keyboard or a monitor...

Thanks for your input,

Nico

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I would invest in a better card. At least a 970GTX or a 1070. The 1060 will work but you will see it suffer in demanding situations. You're ram is also good. 

 

Have you considered perhaps building one? I built my last and it works flawlessly. 


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Seems a bit overpriced for what you are getting, and there are a few things I'd be concerned about too.

First up, that thing's got a weak PSU at only 300 watts. Yes modern GPUs, CPUs and RAM run fast with less power, so you don't need the 850 watts you used to need with older components, but I'd be concerned about only having 300 watts available (that GPU the thing has will probably draw 150 watts on its own for a kick off). If you put anything else in there such as a fancy soundcard or whatever (and don't forget joystick and rudder pedals etc draw power too), then it could run into issues with not having enough power to run things without stability issues.

Which brings up another issue, it's a Micro ATX motherboard, and that makes upgrading things a squeeze should you ever want to do so. More critically, that's a motherboard with only two RAM slots, and that's not good for upgrading possibilities either since they're both already populated as it comes, leaving you with either nowhere to go, or faced with a new motherboard or some new RAM sticks whilst you ditch the ones you already have in there (neither option being cheap and one of them being a real PITA).

The GPU is a bit on the weedy side as well these days, with only 3Gb of DDR5 RAM, there are plenty of cards which offer a similar architecture to that one from NVidia and ASUS which have far more memory on board and which don't break the 250 quid price barrier either, so it's difficult to know where HP get off in sticking that thing in there and charging nearly a grand and a half for the computer.

Then you've got a CPU which ain't the fastest either, and it's just about to become surpassed by 8th gen ones too, which in itself is not that big a deal, since things always get surpassed in the computer hardware world and if we bothered about that we'd never make a decision to buy anything, but..

Essentially what all of that means is that you would be paying rather a lot of money for a computer which, whilst not terrible, is definitely overpriced considering what is inside it, which is in all honesty, not the best set of hardware one could find for that kind of money. There is nothing wrong with the hardware itself, it would probably run most PC games pretty well, but as you know, you need a sledgehammer to crack a walnut where ESP-based flight sims are concerned and I think you'd be disappointed with how that thing ran P3D V4 considering what it costs. It would run it, and fairly well I reckon, but it would not be blistering along with you able to whack every slider over to the right and expect 100 fps whilst whizzing around in a PMDG airliner over a fancy add-on airport with add-on clouds etc, it just ain't gonna do that.

Add up the cost of all the main components for that thing if you sourced them yourself. You will find the motherboard will be about 100 quid, the GPU will be about 200 quid, the CPU will be about 200 quid, the case will be about 30 quid, RAM will be around 200 quid and a PSU would be about 50 quid, throw another 200 quid in for an HD of some kind. Prices vary of course, so let's be conservative and say it all costs an additional 100 quid to put to together, so, under 1,100 quid in total for the components even when throwing in another ton on our price list just to be on the safe side (realistically with a bit of shopping around, I'd say it'd more like a grand to get that lot together).

Build one yourself, it'll be cheaper and better. A keyboard and a monitor won't cost that much and in any case you could take the signal out to a TV if you wanted to.


Alan Bradbury

Check out my youtube flight sim videos: Here

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Great feedback guys, thank you!

I just ordered a custom built system. It's not top of the line, but at least I will be able to upgrade it later...

€ 1.286,97

1 x Intel® Core i5-7600K, 3,8 GHz (4,2 GHz Turbo Boost) socket 1151 processor

1 x ASUS PRIME H270M-PLUS, motherboard

1 x GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Windforce OC 4G, 

1 x Noctua NH-D14, CPU-cooling

1 x Corsair 8 GB DDR4-2400, 

1 x Corsair CS650M, 650 Watt 

1 x Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64bit, Software

1 x LG GH24NSD1, DVD 

1 x Sharkoon BW9000-W, Tower

1 x Kingston SSDNow UV400, 240 GB SSD

1 x Seagate FireCuda, 2 TB Hybride 

1 x ASUS Xonar DGX

I'm fairly confident I will be able to use P3Dv4 according to my standards.

Kind regards,

Nico

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Yup, that's a bit more like it for the money.

In fact, it's not a million miles away from some of the components I have in my computer (i.e. similar motherboard, similar CPU, similar PSU, similar RAM), and that one runs P3D V4 out of the box at 130 frames per second.

Of course sticking a bunch of fancy add-ons into P3D and taking those sliders all the way over to the right takes it down to about 45 frames per second, but I'm happy enough with that kind of frame rate when using stuff like add-on 737s at payware airports with the AI traffic up on high settings, Active Sky cloud Art etc and all the fancy graphics sliders turned up.


Alan Bradbury

Check out my youtube flight sim videos: Here

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I've just built a new flight PC over the weekend for the new 64bit flight sim, still tweaking spec`s now in my sig.

Ray Fry.


 

Raymond Fry.

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