Hi first post, so hope done correctly and in correct forum!

Recently had to replace both motherboard and Chip – partly down to 1 PC tech miss-diagnosing issue 1st time round. Using FX Gold, but am now thinking to either use steam edition, or another sim such as X plane. Any suggestions?

Current PC setup:
•    Brand new: AMD FX-8358 Black Edition, 8 core, 4ghz.
•    Brand new: ASUS motherboard M5A787-M plus.
•    8 Gb Ram: 2 x 4GB SP DDR3 1600(CL11) 14028665-11 (16N). If possible would like to keep and add another 8 in the two free slots if possible?
•    Gdegen 600w switching PSU.
•    8gb ATI Radeon 3000 GPU

Need your advice on two things:

1. Video card died, now need to buy a video card as running of the GPU at present. Any suggestions that would not break the bank, but give a reasonable experience. 

2. Would like to upgrade the RAM. Currently in two slots (blue) there are   2 x 4GB SP DDR3 1600(CL11) 14028665-11 (16N). If possible would like to keep and add another 8 in the two free slots if possible?

Thanks in advance for advice.

James
 

Yes, go to 16 Gigs of RAM - it's cheap  enough and you won't regret it...

Check in the forums list. We have a number of hardware forums that contain pages of advice.

Also, welcome to Avsim. 

Thanks for the welcome and guidance.

The lowest spec card I would use for acceptable performance in X-Plane 11 would be a GTX1070 - it just about copes if you are thinking of VR.

If you are considering VR in the future, then an RTX 2070 or RTX 2080

 

@zazahector

Welcome!!!!!

GPU

If you do not want to spend a lot of money on a new graphics card, the best option today to play all games and fly in fsx se is the GTX1660 6GB, it is mid-range, full hd - 60 fps, more than enough to fsx se and its energy consumption is moderate.

If you only play fsx se and you do not plan to use any other game with a GTX1050Ti 4GB it will be enough. FSX uses a lot of cpu and little gpu.

Now, forgetting the gpu, I think your pc will work better in fsx se than in xplane 11, in my opinion I think you will not be able to enjoy xp11, your pc is a little bit low, especially due to ddr3 ram memory. On the other hand, XP11 uses a lot the gpu, so it needs a powerful gpu, at least GTX1660TI or GTX1070.

 

PSU

 

On the other hand, you have an unknown or little known brand power supply, that is, I think it is generic, if you are going to spend some money on buying new components, I highly recommend that you change your power supply because in case failure your computer may die and you will lose the investment.

At least you will need a 650W psu with 80+ bronze certificate for the psu to work comfortably, in addition that AMD processor consumes too much energy.

There are good brands such as corsair, evga, etc, try the calculation utility of evga psu or the pcpartpicker web, they will help you choose:

 

https://www.evga.com/power-meter/

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/

 

RAM

 

In the case of ram memories, to avoid having problems, all memory modules must be exactly the same, seeing the reference, the ram memories you have are of the brand ''Silicon Power'' and are a reference that I think It is no longer commercialized, at least on its website I do not see them.

 

I found is the reference: SP004GBVTU160N02

 

https://www.silicon-power.com/web/es/product-28

And of course, get 16GB of ram, although to only play fsx se you only need 8Gb , your motherboard and cpu support memories of up to 1866mhz, here you have the memory compatibility with your motherboard: https://www.asus.com/es/Motherboards/M5A78L-M-PLUS-USB3/HelpDesk_QVL/

 

I'm not sure if the RAM that you already use is compatible with your motherboard.

Regards

 

Brisafresca

 

Edited July 24, 20196 yr by E69_Brisafresca

Since you seem to be asking this same question in multiple forums, I merged the 2 of them and made sure to put this into the hardware forum section.

@zazahector

From the motherboard manual: https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/SocketAM3+/M5A78L-M_PLUS_USB3/E11584_M5A78L-M_PLUS_USB3_UM_WEB_only.pdf

so you can buy other two additional 4GB modules ( SP004GBVTU160N02 ) to reach 16gb

Quote

  Dual-channel memory architecture 4 x DIMM slots support maximum 32GB unbuffered ECC and non-ECC DDR3 2000(O.C.)/1866(O.C.)/1800(O.C.)/1600(O.C.)/1333/1066 MHz memory modules

AMD® FX™ Series CPU on this motherboard supports up to DDR3 1866MHz as its standard memory frequency.

 

Edited July 24, 20196 yr by E69_Brisafresca

Thank you all for the time taken to replay and comprehensive advice which I will now look at in conjunction with the wallet!

I have another desktop PC with an Intel i5 @ 3.4ghz 8GB DDR3 ram and an MSI 960 GPU and it ran FSX:SE and 64bit FSW ok, but I would not try P3D on it.