Opinions on New High End PC for X-Plane, FS2020?

[G-RFRY 1,708]

You may still be worth waiting as the new 10th gen will hit the shelves around the end of the month, and talk is a more competitive price so if you still go for the i9 9900K they may well be discounted. 

[Alpha Floor 237]

23 hours ago, TechguyMaxC said:

Re: monitors

IPS panels are preferred by some, but in my experience they have significant drawbacks.  The backlight bleed is too great, to the point that "black levels" are almost non-existant and instead you get grey levels.  I've got a 34" ultrawide gaming monitor with GSync, 100Hz refresh rate, 3440x1440 resolution, and an IPS panel.  I wish I never bought the thing.  Everything about it is great, except the panel type.  If it were a VA panel I would be happy but it is hard to drive VA panels at the same rates as TN or IPS panels, so it is what it is.

I'm not suggesting you get a TN panel, the image quality on those is notoriously poor compared to all other display technologies, just be careful with IPS.  If you plan to use your monitor in a bright room then you may not notice the backlight bleed inherent to IPS panels, or you may even get lucky and end up with a display that has a lower amount of backlight bleed than the average for IPS panels.  But if you want to use your display in a dark room (as I do) then you may find the backlight bleed to be intolerable in dark scenes.  In the case of simming, this means night flying.  

 Back to monitors,

Interesting you mention night flying as I very much like it. I tend to track real time, so if I am simming at night then I am also flying at night. And I really love the night lighting on X-Plane, very realistic.

What monitor do you have then? What's a good all-rounder for flight simulation? (and something I can use to watch a film as well would be appreciated...)

Edited May 7, 2020 by Alpha Floor

[TechguyMaxC 516]

18 minutes ago, Alpha Floor said:

 Back to monitors,

Interesting you mention night flying as I very much like it. I tend to track real time, so if I am simming at night then I am also flying at night. And I really love the night lighting on X-Plane, very realistic.

What monitor do you have then? What's a good all-rounder for flight simulation? (and something I can use to watch a film as well would be appreciated...)

For flight sim, I use a 4k TV with a VA LCD panel and Full Array Local Dimming technology to control backlight bleed.  PC monitors, and in particular gaming monitors, are great for games with fast motion.  Flight sim doesn't have fast motion in normal use, not even combat sims can approach typical pixel change rates of games like first person shooters, so I find 4k TVs with their large display sizes and affordable prices to be the best fit for my needs.  Here is the specific model I chose:

https://www.hisense-usa.com/televisions/all-tvs/50H8F_4k-uled-hisense-android-smart-tv-2019

If money is no object then go with OLED.  Nothing beats the contrast ratio and black levels of an OLED display.  LG's upcoming 48 inch CX OLED display looks like it will be the best gaming monitor on the planet when it's available, though at $1500 it's hard for me to justify for flight sim.  

[ricka47 611]

On 5/5/2020 at 12:02 PM, Alpha Floor said:

Geez, I am now doubting whether I should go for the AMD 3900x rather than the i9 10900x, as the Intel seems to be getting so much bad press as a "disappointing" chip compared to both the 9900k and the 3900x... And I would put in a 2080S with the money saved.

I guess if I go AMD I would be betting that flight simulator will make better use of multi-core CPUs in the coming few months/years. If I go Intel I am expecting single-core performacing to remain king. Tough calls...

Although you have made your choice, I'm still debating these two as well and am now leaning a bit more toward AMD due to PCIEe 4.0, more cores, 7nm, prices. etc.  It's seems that Intel is still playing catch-up. But, I'm going to wait until MSFS is actually released and the new 3000 series video cards are out before plunking down $4k.

Edited May 24, 2020 by ricka47

[vortex681 806]

1 hour ago, ricka47 said:

am now leaning a bit more toward AMD due to PCIEe 4.0, more cores, 7nm, prices. etc.

Graphics cards don’t really stretch the current PCIe 3 interface and the extra speed from a PCIe 4 SSD would probably be unnoticeable over the current fastest PCIe 3 drives in normal use (but will almost certainly cost a lot more). There’s an interesting article here: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3400176/pcie-40-everything-you-need-to-know-specs-compatibility.html

Also, the extra cores that the top AMD CPUs offer over Intel would only really make sense if you were regularly using your PC for something productivity-related rather than just gaming. Flight sims tend to benefit more from clock speed than more cores and I’d be surprised if this changes too much, even with the upcoming new sim.

Edited May 24, 2020 by vortex681

[Alpha Floor 237]

Gentlemen,

I received my new PC last Friday and spent the weekend setting it up, configuring and test flying. I must say that my initial reaction is extremely positive.

I managed to get a seemingly stable OC at 4.9 GHz. 5.0 GHz seems to resist itself. The maximum Vcore I can apply is 1.29 which yields a Prime95 Small FFTs temperature after 15 min of 94ºC. I know this is very high but I am of the opinion that as long as this doesn't go above 95 it's ok as there is no real world load scenario where it would ever come anywhere near that number. Running X-Plane temps are always below 80ºC.

As for the GPU, RTX 2080 Super, I managed to get +160 Mhz with stability on the Time Spy, Fire Strike and Heaven benchmarks.

 

I noticed Active Sky Next clouds kill the GPU, with FPS dropping down to as low as 20 FPS. This is when the aircraft is surround by overcast clouds. My settings are all one notch below the top right, reflections off, no shadows.

 

[Alpha Floor 237]

On 5/24/2020 at 1:20 PM, ricka47 said:

Although you have made your choice, I'm still debating these two as well and am now leaning a bit more toward AMD due to PCIEe 4.0, more cores, 7nm, prices. etc.  It's seems that Intel is still playing catch-up. But, I'm going to wait until MSFS is actually released and the new 3000 series video cards are out before plunking down $4k.

If you do go for Intel, ignore the 10900x. Go for the 10900K if you can, it's the replacement to the 9900k.

I would have gone for AMD instead of Intel if productivity tasks were more important to me.

[coreservers 0]

I Just put this rig together... should be ok i think. Built for just over £1200 i see similar retail for near £2000

Should cope with fs2020. its a massive upgrade on the existing machine.

INTEL Coffee Lake Core i9 9900K 3.6Ghz - 5Ghz Turbo 8 Core

64Gb 2666mhz ram

Nivdia 2080 Super 8gb

480Gb SSD plus 2 TB SATA.

4 internal fans.

Win 10 pro.

 

 

[F737MAX 5,542]

1 hour ago, coreservers said:

I Just put this rig together... should be ok i think. Built for just over £1200 i see similar retail for near £2000

Should cope with fs2020. its a massive upgrade on the existing machine.

Hello, welcome to Avsim.

I don't know your level of PC building knowledge, so apologies if this is stuff you already know.

I'm a little concerned by the speed of your RAM as it's a bit on the low side. If your RAM can support it, you should look into overclocking and tightening the timings in your bios.
As a comparison, 3200 MHz is now considered average.
Here's why RAM speed matters (a little):
https://www.techspot.com/article/1171-ddr4-4000-mhz-performance/page3.html
https://www.techspot.com/article/1171-ddr4-4000-mhz-performance/page4.html

If you can't get a decent boost in performance, I would look into selling all of your current RAM and (ideally) getting a B-die RAM kit of 3600 MHz with the lowest CAS Latency value possible (CL16 is average, CL15 good, CL14 excellent at that speed).
Even if your budget limits you to 'only' 32 GB, IMO that is more than plenty of RAM for the next couple of years at least.

Check that the kit appears in the 'Memory Support List' of your specific mobo. RAM doesn't necessarily need to appear in the list to be compatible, but if not, it will be a lottery whether the sticks will allow a PC to run at full chat without a B.S.D. or in a worst case scenario, to let a PC even POST.
(I may have learnt this point the hard way when I thought I'd completed my first build a few years ago!) 🤦‍♂️

This subreddit has some good suggestions and will give you more opinions to read:
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/9mlwbn/ram_recommendations_for_i9_9900k/

Let us know how you get on!