3 hours ago, KenG said:

I was looking at an Alienware. However, they have a very inexpensive 120mm AIO water cooler which is barely marginal for a big 10900 without overclocking, much less when you do overclock it. 

If you have to have a prebuilt system I would recommend ibuypower.com where you can combine parts to your content building a PC that is suited to your individual tastes. There are also more boutique sites like CLX and Maingear that over overclocked from the builder systems with 3 year warranties. 

 

I have a i7 4770K with a GTX 1070 and can run the beta just fine at higher graphic settings. In fact my CPU is slacking and there is plenty of room. High speed SSDs, GPU, lots of RAM, and a fast broadband internet are much more needed. I am waiting for Vermeer, the RTX 3000, and Big Navi to be bench tested before I commit to a new computer. 

My 4790K and GTX1070 are holding their own at high settings.  But VRAM is often close to max and, with a few add ons, it will be time to upgrade this fall/winter when the new generation of CPU's/GPU's are available from both AMD and Intel.

4 hours ago, Farlis said:

I just moved away from Intel after being a customer since the 90's, I'm fed up with their system of making motherboards deliberately incompatible just after one generation.

(?)

I've got two identical Z390 boards, one with an 8th-gen i7-8086K in it, the other with a 9th gen 9900K in it. 

My Z270 motherboard supports 6th and 7th-Gen CPUs (6700K/7700K). 

My Z68 motherboard supports 2nd and 3rd Gen CPUs.  (2600K/3770K).

At some breakpoints the chipset needs to be updated as much as the processor...

 

4 hours ago, w6kd said:

(?)

I've got two identical Z390 boards, one with an 8th-gen i7-8086K in it, the other with a 9th gen 9900K in it. 

My Z270 motherboard supports 6th and 7th-Gen CPUs (6700K/7700K). 

My Z68 motherboard supports 2nd and 3rd Gen CPUs.  (2600K/3770K).

At some breakpoints the chipset needs to be updated as much as the processor...

 

With AMD boards you can advance 4 generations of CPU's without having to buy a new mainboard.

I understand it is wise to wait a bit now and see how my system handles the sim. With that said, do we have any theorycrafting on what CPU on the market would theoretically be the best?

On 8/9/2020 at 9:38 AM, ChaoticBeauty said:

I would strongly recommend not going with Comet Lake.

 

On 8/9/2020 at 8:40 AM, Wanderkroete said:

If I were buying an Intel I think I'd take an i7-10700k over the i9-10900k

This is quite confusing.I am right in the middle of building a cart for a system build. I am not finding a Coffee Lake  i7 10700K. Only Comet lake. i7-10700K 3.8 ghz.  Fastest Coffee Lake I am finding is i7-9700K 3.6 Ghz.  What is the real answer here? How much real difference between the two choices.   I need to build now as I just lost my system late this week.

3 minutes ago, fppilot said:

This is quite confusing.I am right in the middle of building a cart for a system build. I am not finding a Coffee Lake  i7 10700K. Only Comet lake. i7-10700K 3.8 ghz.  Fastest Coffee Lake I am finding is i7-9700K 3.6 Ghz.  What is the real answer here? How much real difference between the two choices.   I need to build now as I just lost my system late this week.

Intel's 10th generation of CPUs is Comet Lake, while the 9th generation is Coffee Lake. The i7-10700K does not have two variants.

The newer CPU has slightly better performance but it's a rather small difference, so it comes down to price and availability. Make sure to pick the correct motherboard, as they are on different sockets. Personally I wouldn't go with either CPU due to Skylake's security vulnerabilities, high power consumption and a platform limited to PCIe 3.0, but if you need the best single-threaded performance and you need it now, go with the best Comet Lake CPU you can afford.

1 hour ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

Personally I wouldn't go with either CPU due to Skylake's security vulnerabilities, high power consumption and a platform limited to PCIe 3.0, but if you need the best single-threaded performance and you need it now, go with the best Comet Lake CPU you can afford.

OK. So I am on the near bank of the river still and have not taken the dive.  My only gaming is flight simulation, and of course aiming at MSFS.  So what is it that you recommend?  I'll take a look.

37 minutes ago, fppilot said:

OK. So I am on the near bank of the river still and have not taken the dive.  My only gaming is flight simulation, and of course aiming at MSFS.  So what is it that you recommend?  I'll take a look.

From what all the alpha/beta testers are saying, it's not overly CPU dependant.  Personally, I'd be looking  at an MSI B450 Tomahawk, Ryzen 3600 or 3700x, 32gb of 3600mhz DDR4 Ram, and as much graphics card as you can throw at it.

53 minutes ago, fppilot said:

OK. So I am on the near bank of the river still and have not taken the dive.  My only gaming is flight simulation, and of course aiming at MSFS.  So what is it that you recommend?  I'll take a look.

It depends on the simulator in this case. If you're going to be playing one of the older ones, single-threaded performance is paramount, so you should go with the best Comet Lake CPU you can afford. If it's Microsoft Flight Simulator, I think Zen 2 would be a better choice when taking overall performance, power consumption, platform features and value into consideration. If you can, I would recommend waiting for a few more days for more detailed benchmarks to show up, the simulator is only a day away now.

13 minutes ago, Charlatan said:

From what all the alpha/beta testers are saying, it's not overly CPU dependant.  Personally, I'd be looking  at an MSI B450 Tomahawk, Ryzen 3600 or 3700x, 32gb of 3600mhz DDR4 Ram, and as much graphics card as you can throw at it.

Good recommendations, though the MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX is not a great choice anymore due its higher price. Spending a little more for the MSI B550 A-Pro would be worth it, which comes with slightly better VRMs and also PCIe 4.0 support and an extra M.2 slot, and the ASRock B550M Pro4 is looking to be a great contender in its price point.

1 hour ago, Charlatan said:

From what all the alpha/beta testers are saying, it's not overly CPU dependant.  Personally, I'd be looking  at an MSI B450 Tomahawk, Ryzen 3600 or 3700x, 32gb of 3600mhz DDR4 Ram, and as much graphics card as you can throw at it.

Humm. Does an AMD system or the Tomahawk MB require a Radeon video card?  The site I am using filters based on compatibility and that is is all it will show me.  If I turn the filter off I see both nVidia and Radeon.  I have an nVidia GPU I will get started with. 

An AMD cpu/mobo works totally fine with Nvidia GPUs.

2 hours ago, Tektolnes said:

An AMD cpu/mobo works totally fine with Nvidia GPUs.

I'll speak to them tomorrow and ask why the filters are acting that way. Strange

10 hours ago, fppilot said:

Humm. Does an AMD system or the Tomahawk MB require a Radeon video card?  The site I am using filters based on compatibility and that is is all it will show me.  If I turn the filter off I see both nVidia and Radeon.  I have an nVidia GPU I will get started with. 

As tektolnes says, Nvidia card are fine with AMD.  My second system is a 3600 with a GTX1070