I am currently in process of ordering my new PC primarily for flight simming. What do you guys thing about the following configuration? Instead of buying a prebuild PC which I did last time, I'm going custom build for flight simming. My goal is to run multiple flight sim platforms - P3D, MSFS (both 2020 and 2024) as well as DCS world. 

Processor (CPU) Intel® Core™ i9 24-Core Processor i9-14900K (Up to 6.0GHz) 36MBCache

Motherboard ASUS® TUF GAMING Z790-PLUS WIFI (LGA1700, DDR5, M.2 PCIe 4.0,Wi-Fi 6E)

Memory (RAM) 64GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 6000MHz CL30 (2 x 32GB)

Graphics Card 16GB ZOTAC GEFORCE RTX 5070 Ti SOLID SFF - HDMI, 3 x DP

1st M.2 SSD Drive 4TB SAMSUNG 990 PRO M.2, PCIe 4.0 NVMe (up to 7450MB/R,6900MB/W)

2nd M.2 SSD Drive 2TB SAMSUNG 990 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe 4.0 & 5.0 NVMe (up to 7250MB/R,6300MB/W)

1st Storage Drive 2TB Samsung 870 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR |530MB/sW)

2nd Storage Drive 4TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR |530MB/sW)

DVD/BLU-RAY Drive NOT REQUIRED

Power Supply CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ ATX 3.1, MODULAR, CYBENETICS GOLD

Power Cable 1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)

Processor Cooling NZXT Kraken Elite 240 RGB (2024)

Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING

Sound Card ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Network Card ONBOARD LAN PORT

Wireless Network Card NONE OR ONBOARD Wi-Fi (MOTHERBOARD DEPENDENT)

USB/Thunderbolt Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT

PORTS

Operating System Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence

Operating System Language United Kingdom - English Language

The quotation for above comes to around well over £2500 - I want to ensure that investment I make is long term, meaning the PC should be able last good many years. 

Do you have a budget?

Your SSD config looks strange.  Are the two SATA drives legacy devices from a previous build?

The 240mm AIO cooling unit is a bit anemic for a 14900K...I'd say 280mm minimum and 360mm better.  The Intel CPUs are heat monsters.

I've also found that fast RAM helps smooth things out on the Intel CPUs, particularly with P3D.  6000MHz CAS 30 is middle-of-the-road average memory.

A broader recommendation would be to consider the less expensive AMD 9800X3D CPU and a compatible mobo...much less heat and lower cooling needs, and high memory bandwidth using average 6000 MHz RAM due to it's massive 3D memory cache.

 

I highly recommend using Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Extreme Thermal Paste.

Also recommend using Win 11 Pro.

Lian-Li 217 Case.  

Lian-Li Galahad II LCD CPU Liquid Cooler.

I run a 5070 card and 12700K CPU and this keeps my CPU temp below 80C on Cinebench23.

Add my vote for AMD 9800X3D.  Also not sure why you want or have those other SATA SSDs?

For CPU cooling I’d suggest at 360 AIO or 420 AIO if you don’t want to go custom cooling route.

Get external audio interface, internal onboard audio could be noisy if the motherboard isn’t designed well.

I didn’t see what case you plan to use?  Important for cooling efficiency.

6000 Mhz CAS 30 DDR5 RAM is "average middle of the road"?? 

Edited August 25, 2025Aug 25 by Christopher Low

5 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

6000 Mhz CAS 30 DDR5 RAM is "average middle of the road"??

Yes, pretty standard stuff … more exotic RAM is 8400MT/s … even more exotic is 10000MT/s

On 8/24/2025 at 12:59 AM, SayAgain said:

Do you have a budget

Ideally less then £3000 - the above build currently comes to around £2700 not to mention the 20% VAT on top. 

Edited August 26, 2025Aug 26 by CAP1234

On 8/24/2025 at 6:04 AM, Bob Scott said:

Your SSD config looks strange.  Are the two SATA drives legacy devices from a previous build

Not really - I added them because for me I noticed space becomes a factor so decided the more space I have the better. Do you reckon I remove them?

On 8/24/2025 at 7:31 PM, BlueStar said:

I highly recommend using Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Extreme Thermal Paste

Thanks - I shall amend that. 

 

On 8/24/2025 at 6:04 AM, Bob Scott said:

6000MHz CAS 30 is middle-of-the-road average memory

I'll see what is available. I don't think there is anything higher then 7000MHz but I'll have a look. 

Edited August 26, 2025Aug 26 by CAP1234

On 8/24/2025 at 8:39 PM, SayAgain said:

Add my vote for AMD 9800X3D

I personally have used intel CPUs only and never considered AMD processors. I have heard good things about them so I might consider it. My build above is not yet finalised and I'm tweaking it as I speak. Just getting more feedback on what people think. 

 

On 8/24/2025 at 8:39 PM, SayAgain said:

Also not sure why you want or have those other SATA SSDs

Storage is my biggest concern - On my current old system, I have 2 SSDs of 1TB each and apparently not enough. As I also few games from Steam which needs to be installed and some of them are in excess of 100GB. I have added 2 M.2 drive above but I'm not to sure how many the motherboard can support. 

2 hours ago, CAP1234 said:

Not really - I added them because for me I noticed space becomes a factor so decided the more space I have the better. Do you reckon I remove them?

Space requirements depends a lot on your usage. On my PC, MSFS2020 is using up 3TB already. Since flightsims benefit from fast drives that 4TB drive M.2 is a sensible choice.
You could even go for an 8TB drive instead of 2 M.2 drives. Six months ago that would be ridicilously expensive but I noticed that the price is scaled nicely.That would leave the other M.2 slot available for future expansion.

These 2 SATA drives, if you have these drives already lying around it is not a problem but SATA is relatively slow so better suited for data or games that you don't use often.

6 hours ago, CAP1234 said:

Do you reckon I remove them?

Yes, just get larger capacity M.2 nVME.

5 hours ago, CAP1234 said:

I personally have used intel CPUs only and never considered AMD processors

Not sure why you haven't considered AMD CPUs?  But they do perform better than Intel CPUs.  With that said, Intel are hurting financially and I don't want them to go bankrupt so by all means go with Intel.  It's not the logical choice, but Intel get my sympathy support.

6 hours ago, CAP1234 said:

I have added 2 M.2 drive above but I'm not to sure how many the motherboard can support.

Most motherboards support at least two M.2 2280 drives, some 7 or more.  The manual for the ASUS board you selected says support for FOUR M.2 2280 drives.  So definitely dump those SATA drives.

If you do decide to stick with 14th gen Intel (which is a better choice for Intel for simming over the newer 285K CPU even though it's an olddd model now) make absolutely sure you update the motherboard BIOS to the latest.  Intel had a big issue with 13/14th gen pulling too much voltage and slowly degrading the CPU's due to a bug in the microcode they supply to motherboard vendors.  I'm not talking something that can be fixed with a BIOS update once it's already happened, but actually permanently damaging the CPU's leading to either permanent instability requiring lowering the clock speeds or straight up killing them.  It was eventually fixed via new BIOS updates, to prevent future issues, but anyone running one before that potentially has had degredation etc.

Edited August 26, 2025Aug 26 by flyinion

On 8/26/2025 at 6:13 AM, CAP1234 said:

Thanks - I shall amend that. 

 

I'll see what is available. I don't think there is anything higher then 7000MHz but I'll have a look. 

In video games Ram is not about speed, but about capacity.