747VirPilot

Honestly, are you serious? Personally I've not heard of more than a handful of businesses that want to shy from public contact. Let's just take a hack against this site? THAT could never happen. More than one business has been put out of business with data loss. Data is your biggest asset. I just don't know of any business that puts ALL their faith in one mode of communication. You must have vendors that communicate with you or inquiries from those that want your service or product. Or you might have more were it easy and straight forward. Phone calls and as you say 'snail' mail are still very viable means of business contact. You are of the mind that you are the only business that distributes globally and would have to deal with that fact? I think if you are serious about global engagement you make arrangements operationally to do so. The world IS used to odd hours in order to work with global customers. As is oft said, 'tis a free country, do as you please. I put 'Finis' at the end of my last response, Latin for finished which I pray we are.

That would be fine but how does one contact your business? I googled PMDG and could not find a stated address. On my various receipts I saw Alexandria, VA and Sparks, NV., so if one really wants to correspond with your company, how do they do so? 99% of businesses at least give an address in the Contact Us. Don't need to take information as in a contact ticket, just give a business address, an email address and it would be nice but doubt you have the staff to include a phone number. Seems that's just how it is universally done in this day and age. A trivial web program change. Was looking at Level-D (leveldsim.com). The only thing on their web site is a place to click 'About Level-D'. Click it and nothing happens. And so it goes. Finis

Besides my gumming up the works with multiple logons (it happens when you've lived in 2 countries and 2 states over the last 3 years) this might have been avoided if the "Contact Us" on your product site were monitored. All of this would have been unnecessary. Anyway, thanks for the help.

Have responded to your email with the email account for merging all accounts into a single email. So where does that leave me? Think I understand the larger problem now but am perplexed by the design. When I first tried contacting you the product site did not recognize me. So I (re)registered on your commercial site (as opposed to the support site) and suddenly it knew who I was? Interesting. So I tried to logon to the support site following the link on the account menu page. The support site didn't recognize me so I tried to register there on the support site when it reported that my email was already in the system. Sooo I tried to contact you using the link: https://www.precisionmanuals.com/ProductCart/pc/contact.asp I was in a catch-22. I was recognized by the product site but only recognized in passing in the support site. The support site knew my email. At that point it wasn't a matter of not remembering my support site password, I didn't know or remember the support site userid. Clear as mud huh? Having been a former customer service rep for a computer company, I know what it is to deal with idiots like me. What is perplexing is the necessity for two logons ergo two 'sites' to transact business. Many businesses have one place to enter a ticket with a drop-down menu where you specifiy what the problem is and your system sends the ticket to the right place. Or at a minimum, add an option on the support site to get a forgotten userid in addition to a forgotten password. Your support system blocks an attempt to login if the userid is incorrect, it further blocks if you try to register a new userid IF the email address is already known. I know this is long winded but I'm an idiot, I have to accept that and am probably the only one to have this problem. So thanks very much in advance for your help. Please consider my "problem" in your system design. Certainly one site signon, to me, is preferable to two. No doubt you have business considerations at play here. Am wondering if anyone did see my communication on your product site? So I still do need someway to get into the support site. If you could forward my support site userid to my email, I can use the forgotten password facility to actually be able to log into the support site and see my ticket. Again thanks! Idiots always make your day and as one probably made yours. For that I apologize. I do appreciate your swift response once we made contact. I am a huge fan of your products and hopefully over the next week will make some additional purchases.

Name: George Halvorsen [Account info removed] NO ticket # is given when ticket is submitted. It just says, we'll get back to you.

Have opened 4 tickets over some 3 weeks to find out why my order history is missing on my PMDG account. NOT ONE REPLY. A day or two or three, ok, a week? not good, 3 weeks? Unacceptable. Plus I've found no address or phone number for your company. Am not putting my email address here but respond to this post or leave me a PM as to how I can reach you since you are not answering support tickets.

You can send the hate comments as I'm opening this ancient thread. Have found that I can arm the speedbrakes with a Saitek lever through FSUIPC. First I set up the first lever of the yoke quadrant as a reversed axis in FSUIPC so the lever is straight up when stowed. Then I set a null zone...through FSUIPC at the second mark from the stowed position. When I'm ready to deploy, I look at the speedbrake lever and watch it as I pull the lever down towards the armed position. If you watch it and move semi-slowly it will glich/stop at the armed position. When you pull the throttles back to reverse, the speedbrakes deploy as intended. While flying If you pull it more such as you would in flight, it will also click in the in flight extended mode. In the joystick calibration section of FSUIPC.ini I have the following entry: Spoilers=-16383,-2944,-256,16384/24 BTW,I have the Saitek panels and use SPAD and FSUIPC exclusively to setup and run the system. If you don't use SPAD, you might want to look into it. My FSUIPC setting for flaps: 41=P64,0,C65759,0 ; FLAPS RETRACT 42=P64,1,C65758,0 ; FLAPS EXTEND SPAD lets you set up 'phantom' keys to be programed in FSUIPC. Won't go into programming SPAD but well worth a look. Don't forget that many functions on PMDG can be accomplished with the build in FSUIPC macro facility. Good stuff. Also have the add on quadrant so I use the second and third lever from the yoke and the 1st and second from the addon quadrant as the other two throttles. (PMDG 747). Saitek provides a handle to do this and it works great. The last lever is programmed as the tiller. FSUIPC allows you to set a speed where the tiller is no longer effective and the rudder takes over. Just like the real thing. If you can't tell I'm a huge FSUIPC fan. So far everything I've wanted to do, I can do exclusively in FSUIPC and SPAD. Have the FSX setting for EVERYTHING turned off. Happy to share my FSUIPC.ini and SPAD settings. Apologies for anyone that takes offense to my opening this but it is frustrating to have an incomplete or an alternate answer to a question but heaven forbit the thread is reopened and the information added/updated.

Kevin, Thx for the reply. Yes I've found those items to which you refer. My problem is finding documentation on what is the file, i.e. record format/layout for the c4.csv. The only airline I've seen mentioned is United. Saw the entry for Citrus but in this case there are two records? Why? I will continue looking. George

Am also running an i5-2500K at 4.6GHz, 16GB of memory and an 'old' EVGA GTX460 mildly overclocked GPU clock at 845MHz, memory at 2000MHz and shader at 1690MHz. Am amazed what the ol' Sandy Bridge will do. Have the sliders farther to the right than I have a right but have spent a stupid amount of time tuning my PC and FSX. The secret to my success has been to have nvidiaInspector hold the FPS to 30 and set FSX to unlimited for frame rate. Lots of other tweaks including moving to shader ver 3.0 via a new shader set from Bojote (******* Altuve). And of course a couple of SSDs. If the system is headed for a downfall it will likely be going to 4096 resolution for clouds. Now running clouds at 2048 but my fsx.cfg is set up for 4096. Don't have REX just AS2012. Am running JFKv2 from FSDreamTeam and it does fine. Also TrackIR, UT2, SPAD (software that allows Saitek hardware to run through FSUIPC), Radar Contact,an ACARS program and Firefox to monitor my flight on my VA site. Not a stutter to be seen. Max temp is 64C whilst cooling with a Corsair H80 H2O cooler. Now, finally, me thinks a move to a new video card might be of benefit. At least 2GB of memory, better 4GB. Moral of the story is getting a discount on an i5 SB...if you can. The last I looked the i5 Sandy is gone from newegg. I have thus far not seen a need for an i7. FSX is just NOT programmed for HT. So the i5-3570K it is! A GTX670 OC'd w/4GB all the better. Now if you are rolling in $$, the i7-3970X with SIX cores might justify an i7. Were that I had $1,029 to spend. Now you would need a nVidia Titan.......yada, yada. Happy landings.

I have a problem... (no not THAT problem!). Have recently added a number of addons to FSX. Have been a long time user of RC. A new owner of UTII. Since the UTII install, several airlines, most notably United are not being called out by RC, e.g. While taxiing for T/O was following a United plane that was being addressed as Uniform 384 by RC. Also another airline addressed as Sierra but did not note what airline that was given that name. Have looked (google, what else?) for some time tonight to find an answer and have found several close to mine, but the resolution was not fully documented...at least in the topics I found on the issue. Anyone with a similar/same problem? Is the c4.csv file implicated? Any help appreciated. As to software, am fully up to date on all software. RC, UTII, FSUIPC, etc, etc. Am a bit fanatical on that sort of thing...or delude myself into thinking that. George

Big difference between MSFS and say Bioshock or any of the newer titles for that matter. To stay on top of the curve for THAT kind of processing, which, unlike FS is profoundly graphics intensive, then right now you get no better bang for the buck than the GTX 670 with more than 1GB if you can. 2GB is sweet. Now you are talking bucks however and with a 670 you are far beyond the requirement for FS. You need a competent video card for FS, not a spectacular card. Always remember what hardware was available when MSFS was written. Seems like the last ice age. If you do not get hungup on framerates you are better off. My requirement is to run ALL my add-ons, run them without tearing and without stuttering. Think that means smooth. To what end does running the system at 60fps when you bunch frames up and the rates go up and down like a yo-yo. I run nvidiaInspector to clamp FS to 30fps and have frame rate set to unlimited within FS. My frame rate NEVER dips below 29, FS reports 29 through 31. Good by me. Smooth. I have TrackIR and can spin my head around...maybe not as well as in the Exorcist...but around and no tearing, no stuttering. Just smooth. Can run cars at 20%...trying now at 25% jury out but so far so good (who doesn't like LOTS of snarling rush hour traffic?). So my advice is to hold off on the video card. Have tweaked my EVGA GTX460 a bit, including some clock speeds and a tad of voltage. Works well. Here is the deal on SSD's. They are the next "thing" and as such are inherently expensive. Right now, you reach diminishing returns after 250/256 GB. A 500GB/512GB is far too expensive today. Intel in its limited wisdom only provides 2 Sata III ports for its processors. WHY INTEL??? Ok, can't fight Intel, so get 2x256GB drives and run them on the SATA III ports. Any HDD(s) that you add can run on the SATA II ports. With the Samsungs you get in excess of 80,000 iops. Even if it were half of that you are blowing away HDDs. Intel has another option. think its IRT (Instant Response Technology?..feel free to correct me on the feature name) that allows you to put a 60GB or less SSD as a kind of cache for the HDD. So far, toooo many problems with the drivers and I'm not willing to sacrifice my data yet.. I like what they are doing but IMO not ready for prime time. I hate W8, businesses are not compelled to upgrade to W8 and even more telling, Wall Street is not impressed with W8. Again, as for so many years, there are calls for Steve Ballmer's resignation. Expect it is hard to be the head of a software giant. If they had a clue what they were doing, Apple and M$ would switch positions in the marketplace. That said Apple is really sucking with investors as I write this. Below $400/share? The mighty doth fall. To the point. M$ has indicated that they want a single operating system to run on the PC, mobile phone and tablets. Hooray! Hmm, doesn't that sound like Linux??? Indeed Linux is used to run just about anything you want. The word is scaleable. Now IF, the underlying engine on W8 were the exact same as W7 I could die happy. Then the issue would be a crappy GUI. Me thinks there is more. When Aero was ripped out of W7 the result was not good. W8 should be renamed T8 for M$ Tiles 8. I grew up using the windows metaphor and it has made Billy Gates stupid wealthy. DON'T FIX SOMETHING NOT BROKEN. Looking back W8 is like Windows version 1. Windows 1 did not have overlapping windows kinda like W8, history has come full circle. The desktop is NOT a tablet and hope to goodness it never becomes thus. Note to M$: Anyone listening??? Anyway, running FS on top of W8 may in fact NOT be the same as running FS on top of W7 (or XP-64). i5 vs i7. Don't talk about religion, sex or politics. Add i5 vs i7. I programmed for 35 years. The amount of work to make an i7 hum is considerable. If you can make an app that is designed to be massively parallel. Wow. That is awesome. Your I/O's perform well. You process to the strengths of the built in caches and life is wonderful. Really awesome. Then there is FS. While massively parallel was still on the drawing board, FS was written to be MILDLY parallel. A handful of threads instead of hundreds. In fact FS was designed to run on less than 4 threads. M$ thought that they had the process of scaling understood such that adding more engines to a processor would work to the advantage of FS and it pretty much does. But HT is a different beast. You can have it. FS will run on it. Do you get a return? I maintain you don't. Sure, there will be those that argue and I'll put my configuration of my i5 against theirs any day. For FS, i5-2500k was a match made in heaven. Heavy duty processors, no waste of HT and FS runs very well indeed. If AMD's processors weren't so inferior to Intel, I would run the FX-8350 with lots of processors. If FS wasn't designed for HT, why have and pay for HT? A 4.5 or 4.6GHz OC on the i5-2500K is enough. The jury is obviously out for the upcoming Haswell. I don't expect it to mean anything for the M$ version of FS. Maybe it will have something for P3D if that fork of FS continues to advance. Am on the fence on P3D for now. For now. Now, for modern games the switch has come to the ability to reproduce fantastic graphics. FS is a simulation and it is not of cinema quality. A Ford Focus will get me from point A to point B. So will a Lexus. How do I wish to travel? Better than a Focus but far shy of the Lexus. Give me money to spend at my destination. Leave some money to buy SOFTWARE. How many fret over hardware. Get what you need. Get no more. Cool to brag up your rig, but for me cooler still to brag up my planes, scenery and airports. i5 will do the job with room to spare. My humble opinion. Have I said too much? No doubt. But want you to think through the process in which you are engaged. Spend money if it gets you where you want to go and save the rest for goodies.

Air is more than fine. That said best to bring cool air into the case in the front bottom and exhaust air through the top back. I have two fans pushing outside air over my HDD and SSDs in the bottom front of the case, A side fan pushing outside air over the video card, two fans exhausting air on the top back and two more pushing air through the radiator out of the back of the case. There I'm a contrarian. I do not bring air in through the radiator and blow the hot air resulting from a pass through the radiator into the case. Screws up the air flow I'm trying to create/maintain. With the fans, air inside the case doesn't hang around long enough to get hot. If the H80 is dumping air into the case from the top back, the air flow is brought to a hault. Fans pushing against each other. I don't buy the contention that you need super cool (outside the case) air to cool of the rather hot radiator. The air inside the case and with two fans on the radiator in a push pull arrangement is cool enough for the radiator. The airflow is constant so no hot stagnant air. My goal is to put one more fan on the bottom front of the case blowing air in to equalize the inflow and outflow. On the static from the compressed air? That is very unlikely to be a problem. FAR more problem to have heat sinks blocked. Here is what static can kill. Memory. Don't mess with the pins that plug into the memory socket. Way easy to do. Also not touching pins on a CPU. Never ever touch traces on the MOBO when plugged in. Mess all you want when the board is out of the machine. After applying power, which happens at the time the system is plugged into the outlet, hands off inside the case. Good idea to, unless you are dealing with bad acting equipment or you, say, want to adjust the speed of the water pump, to always unplug the power supply before going into the case. If you want more bang for being careful, don't touch any pins on any cards ever. People do. Not good. 15 yrs ago I lost a memory stick to a static discharge. That was a good lesson. Not only don't touch the pins (or traces) on a memory stick but be damn careful handling that stick. Don't make a path for a discharge. High humidity, of course, cuts down on the static electricity but not as much to make a difference here. A nylon carpet can make for bad times any time of the year. I don't use an anti-static mat or wrist band. I should. When I've walked across the carpet and going into the case I touch some metal with out paint and look for a tiny spark. That helps. When everything is plugged in most everything I can think of in the case is grounded in one way or another. If you go into the case to clean unplug the PS, NOT just turn off. Waiting for the follow-up!

Couple of things. First get a can or two or three of compressed air; the only way to get accumulated dust out is to blow it out. vacuuming does not move the dust that you want to get out of there. You need high velocity air to dislodge the dust/dirt. Blast the CPU cooler, video card and any heat sinks on the MOBO and anything else that might collect dust where you can't get to it. That little tube that should come with the can of compressed air can get to the out of the way places. Heck. Remove the video card and blow it out and while it's out you have better access to every thing else. DON'T forget the power supply. Usually overlooked. Just a thought. If a computer is shipped around the world or anywhere for that matter..I just moved overseas and learned this prior to the move..remove the video card and the air cooler. The mobo is NOT designed to deal with heavy weights hanging off of it only to be tossed about. Assuming that you have a new video card that is heavy and/or a large CPU air cooler. Great way to crack the mobo. After moving the computer it may work but start doing unexpected resets or just not work at all. Nice thing about water is that you don't hang heavy weight on the MOBO itself. The weight is on the radiator along with the fans. Big difference. Shipping regs may not allow shipping with water. I didn't have a problem. For my money the Thermaltake Frio OCK is a serious contender. It is BIG but the mounting doesn't take an engineering degree and hands trying to work bent 90 degrees. Am very happy with my Corsair H80 now. Still have to blow it out. Sold the Frio when I built my new rig. They've gotten enough bugs out of water now that it is worth the cost. Interestingly the Frio matches the cooling of the H80 pretty much at all power levels, idling or flat out. Air is FAR from dead. If you are freaked by water and electricity being so close together as I was, then air is just fine. Trick is to allow yourself a good delta between ambient room temp and the max temp you are shooting for. Where I'm at now, that delta is not so great and water helps that. I'm not getting ahead of the curve blowing already hot air over the CPU cooler fins. Do need to get those temps under control. Doesn't matter much what software measures the temp. Do what you can to keep any temps at or below 70C. Don't put too much weight on Tj max. Intel doesn't . Tj max s the temp where the chip will throttle itself down. Like a car, do you want your radiator to boil over by running it such that it does boil over? Heat and excess voltage over time will shorten the chip's lifespan. That is a fact. Too much $$$ to replace a unit such as yours.. Am running an i5-2500k at 4.6GHz on 1.325V. Most of the time it is running at around 1V as I allow the power states to do their thing. No problems running FSX with all the bells and whistles while never exceeding 65C. If it did, if there was no other choice, I'd step it down a notch to 4.5GHz or maybe less. But not a problem at 4.6GHz and 65C Runs nice. Good luck.

I have the i5-2500K OC'ing to 4.6 and temps on the Corsair H80 never exceed 65C running FSX full out with all the bells and whistles for 10 hr flights. Something is not right if you're getting temps like yours. I can run the IBT all day and not skip a beat. FYI, recently read an article that said..and I'm not exact on the numbers..that 80% of CPUs can't OC past 4.6. A vast majority. If I REALLY wanted to push voltage MIGHT get 4.7. Worth it? Not at all. 4.6 is a more than decent overclock. An additional note is you have run your system at 4.4GHz for a year, sometimes components get "burned" in at a certain voltage/clock setting. Changing after a year might make your CPU take exception. Power supply? What else are you running? 600W is light especially if your video card is fairly new. Will say that the PS is the LAST place I save money. Electricity makes the world and the i5-2500K go around. Any doubts and you put your system at unnecessary risk and may compromise performance. If you haven't been here, might check it out. http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp Last question/comment. Have you seriously tuned Windows? I've gotten windows to stop ALL I/O for 20+ second intervals. That was serious work to get cycles back that weren't being used for necessary processing. Windows must keep 10+ log files chewing up the system when you don't need those files UNLESS you're talking to M$ support. Goes without saying that hours if not days might be well spent tuning FSX as well. Bottom line. Find a reason for your high temps. You should be seriously chilled with a H100. Don't push the CPU where it doesn't care to go. Run the PS calculator. Have a SeaSonic 850W Gold so I don't worry on any level. If you feel compfortable, plenty of places to go to get serious Windows tuning ideas. BTW, sure hope you're not running W8. Advice? Don't go there. Ok, one more thing. Am running a GTX 460 and recently did some digging and found that a neat trick is to use nVidiaInspector and chop the FPS to 30. Go unlimited inside FSX. Point is to keep your card steadily busy. Avoiding peaks and vallys of fps. Keep firmly in mind that FSX is 2007 code which in this day and age is ancient. Play to the strength of FSX and your video card. And I use an old pre-Windows 8 compatible nVidia driver. Think of a line of people walking. They each represent a frame. If they all move at the same time at the same speed life is good. when some try to speed up things happen and the rate of that line gets seriously choppy. Not good. http://forum.avsim.net/topic/324786-nvidia-configuration-guide-inspector-2xxxx-drivers-version-20-explanations-of-all-settings/ Am running the 8xSQ setting. even better results running my fsx.cfg through this: http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html I only had to change 2 parameters. I was pleased it wasn't more (had done my homework) and the results are worth it. Likely haven't given you anything that you didn't already know. But in case? Good luck. Let us know how things turn out.

Couple of thoughts or so. What is your ultimate goal? That is all this system going to be used for is FS? If so, my thoughts: I have your old video card. Really does the job. You get more points for having more than 1GB on the GTX660 rather than any speed boost. Folks might save a bunch of money remembering that FS was a product of 2007 and CPU intensive. Amazing how far we've come since then. FS ran just fine on my old Q6600 and a GTX 260 while taking the time and patience to tune it properly. Secret to success has come down to say nVidia Inspector holding the fps to 30 and run FSX unlimited. It is a 2007 product and this tweek makes it run smooth as butter...or smooth as something. The board you picked is also is PCIe 3.0 which will, on the other hand, work well the GTX660. Again, an observation. Haven't seen anything to suggest that the faster buss of PCIe 3.0 gives you any return on investment. So think about keeping that GTX460. The Ivy bridge is getting long in the tooth. I say this as Haswell is coming next month. Hope is that it will run cooler. In any event might suggest that you go with the Corsair H80. Mine is doing the job with an i5-2500K. A sweet processor. Run it at 4.6GHz without any fancy overclocking. Wouldn't have minded the H100. All that said, the 3570K is going for $10US less than the 2500K. I wonder why the 2500K is holding its value? Still trying to figure out what the advantage is of having an awe inspiring CPU while paying the price if you get past the point of deminishing returns. Unless a CPU could give me 6 or more processors NOT operating with HT and NOT $999US, then i5-2500K overclocked is enough. I have as much as anyone hung off my FSX..as in goodies...and can no longer peg the system. Again all in the tuning. You would be amazed at the care and consideration you need to run HT. FSX is just not there. 8 threads waiting on i/o completion is not pretty. Now if you are playing games...not FSX, a simulation... then you can pretty much trash my response here. Hell feel free to trash it anyhow. You might be on the low side with 600W. If you can afford the cushion, 850W is sweet. Have a SeaSonic 850 Gold that is running well. As all the parts are slowly becoming more efficient my hope is that 850W will be the most one will ever need. I can hope. 500GB HDD? With flight sim, besides putting a load on the CPU, you are killing the I/O subsystem. Suggest a couple of Samsung 840 250GB SSDs. Run cool, unbelievably fast and take up little space, oh and they don't run hot. Nice to keep the 500GB for storing all the goodies and backups and thus running any flight planning software and anything else you use in flight prep. Keep the SSDs for pounding from FS itself, your weather software and W7. Add things like Radar Contact and if flying for a VA, your VA's ACARS program. I've got W7 and my weather, ASE, on a 80GB Samsung 830. Use a Corsair 120GB Force GT for FSX, all the fancy scenery, planes and airports and everything else FS. Once you go SSD, you don't look back. I/O becomes a non-issue when running them on Sata III. I'm sold on no moving parts, efficient, cooler and smaller. Highly recommend Samsung. you'd be just as well off with their 830 series and save some money. Compared to a HDD ANY SSD is stupid fast. Don't think you need more than DDR3-1600. Really. Having 16GB is nice but 8GB is more than enough for W7 and the system you've scoped out. Deminishing returns. I did mention W7? Reading on the boards W8 is the kiss of death. Why M$ would put a tablet GUI on a desktop? Makes no sense. Give me Aero any day and leave the underlying opsys the hell alone. In fact I bought another copy of W7 just in case...my original W7 did not come with SP1. My assumption is that you are going to stay with FSX? If P3D then much of my comments do not apply as there is no telling how far they will go to modernize FSX. Am not a fan of upgrading everything all at once. Nail down what will get you the most bang for the buck. With FSX it's the CPU, up to a point and moving huge amounts of data from your drive. The nice thing with running something like FSX is that it is mostly read-only. The dream load for a SSD. Again, what is your goal? Bang for the buck, pound, euro? Or a kick &@($* system on which to run FSX. Or more? My 2 cents, euros or whatever. Have built my own machines since the 486 and have over 3000 hrs real time on FS verson 1 through 10. I try to save money when it won't give me a return and spend that money on the great planes and eye candy, e.g. weather, airports and scenery. YMMV. Wish you well.

Just cannot justify the cost of the i5-3570K. No doubt you have the cooling capacity for either the i5-2500K or the i5-3570K. The i5-3570K is 'supposed' to be maybe 5% faster. Do you have a Z77 board? Not mandatory but you do get a native PCI-e 3.0 for graphics. I have a Z68 MB which doesn't natively support PCI-e 3.0 (the Z68 chip set does not support PCI-e 3.0) but the board still does support it. The i5-3570K certainly is the latest and greatest but again it is the price. Have seen the i5-2500K prices fall. I can get a steady 4.8 OC on my i5-2500K and it was very easy to get there, then the brick wall.. Have been to 4.99999GHz but the voltage needed was too high. You have the cooling whatever you decide. BTW I just went through deciding whether to move up to the i5-3570K and a Z77 board. Putting money instead for the graphics card to run multiple monitors and an extra copy of Windows 7. Windows 8 spells the decline of wait for it...Windows. Windows 8 should be named Tiles 8. The world is moving to tablet centric computing and damn usability by those actually using Windows for productive work, not media consumption. Wish W8 was an evolution, not revolution. The days of running FSX are drawing to a close. We are, as M$ puts it, LEGACY. Sorry for the rant, am not happy about M$'s direction with Windows 8 for desktop and said effect on running FSX.

Fellow Flyers, The votes are in and am applying my own perhaps twisted logic to move forward. Ok, "final rig" may have been optimistic and yet maybe not. Here goes. Having moved to the Philippines "outback" in August I had to leave some pieces of my rig behind. Damned expensive to bring extra luggage these days. When I say "outback" I mean rural Mindanao which is the furthest south island and the other side of the country from Manila, the only place to have something akin to newegg. Nope, no newegg shipments to the Philippines, bummer. I wrapped up the order last week and hope to see the parts by next week. i5-2500K - I have it, can OC it to 4.8GHz and am not at all convinced that moving to an IB is giving me bang for the buck. There is something to be said for skipping generations. Yes I skipped Vista but only because of the initial feedback, mostly as it turned out due to driver issues. In reality W7 really was a service pack for Vista and did not advance the opsys. Now W8 is a complete train wreck...plane crash would be tacky...W8 is a tablet opsys with an deprecated...Microsoft's word, not mine...W7 engine. It can boot faster and is a bit faster but how long to get the bugs out? I want MS Windows, not MS Tiles. Speed may be needed for the tiles front-end time will tell. Is it worth it even at the rock bottom price? Not in my book. ASUS P8Z68-V GEN 3. Current board and a dang solid SB one at that. Great OC controls via a great UEFI bios. Where has that been all my life? Well the last 10 years at least. Able to OC the i5-2500K just fine. It has PCI-e 3.0 though an add in on the board and not part of the Z68 chip set but don't think that will be an issue. Have read enough reports that 3.0 is not all that much mainly because there was enough bandwidth before. Will come up short on my intended cooling rig, kind of. Had a Corsair H60 before and had intended a H100 now, BUT...there always is one...I had to get a new case and am a sucker for the NZXT Phantom case, but the 410 mid tower now, not the full tower, don't need the room. Another issue is the vendor here could not/would not verify if the case would take the H100. Returning things here is my idea of a self-made nightmare. So a H80 it is. The H60 did a great job and expect nothing less with the H80. Am getting extra fans so every position is covered for a tornadic air flow. Am becoming more deaf as befits my age but figure since I'm wearing around the ear headphones that should be enough. Truth be told all my flights are flown real time, but not with full time and attention. Typical flight is 10+ hours and some of that is left to the auto-pilot and me watching TV...what little there is of it...in another room. Have had very good luck with SeaSonic and going back with their X-850, i.e. 850W of 80+Gold. Saving a few pesos here is not necessary but hey. Plenty of juice for my operation. Same with G.Skill. Don't believe in pushing memory. Keep at stock voltage and let the XMP setting guide most of the rest. I use DDR3-1600 RIPJAWS X even though the SB uses DDR3-1333. What's wrong with a little headroom? Bought 2x8GB only because I could, not because it will be of ANY use. Was at 2x4GB before and that REALLY is enough. Now what would have been nice is to get a CL of 8 or less, maybe I will tweak the memory ;-} I don't have all of its specs but it will likely be 2T and that is ok. 2T is rock stable where 1T may or may not be. When stability is an issue I look there first. Finally will stay with my EVGA GTX 460. Good card until next year when I plan on the ASUS DirectCU GTX 680 with 2GB. I really considered 4GB but there has been nothing to convince me that it is necessary. That said it may or may not stretch the card to run 4 monitors in Surround mode. I have my eyes on a GO Flight CDU addon someday which will use one of the outputs...which you must use for something other than the 3 monitors panorama I plan for "someday". I will not run in SLI. Cost and DirectX 9.0, really? I do not run FSX in 10 ever, too buggy for me. To summarize. Nothing of import changes until a new video card. FSX runs very well when I get serious about tuning. That said I've not had the chance to run FSX on my i5-2500K. I put the system together sans FSX just prior to coming over here. My fav plane is the PMDG 747-400 and with the AMD FX-4100 (yes I was a contrarian until AMD announced under no conditions was it in the speed business). So expect very nice things with the i5-2500K. The 744 is so nice to come in at dusk from a EGLL to KSFO flight onto RWY 28L flying up the bay. And that was with the FX-4100 which actually turned out to be a decent chip for its generation. Bulldozer? I never look...well a peek.. at frame rates. End up chasing your tail. I look for stuttering. THAT drives me nuts and I will back off ever so gently on FSX settings until all is smooth. Oh, that little matter of how many cores to run? I found an article by a member of the ACES team. It confirmed my findings. You may see extra from the i7 but not due to FSX processing. Perhaps something in Windows uses it but has yet to show me that it is worth it. I want FSX to run very well and not running an OC'ing contest. Think the i5 is the ticket. That article went on to explain how the various threads would rise and fall. 0 Core took the most beating but there were times when the other cores lit up. Mirrors my experience. If I find the link, will post. It really boils down to what was the state of the art in software and hardware at the time FSX was written. We are a light year or five past that. So going for my "final" "final" rig may be unnecessary. Will advise in a month or so. Happy Flying--- Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Let me offer a different view of the future. First there is a massive Catch 22 going on. Microsoft wants to get out of the desktop game. How? Cloud. The only interface the client needs is something that will run a browser. All the data and computation is kept on the cloud. The suits at the big companies like this as they can get rid of massive numbers of IT professionals. MS wins as it gets out of the game it never was very good at...customer support, especially of DIY rigs. MS has the data and processes the data...and stores the data. Where does the local IT staff come in? The new Office suite is browser centric. MS has nearly full control of all the aspects of IT. Windows 8 isn't a serious step forward in the evolution of the "windows" paradigm. It, in fact, is a tablet opsys glued on the front of a striped down Windows 7. Sorry, but W7 is the end of the road for the Windows paradigm. Where does this leave tel, the other side of WinTel? If the huge enterprise market for big desktop iron disappears then Intel has a problem. How much horsepower does it take to run a browser...say an ARM chip? Is not everyone dashing to make their own ARM chip and thus making themselves no longer dependent on Intel? What motivation does Intel have to make a mass produced killer CPU? The way the industry is moving, it has not much motivation at all. So maybe not the Haswell or its successor, but I could have never seen the last 5 years coming. Where will I run FSX if x86-64 goes away? What is the real direction of LM and P3D? How soon will I have to hang up my virtual wings? George Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Thanks Rohit. I'm on board with all your observations and recommendations. If I move forward will wait for the Haswell. That said, wondering out loud if Intel is very near of the end of the line for DIY computers. I saw a number of podcasts today and did a lot of reading. IB turned out to be running hot because of accounting decisions (who knows for sure) using inferior TIM. The one component that stands out for replacement is the graphic card and I like the ASUS GTX680 that would appear to run "Surround" - multiple monitors? What I didn't like was Intel saying chips running hot was the new normal. Did they get out of the chip engineering business? As am living in the Philippines for a couple of years I'm wondering as to the magnitude of procuring the parts, especially the SSD's. Seems the WD reds are available. When I was asking about "virtual" threads on the i7, I knew FSX did not make use of them. The questions more was did any of the other addons, i.e. REX, FS2CREW and the such have the ability to use the threads. My guess is that everything happens as a subtask of FSX and is dispatched by FSX. If I'm wrong, please let me know. Has been one of my longest standing questions. I'm coming to believe that all of us with desktop units are on the edge of extinction, as I was with mainframe computers. It's all servers and as you would expect an old veteran of IT wars, think servers are a mistake and the "CLOUD" a much bigger one. Seems like MS Live FLIGHT was a stab at a cloud circus scam. See how fast they closed up. Windows 8 is by no means a desktop OPSYS. I bought Microsoft Windows, not Microsoft Tiles. ARM processors are in the wings and FSX is now P3D. Am temped to get the best IB system and trade out parts for the last of my days. Damn word seems to be that the Haswell tick-tock may be THE last DIY series. I have an iPad which is great for what it does. Windows it ain't. Merely making the point that we need to watch out as extinction is not exclusive to dinosaurs. Thanks.

Have been flying FS since subLogic and ATP etc. The years have a way of adding up and having recently retired am looking at what will be my final rig. Have built them since the mid '80's so I have the steps down. Now it is a question of horses under the hood. (an old metaphor but meaningful to my age group). I intend this to be a very fine rig. I want to run FSX with every feature turned full on and every add-on I can fit on the SSD's. Going out in style. First to clear up some conceptions and misconceptions about FSX, or maybe urban legends is a better way to put it. Back in the day, the word was that FS was developed on nVidia video and that is why it works the best there. I believed that because they have always seemed to work very, very well together. My latest card is soon to be replaced is a GTX 460. Would like to be able, at some time, to use 3 monitors powered by one card. Any problem there? Specifically looking at a GTX 670 or 680 with 2 or 4GB of mem. Comments? Legend true then? Now? Can nVidia do a decent 3 monitor setup? Would 4GB buy me anything? Am I backwards such that AMD-ATI is the real obvious choice? Next topic. CPU. Currently have i5-2500K OC'd to about 4.8GHz. Very nice. It is my understanding that FSX can only make use of 4 "real" threads which would say the i5 is the way to go. BUT is it really? Can any of those tens of addons make use of the virtual threads or are the addons dispatched by FSX? Or is there just brute force that the i7 can bring to the table? There is no reason for the existance of this machine other than to run FSX (ok and iTunes) as far as current technology and my somewhat limited income will take me. Maybe i5-3570K is the ticket. My preferred MB is an ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe. Like the goodies and it has and the PCIe 3.0 bus built in. Have an ASUS P8Z68-V Pro now that has been very good to me. Memory. Have used G.Skill in past, see no reason to change now. Something with CL9 DDR3-1600 1.5V. I see only a need for 8GB but could go 16GB just for grins. Any real need for DDR3-1866? It's like getting a Cadillac with the works. A BMW M5 would be grand but the new Caddy's have come a long way on less money. Have a couple WD 1TB Caviar drives that may get upgraded, really want the Red WDs to do RAID 5. No reason for FS, just for other stuff, music, video etc. I'm an old mainframer and we liked RAID 5. For FS will not consider any drive but the new Samsungs, 840 Pro (if I remember). I have an 830 now and for pure random read i/o...99% of FS, am sold. Guess the final mention is going with a Corsair H-100 CPU cooler. It is big and I'll have at least six fans in my case..can't hear much so sounding like a tornado is of no concern. Besides I always wear earphones while flying. So there it is. Appreciate from hearing from any and all of you. Please set me straight. I'm only set on the MB, rest is up for consideration. Thanks much, George 747VirPilot (of a PMDG 744)