vortex681

Why? In the days of just hard drives it made sense as you didn't want the OS drive to become fragmented with all of the additional files. SSDs don't need defragmenting and the argument that it's easier to reinstall the OS if something catastrophic happens isn't really valid. Most apps and games rely on many registry entries to make them function and a clean install of the OS wipes all of these so your software would almost certainly also need reinstalling to restore the registry entries. See above. Firstly, it's highly unlikely that any of your sim data would be overwritten by a Windows update. Secondly, even if it was, having your sim on its own drive (with the exception of XP) wouldn't make it usable because of the registry problem. It may look neater and more organised putting things on their own drives but it doesn't necessarily make things any safer. Regular system backups are the best solution.

You get more options using MSI Afterburner for GPU fan control. You can easily set a custom fan curve to manage temps. I have the fan off completely below 40C and then ramping up exponentially from there. Much easier than having to swap between settings based on what you’re doing at the time.

It's definitely worthwhile putting some old exposed photographic film in front of your camera lens to cut out some of the visible light. Also, it looks from the camera image that the camera is picking up some stray light sources/reflections from above your head. If the software sees more points than the number of LEDs you're using, it won't lock on properly. Make sure that background behind you is as free from light sources or shiny surfaces as possible. I assume you're using a driver for your PS3 Eye camera like the CL Eye Driver (https://codelaboratories.com/downloads)? If so, you can adjust the gain and exposure to remove most stray reflections. Also, I'd be tempted to use Opentrack rather than FaceTrackNoIR as I've found it more responsive, it's updated more often and has more options (and it's completely free): https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack/releases/tag/opentrack-2.3.11. I haven't specifically tried head tracking with P3D but I'm pretty sure you need to use FSX Simconnect as the Game Protocol (or Output in Opentrack) rather than FreeTrack. There's a basic setup video here for Opentrack (just remember to use FSX Simconnect): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN-CD1MDe4Y

Air coolers may be safer (but leaks are now very rare with quality AIOs), but they're certainly not better. The best value (and also best performing) AIO is currently the Arctic Liquid Freezer II - https://www.kitguru.net/components/cooling/james-dawson/arctic-liquid-freezer-ii-all-in-one-cpu-cooler-review/5/

I didn’t need to but used SFH485P LEDs which may differ from yours. Whilst I wouldn’t advise using FreeTrack software (it’s old and hasn’t been updated for several years), there’s a lot of good hardware information on theIf site: http://www.free-track.net/english/. I would recommend FaceTrackNoIR or Opentrack (my personal favourite).

Also worth trying the suggestions here: https://thegeekpage.com/nvidia-control-panel-not-showing-in-windows-10/

Alternatively, you could partition a large drive and just backup the (small) OS partition. Saves you needing an extra drive this way. You must be unlucky (or I’m lucky) as I’ve yet to have an update which broke my system.

I’m sure it’s not the case with your problem but it’s always a good idea to wait to for updates to be offered rather than clicking the “check for updates” button as this bypasses any checks for compatibility on your system.

I don’t think so - at least not specifically for AMD. A report at the end of 2019 (https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/amd-vs-intel-cpu-market-share-q4-2019-epyc-and-ryzen-growth-decelerate-mobile-ryzen-up) put AMD’s share of the desktop market at just 18%. I can’t see how MS would ignore the 82% using Intel. Ryzen are certainly becoming more popular but still have a very long way to go to match Intel’s sales for desktops.

Probably the most well respected comparative site: https://www.av-comparatives.org/latest-tests/. Look specifically at the Performance Test April 2020 and Real-World Protection Test Feb-Mar 2020. Defender is much better than it used to be at catching viruses. However, it’s not great for the performance hit it puts on your system. Not quite the worst, but close.

Sometimes. P3D uses borderless windowed mode but FSX uses genuine full screen. Many other games use proper full screen mode where pop-ups from other Windows apps won't appear.

Correct. There are some apps and games which don't rely on registry entries (XP11 being a good example) but these tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Regular backups are the key to overcoming most major problems.

I think you’ve been very lucky, then. The main problem with doing that is that you can run into problems with the game not knowing which device to monitor. Many people have had problems over the years with the controls in the aircraft mysteriously jumping to odd positions because of conflicting axis assignments.

If you don’t actually need a better card at present, I’d definitely suggest waiting a few months until the NVIDIA 3000 series cards become available. They will potentially offer much more performance for the money.

But there’s a difference between restoring your system from a backup and a clean Windows install. A restore from a backup puts your system back to were it was before you had a problem, with all the registry entries still intact. Reinstalling Windows gives you a fresh registry which means that most of your apps and games (and add-ons), even if they’re on another drive, will probably need to be reinstalled to create the correct entries.

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.

100C is definitely too high for a stock CPU. The best all-in-one coolers, for both price and performance, are currently the Arctic Liquid Freezer II series. The Arctic Liquid Freezer II 280 is cheaper than most other 240 models and has excellent performance even when compared to much more expensive coolers. Whichever cooler you decide to get, make very sure that it will definitely fit in your case. Many older cases (and even some recent ones) aren’t designed to accomodate liquid cooling systems - or even some of the best air coolers, come to that.

Yes and no. If you have apps (not just data) in one partition and Windows in another, if you clean-install Windows into the boot partition it will give you a fresh registry without any data the apps in your second partition need. As a consequence, you’ll probably have to re-install all the apps anyway to restore their registry entries. You can’t just backup the registry and restore it after the clean install. The same problem would apply to anything on your second SSD if anything on it relied on entries in the registry. The best solution would be to get the new system fully running and stable, with everything you want installed, and then make a full system backup with something like Macrium Reflect (my favourite). If you schedule a weekly differential backup, you can effectively restore any of the drives and only lose a week’s worth of data. Alternatively, your first backup file (without using any of the subsequent differential backups) will get you back to the original, clean working version of Windows.

@MarkD - we both seem to have crossed wires here so lets just get back to the thread topic (solved now, it seems)!

Not for all games. The latest racing sims are still also heavily dependent on CPU performance.

I didn’t say it guaranteed it. However, I’ve had experience in the past with Windows recognising the same joystick as a new one if plugged in to a different USB port. Even if the chances of this happening are small, why risk it?

FSX certainly doesn't do this for me. I unplug my joystick every time after I close FSX and plug it in before I start and have never had a problem. I can imagine that it may cause a problem if you plug it in whilst FSX is running. With the software closed, assuming that you always plug into the same USB port, how could it possibly know what was happening with your hardware?

Not unless you’re actually running out of physical RAM and your system is having to use virtual memory. However, I agree with you that, as a general principle, more RAM will not guarantee to make things faster. For the OP, if I had to choose between 32Gb of RAM or a better GPU, I’d go with the GPU. That said, and as others have already advised, I’d be tempted to stick with what you’ve got (assuming that it’s working OK at the moment) until we really know how the release version of the new sim will perform. Not to mention that a lot of new hardware is due to be released in the coming months which might completely transform the flight sim experience - hopefully!

I’m not saying you’re wrong because I don’t know for sure, but it makes no sense to stop supporting it. It’s already a part of the OS and, as far as I’m aware, running 32 bit software does no harm to Windows (or MS) so what would be the point of disabling it? You’d just stop a lot of popular, useful software from running for no good reason. Maybe if Windows went 128 bit somewhere in the distant future it might make slightly more sense, but even then, I’m not so sure. If you have a link to any statement from MS, I’d be genuinely interested in reading it.

It’s only OEMs that will be restricted to the 64 bit version. The 32 bit version will still be available to retail customers. Even then, that doesn’t mean the future 64 bit versions won’t still run 32 bit software (using wow64) in the same way that the current 64 bit version does. It’s only 32 bit processors which will not operate with the 64 bit version, not 32 bit software. See: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/14/the_end_really_is_nigh/