Aloha this is Apoapsis requesting help to build a simulator.
I am a coder but I am only a software guy. I know how to put pcs together but I have never picked out the parts before.
The computer I am building is for a friend who is ex airforce so he wants his rig to be top notch. He runs flight sim on it and nothing else. He has played every flight sim since dos, and he wants to completely max out the sim. He tells me that for each of the previous versions of flight sim that they continually release updates or patches which beef up the game play requirement at max settings. He wants a rig that will be able to handle all of the upgrades continually for 2020 flight sim through the life of the rig. We are talking windows 10 pro and premium edition of flight sim. We are even considering the vr goggles now and dont know what to do about that.
Here are the specifications:
1. We want to meet at least the maximum specifications recommended by microsoft, but I don't personally trust that that will max the game.
2. He's gonna need to support at minimum 2k video out. Though I think he would much prefer 4k or even 8k I am not even sure. He will *say* 8k but then when I show him the price tag he will be way more willing to pick 4k.
3. He and I both prefer AMD cards (though I have no idea what card to get or which motherboards are supported).
4. I personally prefer a probabilistic graphics card rather than deterministic, if you know what I mean by that. I don't think he knows the difference but I think that's the way that high spec computing is headed.
5. We are going to want it to be compatible with microsoft's vr stuff.
6. Hopefully we can get a machine which can support the input of a fibre optic internet cable though I don't know if this exists. We may only need to replace his router for that.
7. I am fairly certain he is not so into watercooling or overclocking. We are gonna go all out on the fans. This machine is intended as a single purpose machine that runs flight sim and nothing else (almost like an embedded machine). If it doesn't smoke flight sim I screwed up.
8. I don't know much about processors for gaming so from what I gather I just need to buy an intel processor with alot of cores and stick that in there. But if that is not going to work here I really don't know. I can install the thing again but I am not sure what beyond that. I like the kind of motherboard where you can just lower the arm and it secures the processor in there.
9. Needless to say I am trying to future proof it in terms of ram slots. I'd like to be able to put alot of ram into it. We aren't talking dram here we want the fast ram.
10. I am thinking of using a combination of vnand and ssd storage.
Again I appreciate any advise I could get. I am a software guy and know nothing about hardware. I can put the stuff together but that is the extent of it.
If there was something on pcpartpicker.com which meet these specs that would be ideal. I just have no idea what I am looking at when I buy computer hardware. I just buy thinkpads as prebuilt laptops I have never built my own.
