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I have been slowly upgrading my older PC to achieve better FPS and quality on a retirees funding and found myself debating my next steps. As it would basically be a hardware choice I contacted the original builders of the PC and requested a recommendation. This I then posted to Tom's Hardware who are usually sensible people around hardware which resulted in the below thread. If any of you have the time to process and maybe give me some pointers from a FSX POV |I would appreciate it as I am currently not able to get much above 15/20 FPS average and usually about 5 FPS at airports and with graphics at normal or below. Thanks in advance: "23 May 2018 16:04:48 I am looking to upgrade the above CPU/Motherboard and my local IT pusher is recommending: a MSI B360M Gaming plus micro ATX with a i5 8600K/3.6 GHz Processor with a Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO 92mm cooler. RAM would be 16bg HyperX fury DDR4 - 2666MHz CL16. I would be primarily using the new PC for FSX Flight Simulator and X Plane 11. Does this make sense or should I consider anything else?? Thanks for your help and comments. Schaefer47 why_wolf abVMotherboard abĈASUS 23 May 2018 18:07:43 Warp 9 That's kind of a side-grade. You'd be going from a 4 core / 8 thread CPU to a 6 core / 6 thread CPU. There would be of course the relatively minor IPC improvements from the generation change. I suppose the thing to do is to hit the forums for those specific games and see what kind of results people with the new coffee lake and Ryzen CPUs are getting. My cursory check indicates that FSX will support multicores (more cores = better) and it looks like X Plane is moving towards multicore support. Found this dev post of X Plane, sounds like multicore is still a work in progress so I'm not sure how much of an improvement (if any) it would be. https://developer.x-plane.com/2017/05/three-performance... If you do want to upgrade I'd stick with your class of CPU to avoid side-grading. So if you have an i7 stick with an i7 or AMD equivalent R7. An aside; pairing an unlocked K series CPU on a B series motherboard is frankly stupid. The whole point of the K series is that they are unlocked for overclocking which can only be done on Z series boards. Same though on that CPU cooler, 92mm??, junk. You'd want a 120mm like an EVO 212 or a Cryorig H7 as a starting point. Quoted 1 time. Reply to why_wolf Schaefer47 24 May 2018 15:51:43 Hi Why-Wolf, Now that's what I call a responsible answer.... It is also the reason I mentioned that I had an offer from my IT dealer - or should I say pusher ;0)) I have the abovementioned PC with the below specs: It was supposedly the top GPU 5/6 years ago for FSX and I have added a GTX 1060 6gb which I have OC'ed as well as adding new RAM up to the recommended 16GB. I also use Process Lasso to manage cores which seems to work well enough. It runs reasonably well and is fairly stable but I am not able to pull the sliders for graphics as far out as I have heard should be possible. So my question was should I add a Samsung EVO 250GB SSD mindbearing that I already have a hybrid SSD/HDD that gives me a fairly fast startup or should I consider upgrading within the confines of the existing machine and my retiree budget? Hence my check question to this forum. Thanks again for the valid comments and I will check out the relevant FSX/X Plane fora to see if they offer anything along my constrained lines. Processor (CPU) CPU Name Intel® Core™ i7-4771 CPU @ 3.50GHz Threading 1 CPU - 4 Core - 8 Threads Frequency 2194.76 MHz (22 * 99.76 MHz) - Uncore: 2194.8 MHz Multiplier Current: 22 / Min: 8 / Max: 39 Architecture Haswell / Stepping: C0 / Technology: 22 nm CPUID / Ext. 6.C.3 / 6.3C IA Extensions MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, EM64T, VT-x, AES, AVX, AVX2, FMA3 Caches L1D : 32 KB / L2 : 256 KB / L3 : 8192 KB Caches Assoc. L1D : 8-way / L2 : 8-way / L3 : 16-way Microcode Rev. 0x000001E TDP / Vcore 84 Watts / 0.838 Volts Temperature 100 °C / 212 °F Type Retail (Stock Frequency : 3500 MHz) Cores Frequencies #00: 2194.76 MHz  #01: 2194.76 MHz  #02: 2294.52 MHz  #03: 2194.76 MHz  Motherboard Model Asus H81M-K Socket Socket 1150 LGA North Bridge Intel Haswell rev 06 South Bridge Intel H81 rev C2 BIOS American Megatrends Inc. 0401 (08/28/2013) Memory (RAM) Total Size 16384 MB Type Dual Channel (128 bit) DDR3-SDRAM Frequency 798.1 MHz - Ratio 1:6 Timings 11-11-11-28-1 (tCAS-tRC-tRP-tRAS-tCR) Slot #1 Module Kingston 8192 MB (DDR3-1600) - XMP 1.3 - P/N: KHX1866C9D3/8GX Slot #2 Module Kingston 8192 MB (DDR3-1600) - XMP 1.3 - P/N: KHX1866C9D3/8GX Graphic Card (GPU) GPU Type NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (GP106) @ 139 MHz GPU Brand Micro-Star International Co. Lt GPU Specs GP106-400 / Process: 16nm / Transistors: 4400M / Die Size: 200 mm² / TDP: 120W GPU Units Shader Units: 1280 / Texture Units (TMU): 80 / Render Units (ROP): 48 GPU VRAM 6144 MB GDDR5 192 bit @ 405 MHz GPU APIs DirectX 12.0 (12_1) / OpenGL 4.5 / OpenCL 1.2 / Vulkan 1.0 Storage (HDD/SSD) Model #1 Seagate ST1000DM003-1CH162 Capacity #1 1000 GB Model #2 Seagate ST31000528AS Capacity #2 1000 GB Model #3 Seagate ST31000528AS Capacity #3 1000 GB Display Screen #1 ASUS PB277 (ACI27B5) Screen #1 Spec 27.2 inches (69.1 cm) / 2560 x 1440 pixels @ 50-76 Hz Update this why_wolf abVMotherboard abĈASUS 24 May 2018 18:53:49 Warp 9 Swapping in a SSD won't improve in-game performance, only load times will improve. That is the part of load up that transfers data from the SSD/HDD to RAM so it can be used by the CPU. So if you want the overall system to have a more snappy feel when you open new programs then a SSD is the way to go. But in terms of performance it won't matter for games, unless you were always maxing out RAM and Windows started using Page File (does this automatically) to keep the game from crashing. Even then though it would be advisable to add more RAM not an SSD to alleviate that kind of problem. However you are playing a really special niche game so it is possible that it really does want to eat more RAM, even past your 16 GB, if you are trying to twist every knob to max settings. Those simulation games can get really serious about just how much of the real world they are recreating. This is probably something you'd need to check up on in the game forums. In terms of just visuals that's more likely related to the GPU as opposed to the CPU/RAM. The 1060 is the low card but not the bottom card by any means, followed by 1070 > 1070 Ti > 1080 > 1080 TI > Titan. The resolution you are running the game at matters too, more pixels = more strain on the GPU. I see you have a 1440p screen. You could try dropping the game resolution to 1080p and the other graphics settings higher. It may or may not look better, its really in the eye of the beholder. Sorry long response. Get a SSD if you just want a quality of life improvement on the current rig. Otherwise just hold strong with what you have and wait for when a more substantial total upgrade is possible." Best regards schaefer