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Here's my experience with upgrading my computer. Foreword At first, I was planning to upgrade. I was going to reuse my old case, keep the old video card and save some money. Since my old computer was more than 5 years old, I later thought I should replace the works. I didn't want to destroy one computer to make a new one. What if something goes wrong and I have NO computer? Another realization I had along the way: I have a lot of Add-on's. I have spent hours and days getting my old system 'just right'. There are a huge number of licenses to keep straight. It takes many hours to get all this re-installed and configured. And...tuning and tweaking an overclock setup also takes huge amounts of time. Was it really worth all this? Read on and see what you think. Scope This post won't contain any hard and fast P3Dv4 performance numbers. I'm in the process of experimenting with all the simulator settings. I will mention general values I've seen along the way. This is a journal of the process of building, tweaking and installing software. Parts Here are the components I used in my computer build. Fractal Designs Define R5 case EVGA 850 G3 80 Plus Gold power supply ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero Wifi motherboard - BIOS version 0802 Intel i7-8700K chip, not delided G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 3200 4x8Gb memory EVGA GTX1080Ti SC graphics card Corsair H100i V2 AIO water cooler Samsung 960 Evo M.2 SSD 500Gb 2x Samsung 860 Evo SSD 500Gb Seagate FireCude 2TB HDD Windows 10 OS I'm continuing to use my Viewsonic monitor @2560 x 1440 and my CH controllers. Build The case is very adaptable to whatever you might need to do. It's a mid-tower. I removed both drive cages, via thumbscrews and 4 small screws. This provided lots of room. I installed the cooler in the front. No problems. I placed the power supply with the fan facing up for additional airflow. I moved the included front fan to the top of the case. I may remove this later, or move it to the bottom. We'll see. Not sure it's needed. I installed the CPU and memory. The M.2 chip was installed under the included heatsink. Don't forget to remove the plastic under the heatsink which reads "please remove". I then fastened the motherboard into the case. So far, so good. Next, I attached the cooler to the CPU and connected all the various leads to the motherboard: fan cables to fan headers, front panel leads to motherboard headers. You get the idea... This case has 2 mounts in the back for your SSD's. That's where the 860 Evo's went. I mounted the HDD in the 51/4 bay using an adapter bracket I had in my parts pile. The power supply is modular. This means you only have the cables you need. Which is good because after everything was wired up and connected, there was an unholy mess of cables and wires. I tidied up the wires and cables using the included velcro straps and ties. I also used some additional ties which were also provided. This case has the best cable routeing system I've encountered. There's plenty of grommet holes, some of which are angled towards the motherboard's location. Also, the back of the case has a generous space for tucking and hiding. Finally! That only took 6 hours. I'm pretty old and my eyes are getting worthless at doing detail work. I'm sure somebody younger would knock this out in an hour or 2. Looks good. Clean as a whistle. Time to fire this baby up. Configuration It booted up! Always a relief. Updated the BIOS. Selected the XMP profile and let that take. What do we have then? The memory was running at the rated speed. The XMP profile also increased some voltages, enabled Multi-core enhancement and generally had it running at what could be good enough for general use and gaming. But, that's not why we're here, is it? I installed Windows 10 and the stuff which came with the motherboard. Next, I installed the updated versions of the ASUS stuff I have downloaded previously. Just a note here. There's some garbage that is loaded with the included CD from Asus; including Kasperski AV. I just uninstalled it and said "so long". I also installed Corsair's Corsair Link software. This is completely necessary if your using their AIO cooler. More on that below. Here's where things stopped going smoothly, due to my lack of understanding. I ran the "5-way Optimization" accessed either through the BIOS or via the rather nice AI Suite 3. Wow. I'm running at 5.0 Ghz just like that. And it seems OK. Not hot or crashing. I guess I'm done. During the automatic optimization I introduced some problems which became apparent when I started stress testing. I mistakenly set the CPU fan to DC control as opposed to PWM control. Also, the core voltage is set to 1.35 (same as the memory). This voltage is safe, but only if you're using water cooling or a top of the line air cooler. During my testing, I was seeing my temperatures spiking into the 90's. No bueno. That's enough for the day, I thought, so off to bed...what could the problem be? Upon waking, I thought that the cooler didn't seem to be running correctly. The pump speed was meager and the fans over the radiator were also weakly spinning. After some looking on-line and thinking hard (and nothing was happening!), I realized or read the H100i must be set to a PWM fan type. My bad. Also, I hadn't really looked at the Corsair Link setup. I created a custom profile in Corsair Link and made sure the pump was pumping and the fans were fanning. Cool. The difficulty here is in that there are 2 places for fan control: AI Suite 3 and Corsair Link. I have it sorted out now, but I'm sure I'll return to this to get the optimum cooling with the least noise. The fans on the cooler can get stupidly loud. The same can be said for the included Fractal Designs fans, if they run at RPM's over a certain threshold. You must have your fans and cooling working if you are overclocking. Duh! I stepped back the overclock and started again. Onward Time for another attempt at overclocking and stress testing. I found this youtube personality who had some settings for the motherboard as a starting point. I'll post a link below. The values he suggested worked, but the voltage was a little high for my liking. What I have now is a steady 4.9Ghz overclock on all cores with hyperthreading enabled. My temperatures range from 38ish at idle and mid to high 70's at full load. Completely acceptable, for me. I'm not quite finished with the tweak. I'm pretty sure I can run at 5.0Ghz on all cores with HT enabled. Results I'm stoked. My early experiments with P3Dv4 are very good. A generic aircraft at a generic airport is practically pegged at 60 FPS (my monitor's refresh rate). Loading up the FSL A320X at payware KSEA with full Orbx, AS16, Envtex with rainy weather and sliders haphazardly moved to the right, I see FPS values at 30-40. My temperatures remain very acceptable. I haven't mentioned the graphics card, because that isn't where I need to spend time. It works and it's grand. I'm far from finished configuring everything. I wanted to share my experience so far hoping that some will find this story interesting and perhaps helpful. Here's my overclock settings as of now: Asus Multicore Enhancement - Disabled AVX Negative Offset - 2 CPU Core Ratio - Sync all cores Core Ratio Limit - 49 Digi+ Power Central/CPU Load Line Calibration - Level 6 Internal CPU Power Management/Long and Short Duration Package Power Limit - Max (4095) CPU Core/Cache Current Limit - Max (255.5) Min/Max CPU Cache Ratio - 42 BCLK Auto Adaptive Voltage - Disabled CPU Core and CPU Cache Voltage - Manual CPU Core Voltage Override - 1.248 Link to der8auer's guide