Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler - Building a new computer, need a second opinion

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | PC Support | Building a new computer, need a second opinion

DVA2171
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Posted onPost created on May 05 2012 10:45 ET by Daniel Walton

Hey guys, I think I'm about to finally take the plunge and build a new computer. I've been flying FS9 only since December of 2003, but the NGX is just too tempting... I think I need to make the move to FSX.

I want to make sure that whatever I buy can handle 100% traffic, ORBX PNW, REX, add-on airports and the NGX with sliders maxed out. I don't want to skimp on my hardware, but I also don't want to spend an unnecessary amount of money. After a long time on Amazon here are the hardware components I'm looking at:

Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D
CPU: Intel Core i7-2700K 3.5GHz
MB: ASUS P8P67-M PRO
PS: Corsair Enthusiast Series 850-Watt 80 Plus Bronze
HD: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA III 7200 RPM
GPU: EVGA GeGorce GTX 580 1536MB
RAM: G.Skill 8GB (2 X 4GB)
Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H70 Core Liquid CPU Cooler
Optical Drive: LG UH12LS28K LightScribe 12x SATA Blu-Ray Combo Internal Drive

This plus the monitor, keyboard and mouse is going to cost me $1980. It's pretty pricey for me, but I want a machine that can handle FSX like nobody's business. Since this is my first build, I want to get other's opinions on the parts I've chosen. Do I have everything I need, are there parts I should upgrade/downgrade? Let me know what you think, I don't want to drop a bunch of money on a computer that won't work properly for FSX. Thanks!

Daniel Walton

Captain, B747-400

DVA5255
First Officer, A330-300

Joined on November 17 2007

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Posted onPost created on May 05 2012 15:23 ET by Louis Vanbelkum

It looks really good, but i have a few suggestions.

1. video card go with something like a 7950/7970 or gtx 680
this is the new series it runs cooler is faster and uses less power and the 7950 is cheaper then the 580
2. A.HD. you picked out a really nice one..but if can afford it throw in a SSD ..this is a older one but it would be great for a boot drive + put some games on it http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1068616&Sku=O261-6401
use a SSD along side of the normal HD
B. get two of 1TB or downgrade to 2 500Gb models and run them in Raid 0 ..this will make things much faster as it will put half the data on each drive

DVA5255
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Joined on November 17 2007

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31 legs, 54.8 hours
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Posted onPost created on May 05 2012 15:45 ET by Louis Vanbelkum

Also what is the speed of that ram?

Posted onPost created on May 06 2012 02:43 ET by Daniel Walton

Thanks for your suggestions Louis! The speed of the ram i chose is 1600MHz. As far as your other suggestions, I don't think I want to spend any more money on a graphics card, so I think that I'm probably going to stick with the GTX 580. I checked out the Radeon 7950 and it looks similarly priced to the GTX 580. But I've heard that the Nvidia cards tend to be better for FSX, do you know if that's true?

As far as drives go, I'd like to get an SSD, but I think I'm gonna have to wait on that. I think your suggestion about splitting a couple 500GB hard drives is an interesting one though. I may look into that.

Daniel Walton

Captain, B747-400

DVA10131
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Posted onPost created on May 06 2012 05:37 ET by Robbie Johnson

I think that that system is kind of overkill, even for FSX. You should defiantly get a better mobo though. Step it up to a full sized Z68, or a Z77 if you decide to go Ivy bridge.

If you're overclocking I would go with a Sandy Bridge CPU, otherwise as long as your spending the money step it up to an IB. You probably wont need the extra threads that come with the i7, so if you want to save another $100 you can go with a i5 without much (if any) of a performance hit. If you do go with the i7, get a 2600k(SB) or a 3770k(IB). For i5 a 2500k(SB) or a 3570k (IB).

For the cooling, you could get a good heatsink that would work almost as well as that H70, but for about 1/2 the cost. You MIGHT be able to push the overclock a little bit further with that, but if you don't intend on going above ~4.5ghz (SB) you should be fine with a Hyper 212 +/EVO.

The 580 is a great GPU but for FS purposes I doubt you would see much of a difference between that and a 570. For other games, you would probably see a slight bump in FPS, but it really doesn't benchmark that much higher (especially considering the price difference).

Unless you intend on using SLI (I wouldn't recommend; google 'microstuttering') that PSU is overkill. A good 750 should be fine and leave you plenty of wiggle room if you ever decide to upgrade to better single card (or dual cards, depending on which ones you choose).

As far as an SSD goes, if you want to spend the money on it go ahead, but for the moment the performance gains don't match up to the price (for me at least). If anything get a small one just for the OS and FSX and get a 1TB+ HDD for storage OR a even smaller one to act as a cache to a standard HDD. If it were my build, I would get a 2tb HDD and call it a day.

I've made up a couple of wishlists for you.
1. Economic price/performance approach: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=20272666
This should be more than enough for almost any game at high settings, assuming you overclock the CPU. It is also very similar to the one I will be building soon.
Notes: i5 2500k; 2TB HDD; 8GB RAM; EVGA 570 superclocked; $1157.76 after MIR

2. "Shut up and take my money" approach: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=20272906
This would be significantly better performance wise for some games and to some degree in FSX (again assuming you overclock), but not really enough to constitute the price difference. Also; awesome case.
Notes: i7 2600k; 120GB SSD (OS & FS drive); 1TB HDD (storage); 16GB RAM; EVGA 580 superclocked; $1851.36 after MIR

I would defiantly recommend going with something similar to #1, and spending the extra money on some nice add-ons, maybe a new yoke, etc. If you are interested in Ivy Bridge (still not recommended for overclocking) let me know and I will make another wishlist for you. If you have any other questions/concerns/comments I will keep an eye on here, or you can email me at rangingwarr@aol.com. Blue Skies & Happy Landings!

Robbie Johnson (DVA10131)

Posted onPost created on May 06 2012 14:36 ET by Daniel Walton

Thanks for your suggestions Robbie! I've taken your suggested list for the economic price/performance and I've made just a few changes based off of these hardware recommendations from the AVSIM forum: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/370594-read-before-posting-software-hardware-guide-for-fsx/

I'd like to stick with the Obsidian 650D case because 1: it looks very nice, and 2: it already has the fans installed (i know, the fans are cheap, but I think the case looks good smile

)

I'm also planning on sticking with the Corsair H70 liquid cooler. I'm looking at doing as much over clocking as I can.

So my updated specs are:
Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K
MB: ASUS P8P67-V LE
PS: OCZ ZS Series 750W 80PLUS Bronze
HD: Hitachi Deskstar 3.5-Inch 2 TB 7200RPM SATA III
GPU: EVGA GeGorce GTX 570 HD Superclocked 1280MB
RAM: G.Skill 8GB (2 X 4GB) Ripjaws X Series DDR3 1600MHz
Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H70 Core Liquid CPU Cooler
Optical Drive: LG Electronics GH24NS90B 24 X SATA Super Multi DVD+/-RW Internal Drive

Daniel Walton

Captain, B747-400

Posted onPost created on May 06 2012 17:59 ET by Robbie Johnson

Good choices. I just threw the HAF912 in because newegg didn't have the 650D I was looking at in stock, but I just looked again and there is one on there. It does look like a great case though. The only drawback is the USB 3.0 on the front are passthroughs, so you would be best off buying something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812176003 . Otherwise you would just have to route them out the back of the case and plug them into the USB 3.0 slots on the back of the mobo.

As far as the H70 goes, keep in mind that you will have to buy fans for it, or just step up to the H80 (which also has some other nice features). You will also want to make sure you have some good thermal compound for it, I would recommend the Arctic Silver 5 (expensive, but well worth it). Also, you should consider getting Intel's tuning plan. It only costs $20, but if you end up breaking the processor while overclocking they will send you another one free of charge (more info here: http://click.intel.com/tuningplan/ ) . Other than that everything looks great.

One more note, if you live near a microcenter they have their 2500k for $170 but it is in store only. Defiantly worth the drive if one is anywhere near you.

I'm glad I could help, let me know if you need anything else.

Robbie Johnson (DVA10131)

DVA5255
First Officer, A330-300

Joined on November 17 2007

Western United States

31 legs, 54.8 hours
15 legs, 18.7 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on May 06 2012 20:35 ET by Louis Vanbelkum

I suggest going with the i7-2600k...i know people say you don't need the threads but a i7 core per core is still a little stronger in the benchmarks which may be good for that last few fps

Posted onPost created on May 07 2012 02:59 ET by Daniel Walton

I completely forgot about the fan for the H70, thanks for the reminder Robbie! In that case I'm just gonna bump up to the H80. Unfortunately I'm nowhere near a Microcenter. I'm living in Bangladesh right now and I'm ordering the parts through Amazon so I can build the computer when I get home in June. But Amazon's price for the i5-2500K is $204 including S&H, so not too bad.

I was really temped to get the i7-2600K Louis. Actually I was more interested in the 2700K because they were the same price on Amazon. But from what I've heard in other forums, the performance difference isn't enough to justify $100. So I think I'm going to stick with the i5-2500K.

One last question: Robbie, you suggested the ASUS P8Z68-V LE. Would there be a big advantage to bumping up to the P8Z68-V PRO?

Daniel Walton

Captain, B747-400

Posted onPost created on May 07 2012 04:47 ET by Robbie Johnson

Im assuming you are talking about the P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3. It is an overall better board, but a lot of the extra features boil down to what you want to do in the future. I will list the differences:

-PRO has 2 PCIe 3.0 slots at 16/0 or 8/8 as opposed to 2 PCIe 2.0 at 16/4. The pro also includes another PCIe 2.0 at 4x making 3 way SLI possible. With SB, the fact that they are PCIe 3.0 would make no difference, and with 1 GPU it would be the exact same. However if you at any time in the future would like to use a SLI setup in the future it would work A LOT better with the PRO. It also means that if IB cpus are ever a viable alternative for overclocking, you could switch and be able to take full advantage of PCIe 3.0.

-PRO has 4 SATA 6Gb (as apposed to 2 on LE). They both also have 4 SATA 3Gb. The thing about this is, that is just the speed at which the interface can handle information. The only way a SATA 6Gb would improve performance would be with an SSD (which can read/write at around 4Gbps). Even the HDDs that say 6Gbps are only referring to the interface, actual read/write would be much lower. This would be necessary if you ever intend on having >2 SSDs.

-PRO has Bluetooth built in. That is somewhat of a plus if you have anything that you would like to connect to it via bluetooth (i.e. headset, phone)

-PRO has 2 more USB 2.0 ports, totaling 6. The PRO does not include a PS/2 port, so if you had an old mouse/keyboard you would have to replace it.

-PRO has several more internal connectors, but thanks to a feature of your case several of them would not be needed.

-PRO includes a USB 3.0 bracket. If you removed the bracket you could use it instead of the adapter I mentioned in another post.

In the end it comes down to what you have planned for the future. Also, at the price for the PRO, it would not be very much more to step up to a P8Z77-V PRO ($225) or a SABERTOOTH Z77 ($240). The SABERTOOTH in particular is an amazing board that is meant to last a long time (and has a 5yr warranty). It is an all around great board with quite a few extra features over the P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3. You can view this board here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131821 , and you can watch the video to see most of the features and what it comes with.

Also, you are correct about the i7 vs i5. Any performance gain would be minimal, and most likely would be more for the things running at the same time as FS as opposed to FS itself.

Robbie Johnson (DVA10131)

Posted onPost created on May 07 2012 06:21 ET by Daniel Walton

Alright, I think I'm gonna P8Z77-V PRO. I'd like to have the extra flexibility for the future. Thanks so much for all the time you put into helping me out Robbie! You've been a big help to me. I think I'm just about to pull the trigger on this.

Daniel Walton

Captain, B747-400

Posted onPost created on May 07 2012 08:13 ET by Robbie Johnson

It's no problem at all! I enjoy doing it. I updated one of the wishlists to include your current choices, let me know if I missed anything. http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=20272666 With all of that I think you're all set. Make sure to let us know how it goes, and feel free to post or email me if you run into any problems or have any more questions. Blue skies & Happy landings!

Robbie Johnson (DVA10131)

DVA5255
First Officer, A330-300

Joined on November 17 2007

Western United States

31 legs, 54.8 hours
15 legs, 18.7 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on May 07 2012 18:35 ET by Louis Vanbelkum

I am going to suggest the duel harddrives get 2 300gigs or 500gigs it will help with both windows booting, and speed of read writes. Plus with the harddrive you choose already you are spending alot of money it would only be like $40 more to go with duel 1k gig hdds and it would be twice as fast.

Posted onPost created on May 07 2012 20:38 ET by Robbie Johnson

That would be a good option if you don't need 2TB of HDD space. For me 1TB just isn't nearly enough (right now my 1.5TB is full, and my 500GB is getting close), and I don't mind waiting a few extra seconds for everything to load up. Also the bigger HDD's tend to have higher read/write speeds, but it still wouldn't compare to RAID. If you don't need the extra space, that would be a viable option. Its also worth noting that in a few months the prices of HDDs should come down quite a bit so if you go with RAID for now, you could always pick up another HDD in a few months for storage. Also, the price for 2 1TB HDDs would be around the same price as a 120GB SSD. That would be enough for your OS and FSX with a little room left over. If you're like me and have the need for a lot of HD space I would go ahead as planned with the 2TB drive. If you want the best performance, the SSD. And the middle ground would be 2 HDDs in RAID.

Robbie Johnson (DVA10131)

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Posted onPost created on May 08 2012 06:36 ET by Bill Gardiner

I would recommend you stay with the i7 2700k. Make sure it's the 2700k and not the 2700. These chips have been "binned" and so are better and more suitable for overclocking than the either the 2600k or 2500k. You won't need the extra cores in fsx, in fact you should turn hyper threading off in the bios, but you should be able to hit 4.8Ghz with relatively low voltage and temperature.

Bill Gardiner

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Posted onPost created on May 09 2012 17:41 ET by Kenneth Dickerson

I've made up a couple of wishlists for you.
1. Economic price/performance approach: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=20272666
This should be more than enough for almost any game at high settings, assuming you overclock the CPU. It is also very similar to the one I will be building soon.
Notes: i5 2500k; 2TB HDD; 8GB RAM; EVGA 570 superclocked; $1157.76 after MIR

I have to agree with Robbie on this choice. Unless you plan on using your system for other gaming this one is the very good. The only thing that I would chang is the MOBO choice and go with a Sabertooth for the I5. Once you see it you will understand why it is the right choice. The only other thing I would add is a SDD HD for the operating system. Boot time is incredibly fast now campared to the older system.

Kenneth Dickerson

First Officer, A330-300

Posted onPost created on May 10 2012 21:16 ET by Robbie Johnson

Bill Gardiner wrote:

I would recommend you stay with the i7 2700k. Make sure it's the 2700k and not the 2700. These chips have been "binned" and so are better and more suitable for overclocking than the either the 2600k or 2500k. You won't need the extra cores in fsx, in fact you should turn hyper threading off in the bios, but you should be able to hit 4.8Ghz with relatively low voltage and temperature.

Even if they are binned (not necessarily true though), it wouldn't necessarily mean they would run better overclocked. All that means is that intel found them more suitable at 3.5ghz, but by the time you actually overclock it, it is not going to be very much better. Also, I know plenty of people that have gotten 2500ks up to ~5ghz with no problems. If you were to turn HT off with a 2700k, there would not be very much (if any) of a difference between it and a 2500k, other than the $100+ difference in price.

Kenneth Dickerson wrote:

I've made up a couple of wishlists for you.
1. Economic price/performance approach: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=20272666
This should be more than enough for almost any game at high settings, assuming you overclock the CPU. It is also very similar to the one I will be building soon.
Notes: i5 2500k; 2TB HDD; 8GB RAM; EVGA 570 superclocked; $1157.76 after MIR

I have to agree with Robbie on this choice. Unless you plan on using your system for other gaming this one is the very good. The only thing that I would chang is the MOBO choice and go with a Sabertooth for the I5. Once you see it you will understand why it is the right choice. The only other thing I would add is a SDD HD for the operating system. Boot time is incredibly fast now campared to the older system.

That list is updated with his current choices. I completely agree about the Sabertooth, it is a great mobo in many respects (and I think it would look good in the case considering the side window). As for the SSD, personally I don't think they are worth the money at the moment. I would put the extra money towards perhaps the Sabertooth, along with getting some good add-ons and peripherals for FS.

Robbie Johnson (DVA10131)

Posted onPost created on May 11 2012 04:44 ET by Daniel Walton

Yeah, that list you made for me is my tentative choice right now Robbie. I'm very tempted to buy right now, but I'm going to wait a few weeks before I actually place the order. The only reason I'm waiting is because I still have 5 weeks before I fly home. If I ordered today the 30 day return policy would expire before I get home, and it would be awful to get home only to find that a part is damaged and I can't return it to NewEgg.

If prices end up going down in the next few weeks I may look into getting an SSD for my boot drive or bumping up to an i7, but otherwise I'll probably stick with what I have. I'm still tempted to get dual hard drives like Louis suggested, but the 2TB drive is quite the deal! Since I'm more concerned about FPS and graphics quality than load times, I'll probably end up sticking with a single 2TB drive for the time being. The nice thing about hard drives is that I can add more later.

Daniel Walton

Captain, B747-400

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Posted onPost created on May 26 2012 02:25 ET by Jerry Friz

Forget the SSD drive. Make sure your FSX is on the same drive as your OS. [iTB is a must] [Your config file is in your OS drive] you don't need to create a bottleneck. The water cooler is a must for over clocking, very good. Forget the Ivy bridges, stick with the i5 2500k...
Jerry

Jerry Friz

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Posted onPost created on May 26 2012 07:30 ET by Gregory Bogosian

Jerrell Friz wrote:

Forget the SSD drive. Make sure your FSX is on the same drive as your OS. [iTB is a must] [Your config file is in your OS drive] you don't need to create a bottleneck. The water cooler is a must for over clocking, very good. Forget the Ivy bridges, stick with the i5 2500k...
Jerry

I hate to disagree, but i run FSX from a "game drive" on 2 diff computers with absolutely no problems?

Gregory Bogosian (DVA10728)

Posted onPost created on May 26 2012 07:56 ET by Bill Gardiner

I agree with Jerrell. Everything I have heard says to install FSX on a different drive.

Bill Gardiner

First Officer, B747-400

Posted onPost created on June 05 2012 06:18 ET by Robbie Johnson

Hey Daniel, just wanted to give you a heads up the GPU is currently $30 off; $60 after MIR. Might be worth it to check it out. I also swapped the PSU in the wishlist because the other one is now out of stock. Also several new things have come out since we made the list; I still feel very comfortable with it as it stands but if you would like to revisit anything with the build just let me know and I can give you some of the new options.

Robbie Johnson (DVA10131)

Posted onPost created on June 05 2012 08:03 ET by Daniel Walton

Hey Robbie, thanks for checking back to give me the heads up! I actually ended up buying the computer during the Memorial Day sale a week and a half ago. I used basically all of your suggestions for the computer so thanks a lot for your help. Really the only thing I changed was the power supply. I bumped up to an OCZ 750W modular supply. Here are my final specs:

Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K
MB: ASUS P8Z77-V PRO
PS: OCZ Fatal1ty 750W Modular 80PLUS Bronze
HD: Hitachi Deskstar 3.5-Inch 2 TB 7200RPM SATA III
GPU: EVGA GeGorce GTX 570 HD Superclocked 1280MB
RAM: G.Skill 8GB (2 X 4GB) Ripjaws X Series DDR3 1600MHz
Cooling: Corsair Hydro Series H80 Liquid CPU Cooler
Optical Drive: LG Electronics GH24NS90B 24 X SATA Super Multi DVD+/-RW Internal Drive
Monitor: ASUS Glossy Black LCD 24"

Everything has already been delivered but I won't get to put it together and try it out until I get back to the States in a week and a half.

Daniel Walton

Captain, B747-400

Posted onPost created on June 05 2012 15:17 ET by Robbie Johnson

Congratz! Good luck with the build and post back when you get it built and let us know how it went. Blue skies & happy landings!

Robbie Johnson (DVA10131)

Posted onPost created on July 09 2012 00:58 ET by Daniel Walton

Hey everybody, just wanted to say that I've had the computer built for a couple weeks and it works like a dream! I'm running the NGX, REX, FSDT and FlyTampa, scenery sliders maxed out, 100% traffic at FPS averages higher than 30 for my flights. Thank you all for your help, I am a very happy armchair pilot!

Daniel Walton

Captain, B747-400

Posted onPost created on July 09 2012 23:43 ET by Robbie Johnson

That's great to hear! I'm glad it is working well, how far did you OC it?

Robbie Johnson (DVA10131)

Posted onPost created on July 10 2012 03:01 ET by Daniel Walton

I overclocked it to 4.5ghz and my temps are right around 50C in FSX. I know some people go beyond 4.5 ghz on the 2500k but with the performance I'm seeing there's really no need for me to do that.

Daniel Walton

Captain, B747-400

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