Final Decision for FSX Computer

[mounty]

Hi,

After a lot of research and some input from various people and orgs. I have decided on the following configuration for an FSX only computer. Any further thoughts or ideas would be most welcome.

Intel i7 2700 CPU OC to 4Ghz
Asus P8Z68-V Gen 3 w/DDR3 1600
GeForce GTX 460 Superclocked 1Gb GDDR5 X 3
Ripjaw X Series 16Gb PC3-12800 DDR3 Dual Channel
Coolermaster HAF 922 Case with additional 200mm fan
Coolermaster TPC 812 CPU Cooler
WG VelociRaptor 150Gb 10,000rpm SATA III Hard Drive
Coolermaster Silernt Pro 850W Power Supply
Asus DRW-24B1ST 24xDVD-RW Drive
Windows 7 Professional x 64 bit

While this computer will be networked with my current one, all flight sim applications will run on the new one. I plan on using Ifly 737 Pro, and six monitors, 1 40" TV for outside view, and 3 other 19" or 20" monitors for the gauges - PFD/ND etc., 1 for the Pedestal and 1 for the CDU. I will also be using the VRInsight 737 Overhead. I wanted to keep the FSX setup seperate from my day to day computer which has all sorts of stuff on it and is a few years old with an E*%)) processor.

Rob

[Sean Nixon]

The only thing I would consider adding or changing is HDD for SSD. I just built a similar PC and put in a 128 gig SSD instead of an HDD. Windows & FSX start up times greatly improved.

Having said that, they say you don't notice the speed advantage until you are without your SSD, which I can understand, as now that I'm used to quicker load times (you still have to wait tho), I'd hate to go back to watching that black bar slowly creeping up towards 100%!

Apart from that, you're putting together about a good a PC as you can without spending double the money for very little gain.

Sean

[Atomic_Sheep]

Meh... ssd is overrated... I've got a raid 10... but you can do raid 0 and get the same results... anyway... with my motherboard GA-X58A-UD3R rev1, it's limited to 250mb/s... so you can have 20 ssds in raid 0 and you'll still get 250mb/s speeds... new motherboards have greater limts... (you'd have to check it out yourself to determine what they are as I don't know what they'd be for that motherboard... anyway... long story short... I've got a 500mb/s ssd in my comp to load system... and a 2tb x4hdd 7200rpm raid partition for my d drive... when I compare read and write speed performance... they are practically identical... ssd is perhaps 1.5 times faster for really small files, but very quickly both just get maxed out to 250mb/s which is my mb limit. In all honesty, there is a difference in load speeds between the two... no idea why anyone would be crazy enough to pay 2ce the price for 10 times less the space to load windows 2-5 seconds faster 0_0. Ok fine... if you search in windows explorer... the ssd drive really does finish a few seconds whereas normal drives take a minute or so... that's the only advantage that I've seen so far... search is actually a useful function now... because you don't have to wait minutes to see that what you typed came up with no results. Other than that... they are pointless.

The only real advantages that ssd have to offer in my mind are:

1.) silence... no sound when loading files... that is quite nice... albeit... I've got a case with sound deadening so my fans are louder than the hdds... either way, it's nice to have the normal drives switch off and not have the constant seeking crackling going on in the background once in a while.

2.) power saving... ssd is like 2watts? normal hdds are like a 50w lamp? don't remember the figures exactly, but it's nice to know you're not burning the planet also.

Overall... I still probably wouldn't go with ssds at this stage... only reason why I have one is coz I got it free... I was totally happy with the raid 0 performance before I got raid 10 (same read speeds) from my old hdds...

[Atomic_Sheep]

Meh... ssd is overrated... I've got a raid 10... but you can do raid 0 and get the same results... anyway... with my motherboard GA-X58A-UD3R rev1, it's limited to 250mb/s... so you can have 20 ssds in raid 0 and you'll still get 250mb/s speeds... new motherboards have greater limts... (you'd have to check it out yourself to determine what they are as I don't know what they'd be for that motherboard... anyway... long story short... I've got a 500mb/s ssd in my comp to load system... and a 2tb x4hdd 7200rpm raid partition for my d drive... when I compare read and write speed performance... they are practically identical... ssd is perhaps 1.5 times faster for really small files, but very quickly both just get maxed out to 250mb/s which is my mb limit. In all honesty, there is a difference in load speeds between the two... no idea why anyone would be crazy enough to pay 2ce the price for 10 times less the space to load windows 2-5 seconds faster 0_0. Ok fine... if you search in windows explorer... the ssd drive really does finish a few seconds whereas normal drives take a minute or so... that's the only advantage that I've seen so far... search is actually a useful function now... because you don't have to wait minutes to see that what you typed came up with no results. Other than that... they are pointless.

The only real advantages that ssd have to offer in my mind are:

1.) silence... no sound when loading files... that is quite nice... albeit... I've got a case with sound deadening so my fans are louder than the hdds... either way, it's nice to have the normal drives switch off and not have the constant seeking crackling going on in the background once in a while.

2.) power saving... ssd is like 2watts? normal hdds are like a 50w lamp? don't remember the figures exactly, but it's nice to know you're not burning the planet also.

Other than that... I still probably wouldn't go with ssds at this stage... only reason why I have one is coz I got it free... I was totally happy with the raid 0 performance before I got raid 10 (same read speeds) from my old hdds... mine is 120 gigs.... and from just installing windows 7 and office... I've got half the space left! SSD is really only useful if you use the comps for typing... anything heavier and you'll be running out of space on your hdd very quickly.

Anyway... as for the rest of your config... I don't know what else you're going to be doing on your comp... but 16 gigs of ram is way too much in my eyes... I've got 12... and I don't think I've ever even gotten over 8 let alone 16. I reckon just get 8 and get another 8 if you need it down the track... will be way cheaper this way. I wouldn't go lower than 8 though... usually I hover around 3-6... depending on how much stuff I have open.

e.g. I just opened x-plane 10, fsx, and like 5 significant programs (by that I mean heaftier than wordpad) and I'm at 4.7gb ram...

Also... as for the velociraptor... 150gb isn't going to be enough I don't think... as for the price/performance? well... you can get better read speeds with 2 ordinary drives in raid 0 for half the price and have 1tb of space. That's all I'm gonna say...

If anything... go for a better video card... 1gb isn't adequate when you start adding addons... I've got a 893mb video card or something... or whatever it is... and it's way not enough... gets maxed out too easily... throw out unneeded ram... get rid of the raptor and get 2 normal drives in raid 0 and get a better video card and that system should run FSX pretty much maxed.