System Hardware: PC | MOBO | RAM | CPU | HDD | SSD | PSU etc

Good morning and happy holidays to all - I made a mistake about 3 years or so ago and bought an Alienware gaming PC, the reason I say it was a mistake is because I realized afterwards that I could have built the same system for much less $$. The system works well and I am able to run it with most of the FSX sliders full right with my PMDG aircraft. Now when it comes to areas like Chicago or the New York, Philadelphia area, I have to turn AI traffic way down (about 20%) in order to get smooth graphics. So I'd like to upgrade the system. I am looking to spend around $400 to $500. Any idea on what my best moves would be are greatly welcome. One thing I thought about …

I really need help finding a prebuilt PC. I have been searching for hours on NewEgg, and I just can decide on THE ONE. I have seen good looking rigs from everywhere between $500 and $1500. Please help me guys. These are what I've been looking at. http://www.newegg.com/All-Desktop-PCs/SubCategory/ID-10?Order=REVIEWS

So... I went on Newegg and saw this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147251 My first reaction was: :Hypnotized: :Hypnotized: :Hypnotized: :Hypnotized: I WANT ONE. (But of course, I have no money) But I started thinking, is it bad for you to store EVERTHING on a SSD? I.e., the SSD being your one and only drive? Does it make the life of the drive actually last less?

Hello guys I know this topic has been discussed before but as you know technology changes so I said i might get a good answer for this present time on "what is the best fairly price specs for a desktop to run fsx smoothly" I already have a rig built 2 years ago with the following: 1- CPU: i7 2600k 2- asus z68 deluxe 3- 2x 4gb ripjawz (RAM) 4-nvidia GTX 660 "bought it just today" This computer was just working fine untill few days ago the whole system crashes when i try to start any game, i just cant even access the game, the moment it finish loading, baaam windows restarts, no blue screen nothing I tried many things to solve my issue, replaced GP…

If you've seen my corrupted OS thread you'd know my secondary "charts" PC is dead. I'm looking for a new one preferably free that you need to get rid of (I'll pay shipping) or really cheap (I don't want to spend more than 100 with shipping) I've got a few possible options but wondering if anyone really needs to get rid of theirs hehe? It can be the most basic of basic, but needs to have a nic/onboard and some form of optical drive. I don't need sound either. integrated graphics is fine... something 2004 and later would be fine.

Hi guys; Finally decided to upgrade from my OEM HP Q6600 store bought Desktop circa 2006,to something a bit bigger. Hope I haven't gotten my head into something too big. Here's my thoughts and if anyone can make recommendations I will be grateful. First I wanted a more powerful CPU,but my budget will only allow an I3-4330;LGA 1150. This I got an ASUS B85-Plus MB for. I recently upped my HP to a 500w PSU and added a MSI 460. It also has a HDD and optical drive. I was intending to swap the Vid card;PSU ;Optical drive and HDD and put them all in a new case(not yet purchased) Can I do this??? I also need to upgrade the RAM,and the ASUS manual specifies what I need. Here'…

I’m long overdue posting this. I’ve had a further look in to HDD and SSD performance in FSX. You can read my earlier post about it here. There I also have the full explanation of what my spreadsheets show. Since then I’ve upgraded my system to a i7 3930K SandyBridge-E. I’ve also acquired a GTX780 and a 1TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD. My choice of the 3930K over a Haswell system was based on the fact that my personal user scenario is high-res photo scenery at high LOD, and that’s where many cores and HyperThreading makes a change in FSX. Firstly I wanted to see the differences between my old i7 860 Lynnfield and my SandyBridge-E. With the new system being capable of r…

Since it looks like I will have to move up from Windows XP Pro to some sort of Window 7, I was looking at what I might do to the rest of the system. It is a Intel Q8400 @2.66 Ghz with 2 Mb of 2.67 Ghz ram, ATI HD 4650 video card with I Gb of memory.From what I can tell, the CPU is a 64 bit model but I only have a 32 bit copy of Windows XP. I can run FSX at 24-30 FPS with most of the scenery setting to the right. Do not run those fancy clouds, the fake extra scenery, or a lot of land, sea, or air traffic. If I go to a 64 bit Windows 7 with 8 Gb of DDR3 ram and a SSD for the OS and FSX and some sort of 7500RPM HD for main storage, will I be able to maintain or increase …

Hi! I have a 480 GB SSD (Sandisk) with just Win 7 64 bit and FSX + addons installed on it. Right now, it has 140 GB of free space left. I bought X Plane 10 and I would like to install it on that SSD too, maybe along with SkyMaxx Pro and 2 or 3 addon aircraft and addon airports. X Plane itself is around 60 GB when installed completely. With the additional stuff mentioned above, maybe 50-60 GB (around 10% of its capacity) free space would be left on my SSD. Would this decrease performance in any way or would there be other negative aspects? Thanks in advance for your help!

Hey everyone, it's been years since I've been deep into a flight sim my last one was FS2002 and I miss it a lot and am looking to get back into it. I have a home built system I did years ago and I am hoping to leave it as is and just upgrade the graphics card but I have no idea where to start. this is my current system: windows xp 2.8Ghz core 2 duo E7400 ASUS P5Q LG 775 motherboard 4gb ram 1 500gb esata hard drive 1 320gb hard drive not sure of the GPU but I think it may be a GEforce 6700 or similar low end model plan on hooking it to a 40" HDTV through hdmi Should I even consider putting xplane or fsx on this system with a better graphics card, or…

Hi! I plan to buy a new pc. Do you think a AMD FX-8350 with 8x4Ghz, 16GB RAM and NVIDIA GT630 4096MB (Win 7 64bit) would have enough power that FSX with PMDG777, REX, Addon-sceneries and with very high settings could work without lags? I know, intel i7 is almost the best for FS, but this FX-8350 looks quite interesting and it is much cheaper... Thank you!

Hi All My I7 2600K run at 3.4 currently not over clocked but it does turbo to 4.3 when flight sim is running I have an indicator on task bar so I know this for sure. Now I want to overclock but I am confused as I see some people are clocking around 4.8 and higher on this chip but are they referring to their turbo clock that's been overclocked or is this a pure overclock of the standard clock speed 3.4 to 4.8 so in effect there CPU is always at 4.8. This really confuses me for some reason, is there really a point to do a mild over clock if your turbo is already hitting 4.3 when necessary, I do notice when its not under load it drops down to 1.6. Thanks for any advice …

Hello all, I am an old fs2002 enthusiast looking to get back into the world of flight sims using fsx deluxe.... and it has grown very much! My current core 2 duo system is outdated and not worth upgrading so I am looking to do a good build right the first time. After reading for a week or two now for hours a day, I feel more knowledgeable in some areas and others just even more confused then before due to all the different opinions. I plan on doing an i5 or i7 build and hooking up to a DVI dell monitor to pull up plates and such on and a 40" plasma tv for the flying. I don't have an unlimited budget and am hoping I can re-use a few things such as my 500w pow…

I am wondering about overclocking my CPU. I have a AMD 1100T Black edition 3.3GHZ processor turbo 3.7GHZ. I also have a 1 gb 6850 sapphire AMD Radeon card but am wanting better performance. How safe is it to overclock and what would be a safe number to get it too? I have a ZALMAN CNPS9500A-LED 92mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler as well so not just stock fan. I still have low frame rates and want to improve. I was looking at getting a new GPU but FSX is a CPU intensive program so didn't want to waste more money. Help please.

Just thought I'd give you a heads up with regards to competency ... http://www.dropbox.com/s/nwahla3mqv3utkl/ResponseToEVGASupportEMail420088.docx

Hi out there, what do you think - is the Samsung SSD Rapid Mode something for FSX, will the Rapid Mode help to speed up the loading of FSX and it`s files. Regards Tom

All, My existing machine is about 5 years old right now and given the PMDG 777, ASN etc. I have decided to buy a new one. I'm not qualified to build one (my old machine is a Dell XPS 730x) so I am looking at Alienware as a replacement. I am looking at the Alienware Aurora series with an i7-4960x running at 4.3 Ghz with a 15 Cache. The GPU I am considering is a GTX-780 with 3GB memory. They don't have an option for the GTX 780ti. I would greatly appreciate any thoughts on whether this set up is worthwhile or if I should consider something else. My practice is to buy the highest end components I can find about every 5 years and I seem to be getting the most longe…

Hi I purchased a overclocked motherboard bundle with other components to build a new PC. The build is finished and just going to install windows 7,I have read that you shouldn't install windows os with your system already overclocked as you might get errors due to instability,the company I purchased from said they tested the system for 24hrs for stability and it passed all the tests I don't know how to overclock the cpu that's why I got them to do it.has any one installed the os with a overclock and not had any problems as this seems all that I can do other than resetting the bios and just running the cpu at factory setting I wouldn't like to mess about with the settings …

Up to now I have a Thermaltake Kandalf LCS case. I was thinking about buying a Thermaltake GT10 LCS case : incredible beautiful case with lots of features. Before buying this expensive case I was wondering wether or not to continue with liquid coolling or go back to aur cooling. What are your experiences ?

I have several SSD’s (SATA III) in my PC, and hadn’t realized that the fact that I have them attached to my motherboard ports alongside SATA II HDD’s, that the slower communication protocol of the SATA II’s would limit the communication speed of my SSD’s. So, what I would like to do is re-arrange the ports on my motherboard that are connected to my SSD’s and HDD’s to hopefully isolate the SATA II group from the SATA III. When I re-arrange these drive connections to different ports, what effect will that have as far as driver letter and any other drive issues? The most important I expect is if I re-arrange my SSD ( CJ that I boot to, and where Windows 8 is located….…

so I'm thinking of ugrading my processor from an I52500k to the 3770k. I currently have the I5 overclocked to 4.5 which gives me pretty good fsx performance. My question is, do I have to delidd that 3770k to achieve 4.5 ghz overclock? I am running an air-cooled setup.

Dear readers, I would like to improve my performance for my favorite game: FSX. My system: - Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3 iP55 - Intel Core i7 860 2.8GHz 2.5GT/s Box - OCZ 4x2GB DDR3 PC10666 CL7.0 Platin. LV - MSI Videokaart PCI-e GeForce GTX275 Lightning 1.8GB DVI/HDMI - OCZ GameXStream 700W - Samsung 1TB SATA300 32MB, HD103UJ Recently, I purchased a Noctua NH-D14 cooler and succesfully overclocked my i7 860 to ~ 4GHz. Still, I am not happy with the FSX performance. I play FSX with a few add-ons, such as: PMDG 737NGX, Ultimate terrain X, Some Aerosoft sceneries as well as the IVAP online multiplayer. Also, I did the standard FSX tweaks ( such as [DISPLAY] TEXTURE_B…

Yes, I'm rather late in regard to SSD adoption. Have done some research today, but I'm interested in the opinions of those of you that have been using SSD's for a while. I gather there are certain considerations in regard to setting up an SSD? No defragging I know, but what else should I consider? I'm probably going for the Samsung Evo, not as fast as the pro I know, but fast enough for me, and far cheaper.

Hello! I just got another pc from a friend that i wanted to use for fsx addons. I also bought WideFS and FSUIPC and both are now registered. I follow Froogles YouTube clip on how he set it up and so on. WideFS is connecting with my main PC now but i don't understand really how i suppose to import AS2012 for example to my main PC and run it on my other PC. I also installed the SimConnect and all the latest updates to my other PC. But when im trying to find the Simconnect.ini for example, then there is no files there. So i added it by my self(Main PC). Can someone who have done this before give me just a little guide or somethingor maybe there already is one out there? I d…

Hi All, Just wondering if this is worth upgrading? Machine now is around 4 years old. Was even thinking of maybe upgrading and handing on to my son for some gaming, and maybe completely replacing my FSX rig Any thoughts appreciated. Processor:AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Processor Cores:4 Processor Speed:3.2 GHz RAM:8 GB Kingston 4GB (4x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz HyperX Video Board Manufacturer:PowerColor HD (Radeon) Video Board Model:4870 Video Memory:1GB GDDR5 Mother Board:Gigabyte MA-790FXT-UD5P PSU Hi-Power Black 800W Thanks Operating System:Windows 7 64bit