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

I've been using an i5-2500K @4.5ghz for the last five years running FSX, FSX:SE, P3D v3, XP10 and now 11. I started with a cheap GTX 460 and then upgraded to a GTX 960 as well as using a 29" ultrawide monitor now. This system/setup has been decent with most payware scenery and payware GA aircraft, but I've never been able to use the NGX or other fps heavy addons. I'm always hesitant to upgrade because I know the newest and best is always about to come out, so I just wait things out with my trusty 2500K. However, I'd finally like to be able to move up and fly larger, more advanced aircraft and be able to fly into payware airports. I tried using the XP11 default 737 w…

Not sure where to post this, as not sure what’s causing the problem.... Asus Z170 Deluxe motherboard and Corsair TX750 Power Supply. Issue... When I power down the PC, all LEDs remain powered, and cooling fan in Corsair power supply continues to spin very slowly! I’m aware that a powered USB hub can (and does also cause this on my PC), but even without this plugged in, it still continues until I shut off the PSU. I’m guessing this could be a PSU fault, but it started after replacing the motherboard. BIOS updates make no difference. Any ideas guys?

Hi My dog sat on the USB ports which were connected to my hard drives the other day and I think she has blown something on the motherboard as the ports do not work anymore and the cpu is working at 100% constantly..... grrrrrrr. Anyway I think technology has moved on enough anyway for me to upgrade from my i5 2500k and 560ti card. I want to base the system around a 6700k and 1070 graphics card, can anyone recommend a decent mid range board and how many Gb of memory would you recommend ? Any other tips would be most valuable. Thanks in anticipation.

Am continuing to research my next build and have been reading pretty favorable reports about Silicon Lottery. They're a new name to me - either they weren't around for my last build (a Haswell) or, more likely, I just missed hearing about them. Question to the group - are they worth it? I'm perfectly happy trying my luck with a standard-issue boxed 7700k - have done my own delidding and overclocking in the past. But I have to admit that the idea of a pre-tested chip is pretty appealing. It'd help to know how much variation people are seeing in 7700s - if they're reliably going to 5.0, I might stick to a normal retail box. But if there's a lot of variation, then I'd …

Hi folks, today i faced a serious problem with my PC. After a restart of Win7 the PC didnt boot up at all. It does not even boot into the BIOS of the mobo. I have the Q code 00. I looked up google and found a few entries but no real solution. Maybe here is someone who faced this error and have some ideas. Thanks in advance...

Hello everyone, I am preparing for a new build and the components below were what i had in mind. Chipset Intel i7 7700k Cooling Corsair H115i CPU Cooler Motherboard ASUS Strix Z270F Gaming Memory GSkill RipjawsV 16GB (2x8gb) 3200MHz GPU ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 1070 OC 8GB Powersupply Corsair 850W HX850i SSD Samsung EVO 850 1TB I am having trouble sourcing the RAM i want here in Australia. All the G Skill RAM i can access has slow latency and as such started looking online. This RAM issue is very confusing with so many that look almost identical. Can someone point me to a site that has the fast latency ram i am chasing and…

Anyone installed the new bios on the Asus Z170 board? The overclocking options are all changed. How on earth do you now manually overclock?

So, I was watching this video today. I didn't know that SSDs have a limited number of writes...or, perhaps, I'm not understanding this right. I do love my SSD drives for their speed. I also use an SSD for my Windows memory cache and it has me wondering if that's the wisest decision. What do the more knowledgeable amongst us think about the best use of SSD?

I'm currently running a i5 4690k @ 4.2Ghz. my current card is a GTX970. I'm tempted to get a 1080ti when they become available, but would my i5 be a bottleneck in regards to flying P3dv3?

Updating my list of essential SW (free or paywhere) for: 1) CPU temp monitoring 2) System monitoring 3) Stress testing 4) Benchmarking Usually I use: 1) CoreTemp 2) CPU-Z + HWMonitor 3) Prime95 + IntelBurnTest + OCCT 4) ? What are you using???

Just a word of caution and passing on an expensive lesson I learned delidding my 7700K. I purchased a RockitCool delidder and spent some time looking at various guides and videos until I felt comfortable with the process. The delidding, cleanup and applicatoin of the liquid heatsink went just fine. I had found three options for resealing the heatsink to the blank - replace the silicone on all sides, leaving a small gap, replace the silicone on just two sides or put a tiny drop of KrazyGlue on all four corners. I chose the latter. BAD IDEA!! After letting the cpu sit for a couple of hour I went to remove it and reinstall in mobo - remember, I only used a ti…

I was planning of purchasing an i7-6700k, but with the latest AMD processor RYZEN hitting the market in a few weeks/months -- do you think it is a strong contender and will run P3D well? http://www.zdnet.com/article/amds-ryzen-could-be-the-defining-processor-of-2017/

Hi, I'm looking for some power consumption figures from users who run an i7 7700K (maybe 6700K) system with a high end Nvidia GTX GPU (1080 or 980). The max. consumption values are in the specs but I'd like to know how much a system like that uses in the real world. And then of course there's all the rest using power. That total average is what I'm interested in. Right now I run P3D and X-Plane on a beefy gaming laptop that uses around 160W. Performance is good but of course a tower would allow for more eyecandy. However, I'd hate to find myself holding a huge electricity bill at the end of the year. It'd also be very nice to know how big a difference …

Hello everyone, I’m going to built a workstation to fly with FSX or P3D (not decided yet). I have quite big doubts what should I choose. Currently I’m interested in the following components: CPU: Intel Core i5-7400 Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170-HD3 (Socket 1151) RAM Memory: GOODRAM PLAY Red 16GB [2x8GB 2133MHz DDR4 CL15 DIMM] Graphics Card: Gigabyte GTX 1060 Mini ITX OC 6GB DDR5 I’m interested also in following addons: FS Global, FTX Global & Regions, FTX Trees HD, PMDG 737, REX 4 Texture Direct With Soft Clouds, ORBX regions and few more. My goal is to make it as real as possible. Do you think that hardware will able t…

Well here is another one of those “what should I get” posts. My system is about 3 years old now and 3 years ago, I knew quite a bit about the PC and could do a lot better than I am doing right now. My specs are below and I have been running XP10 since I built this computer with pretty high settings around 25 FPS. Long story short, I am now running two sims in XP10/11 and P3Dv3. I have been enjoying p3d more and more now so I would like to upgrade my computer with that sim in mind instead of XP. I am currently running p3d with a few A2A aircraft, AS16, and WAMA. Nothing else installed except for a FSEconomy plugin for tracking. I would like to add ORBX scenery to the …

Hi guys! I'm planning to buy a new PC soon but i'm still wondering if i should stick with air cooling or water cooling. I have bad experience with liquid cooling in my two former builds so i'm thinking about buying the Noctua NH-D15. How would the NH-D15 perform against the Corsair Hydro H115? Keep in my that i'm going to overclock the 7700k. Best Regards Mohamed K

I've been tweaking my settings in Prepar3D v3.4 specifically to get rid of stutters when using the Aerosoft Airbus range of aircraft. This is the only aircraft it happens with, Over to the Aerosoft forums and there are some posts relating to the ND display that can be made, then to the Nividia Inspector forums to install modified profile for Prepar3D, then to youtube to make setting adjustments within Prepar3D. After all this I still have stutters. It then occurred to me that my i7-4790K @4.4 might be causing a bottleneck with my Gainward GTX960 graphics card. Is there anyway to check this or is this a known issue with this combo? I would be grateful for some advice …

Dear Community, I am considering an HW update for my desktop. Today I am running P3D with ORBX, AS16, GSX, and REX airport HD textures and a few addon airliners as well. I am running the simulator almost at max settings (only textures are pulled back to 1024 to aovid too many VAS usage issues). My system is the following: CPU i7 4790 running at 4.5 Ghz GeForce GTX780 16 GB RAM 1866 Mhz Asus Z97M-plus MOBO What would be the quickest win in terms of FPS for P3D. An update of Graphic card or CPU? Which graphic card would you suggest to have some noticeable improvements without spending a fortune (middle-range, I'm …

Hello out there. Hope all is well with everyone. I was cruising along with my new z170, 6700k, 1070 and a patriot ignite m.2 480 when the win 10 boot disk failed. So I removed that HD and used my other HD, which was active at the time as the primary boot disk. What I had to do was install windows 7 because my win 10 OS was a free upgrade from win7 at the time (6 months ago). Now the SSD, although visible in the bios and in Device Manager, it is NOT visible in the disk manager. I have not a clue what to do. I can follow directions though if anyone has any ideas Thanks Much Bob

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/kaby-lake-de-lidding-overclocking-test,4970.html For anyone thinking about it... gb.

Hey guys Do any of you have any experience with Razer and FSX/P3D or with i7 6700HQ? All specs seem amazing but 2.6 GHZ seems a little low, so I'm not sure how it will handle it. Here are full specs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (6GB) - VR ready Intel Core i7-6700HQ Quad-Core Processor 512 GB SSD

I am interested de-lidding my CPU. I tried the manual approach; however, did not proceed as I don't feel confident in carrying out the process. So... The question.... .... Where, can I buy the Delid Tool? Preferably in the U.S. (since I live in the .U.S). However, I'll be glad to purchase it from any reputable location. Thanks in advanced, Joe

Hello everyone, I recently had my old fsx rig expire after many years of loyal service, so its tme for another high end build. This will be another FSX build to start with as all my software is for fsx but may consider a switch to P3D if they come out with a 64bit product in the future. i have the following components in mind and since i am no genius when putting this stuff together a wanted any feedback you may have regarding the hardware being considered before pulling the trigger. Chipset Intel i7 7700k Cooling Corsair H115i CPU Cooler Motherboard ASUS Strix Z270F Gaming Memory GSkill RipjawsV 16GB (2x8gb) 3200MHz GPU ASUS Strix GeF…

Just starting to think about adding a SSD to my new MSI laptop which only came with a HDD. I have heard two versions of what to do from technicians but wanting to get feedback from flight simmers. One technician said that everything presently on the HDD would be put over to the SSD. This would mean that the SSD would almost have to be of an equal size. The other technician said that you obviously have to have the Windows 10 OS on the SSD but my other programs including FSX-SE could remain on the HDD. This would mean that my SSD would not have to be as big. Your feedback is valued.