Spec me a Flight Sim rig?

Audigex

Audigex

Audigex

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Joined
3 Feb 2009
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I'm looking for a Flight Sim PC for £600. Primarily FSX/Prepare3d but I wouldn't mind trying X-Plane sometime. Specifically I'm looking to use the PMDF 737NGX, which is quite resource intensive (CPU particularly)

The good news: I can keep some bits from my current build and only need most of the tower.

Not needed: Peripherals, OS, SSD, Monitor, Case, Sound Card/WiFi card etc

Maybe needed: Graphics Card - I can bring my GTX 460 across from my current build. It's not amazing but it's still a reasonably good card as far as I can tell. I suspect(?) that it's better to keep this card and go for a higher powered CPU, as FSX etc are CPU intensive, but I'm not sure? I'm happy either way, whatever gives me the best performance. I can upgrade the card later.

Needed: The rest of the tower: PSU, Processor, RAM, Motherboard, CPU Cooler (Optional: GPU)

I'd like an i7 if possible, 16GB RAM and would like a closed-loop watercooler. And as I said, the priority is Flight Sim games.
 
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My rig runs fsx/737ng pretty well at 4.5ghz. Yours is one situation where Skylake might be perfect as you get the raw clock speed at stock needed for fsx and p3d without a compelling reason to spend extra on 6 cores...check p3d doesn't benefit before making your decision as you won't have a GPU budget left unless you go i5, 8gb, sell the 460 and up the spend. Edit, been reading avforums and apparently p3d does use more cores.

Apparently x99 loads textures faster but I never have an issue with texture loading anywhere.

Are you sure you need an i7? The fsx bible recommends but I'm not sure whether the extra money is worth it.

16gb might be useful for xplane but its unusable by fsx and p3d.

To get fsx looking nice you need lots of aa which your 460 might struggle with. Xplane benefits from more than 2gb vram I think.

I built my rig primarily for fsx so I have a bit of experience with that. Tried p3d but I found it stuttered a lot more than my highly tweaked dx10 fsx setup.

No idea about xplane really.

But yes, raw CPU horsepower rules for fsx and p3d.

Final thoufhts... Investigate x99 for p3d as I think that's were the sinking future lies but don't worry about going quad core either.
 
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Thanks, I'm looking toward P3D in future and Flight Sims aren't the only use, so I'm gonna go 5820 I think... just got myself a 5820K off the Members Market with a H100i cooler. It'll be nice to be top-end for once!

That's handy, because it massively limits my options for RAM/Mobo too xD

The GPU will be upgraded in a few months, it's just a case of one or the other right now and I figure it's good enough for a little while.

I'm now looking at ~£320 for Motherboard, RAM and PSU. I'm thinking 600W? I suspect with a 970 and 5820 I could get away with 500W but for the sake of a tenner...

PSU (£75)
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cors...ied-power-supply-cp-9020077-uk-ca-165-cs.html

Motherboard: (£180)
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-...cket-2011-ddr4-atx-motherboard-mb-301-ms.html

RAM: ???

That leaves me with £250 to play with for the RAM, but also a little room to upgrade the Motherboard if worth it. Any suggestions? I'm quite happy to save a little cash on the RAM and put it towards the GPU upgrade later, or could potentially get the GPU now if I save enough on the RAM
 
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I was following this thread with interest, Audigex, just to see what others, with more knowledge than me, would advise for your hardware.

But I have just noticed you have chosen the Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 Midi Tower Case, which is currently out of stock, as is the non-windowed version. I myself have two of these cases... and I am quite happy with them for the price...and I can often be hard to please, so don't think I am trying to put you off of your choice.

All I am aware of..is this is one of the older 'Fractal Design' case models. Maybe worth checking, via a forum post in Pre-Sales Queries ( sub-section of OcUK Customer Service ), as to whether OCuk intend to stock any more, or whether you will have to look for purchasing options elsewhere if your heart is set on this case.
 
Good point, thanks: I'm sure I can find it elsewhere, though - I chose it as I've built both my brother's PC's in this case and was really impressed with it.

I'll get in touch with them tomorrow, but I've got backup options (Define r4, or the Corsair 400C both look good) for similar prices, so I'm not overly worried about that.

My main question is whether the Motherboard and RAM are any good, and whether there are better options for the money (similarly whether there's a better option for the 970, although I'm still not 100% sure if I'm getting that right now or not.
 
The reason I am following here..is because I am just getting back into fsx flightsimming, and want to see what others suggest is fair to ideal hardware.
Also on the search for what others think is an ideal set up for add-ons to FSX, especially scenery, weather, tracking, camera viewing, etc.
 
Audigex said:
Any thoughts?

(Along with the i7 5820K and H100i cooler)

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £667.87
(includes shipping: £0.00)
​


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Click to expand...

If you're going for 5820k then I assume you'd want Quad channel assuming that actually makes a notable difference.

Anyway this RAM & Motherboard bundle saves you a bit of money.
MSI X99A SLI Plus - Crucial Ballistix 16GB Memory Discount Bundle **£45 OFF** - £217.98
 
I was about to say "That looks really expensive compared to £100" then realised it was a RAM+Motherboard, superb work, thanks!

@Trying: Flight Sims depend massively on which you play

X-Plane is fairly "normal" as games go: decent CPU, good GPU.

FSX is VERY CPU heavy: specifically, it's VERY single-core clock speed dependant. The best CPU for it is actually probably the 4970k. It's slightly cheaper than the 5820k I've gone for and is quad, not hex core... but those cores are 4-4.4GHz rather than 3.3-3.6GHz in the hex. That said, they both max out at around 4.5-5Ghz when overclocked. FSX cares about the GPU, but it cares far more about the CPU. As someone mentioned, it's worth getting a lot of GPU RAM.

Prepar3d (the Lockheed Martin version of FSX) is a little better but also not compatible with as many add-ons. A lot of us are avoiding it until we're sure it's worth investing in, but it's a little more GPU and a little less CPU heavy than FSX

As for add-ons... I'm hoping to add more with this rig! The PMDF 737NGX looks fantastic, though, and most people I've seen tend to use GSX for ground services which is a nice touch.

Beyond that, I'm only just getting properly into it myself
 
Audigex said:
I'm looking for a Flight Sim PC for £600.
Click to expand...

Audigex said:
Any thoughts?

(Along with the i7 5820K and H100i cooler)

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £667.87
(includes shipping: £0.00)
​


​
Click to expand...

Am I being dense, or have you upped your budget from £600 to £670+second hand 5820k and cooler...
 
Audigex said:
Thanks, I'm looking toward P3D in future and Flight Sims aren't the only use, so I'm gonna go 5820 I think... just got myself a 5820K off the Members Market with a H100i cooler. It'll be nice to be top-end for once!

That's handy, because it massively limits my options for RAM/Mobo too xD

The GPU will be upgraded in a few months, it's just a case of one or the other right now and I figure it's good enough for a little while.

I'm now looking at ~£320 for Motherboard, RAM and PSU. I'm thinking 600W? I suspect with a 970 and 5820 I could get away with 500W but for the sake of a tenner...

PSU (£75)
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cors...ied-power-supply-cp-9020077-uk-ca-165-cs.html

Motherboard: (£180)
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-...cket-2011-ddr4-atx-motherboard-mb-301-ms.html

RAM: ???

That leaves me with £250 to play with for the RAM, but also a little room to upgrade the Motherboard if worth it. Any suggestions? I'm quite happy to save a little cash on the RAM and put it towards the GPU upgrade later, or could potentially get the GPU now if I save enough on the RAM
Click to expand...

My advice would be to spend as little as possible to get he motherboard and ram you need and spend the savings on your gpu in the future.

Fsx and p3d are one of the few games/sims around that benefit from fast/tight ram however.
 
I run FSX on an i5 4670K @ 4.5 Ghz, 750Ti, 8 GB RAM. 24" Monitor for 1080p.

I'll be streaming tonight on Twitch for any setup questions. 7.30pm.

With FSX I offload Voice Comms (Vatsim), Maps, and Streaming to a 2nd PC.

I've also got X-Plane which won't benefit from the second PC. Apparently it only benefits from more cores for loading data and for Full Modeling of AI Planes, 1 core per full model AI Plane.

More Raw CPU is the way to go. And an Nvidia Card if you're going for FSX.

Here's my Aerosoft Airbus A318 at UK2000's London City Airport:

fsx%202016-01-17%2017-34-21-60.png
 
Bluetonic, I'll tune in then and take a look :) thanks

Participant said:
Am I being dense, or have you upped your budget from £600 to £670+second hand 5820k and cooler...
Click to expand...

I confused things slightly, I think, in my original post... The £600 budget was for the PSU and CPU/Mobo/RAM combination without the case (£70) or GPU (£239) - they were just in my basket waiting.

Actual budget was around £900 with GPU, which now consists of £670 (inc case and GPU) + the 5820k and cooler... I just wasn't planning to get the 970 now and I'd already picked out a case :) I may still not get the 970


lude1962 said:
x-plane, single threaded basically
the 5820k will be slower than a i5-4690k for flight simming, cpu speed is the key not the amount of cores
Click to expand...

True at stock as the 4690k has a much higher stock frequency but the 4690k has much less overclocking headroom than the 5820k: for most people, the 4690k will top out at 4.5-4.7GHz, with the 5820k getting 4.5GHz. That puts them as pretty much equal, with the DDR4 hopefully evening out a little of the small difference remaining. In real world use, I'm not expecting (once overclocked) there to be much difference at all.

Add in the fact that my PC spends half the time encoding video and I figured the 5820k was worthwhile.
 
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Ordered with the Antec PSU, and the Fractal Arc Midi came back into stock so I've gone for that because I know I like the case :)

Very happy, thanks guys.
 
Just an update in case anyone comes across this thread... P3D does make some use of multi-threading

Where FSX looks like 100/0/0/0/0/0 across the cores P3D is more like 100/60/60/60/60/60. That's a huge difference, and shows that actually multi-core can be worthwhile in P3Dv3.

It still looks like things are maxing out on the single core first, so clock speed is still king, but it's nice to see things improving here and that there are benfits to additional cores (since my system is basically using the equivalent of 4 cores at 100%, albeit as 1 at 100% and 5 at 60%)

Struggling to maintain the 4.5GHz, but 4.4 is looking stable (just need a few days to tinker), so I don't think I've lost out too dramatically to Skylake :)
 
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