Spec me a £500 fight sim build

Spec me a £500 flight sim build

As title, a friend is looking for a build to run flight sims only on a budget of about £500 ish, No monitors, key board or mouse needed altho he would like to go multi monitor in the near future
Cheers guys

This is quite a tough ask to be honest.

There are a couple of things imperative to running flight sims.

1. Good clock speeds. Flight sims (FSX mainly) are particularly dependent on clock speeds, so something like a well clocked 2500k is imperative.
2. Good chunk of RAM. make sure FSX has as much as possible to use without background bloatware nicking it all. 8GB minimum.
3. Decent hard drive space. Expansions to FSX can be HUGE and take up HDD space very quickly.

£500 is pretty tricky tbh. The bext I can come up with including a 2500k, Z68 board and a decent sized HDD is touching £700. No doubt someone else can do better though, so treat this as more of a rough guide.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - OEM £179.99
1 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560Ti "448 Edition" WindForce 3X OC 1280MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £167.99
1 x Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-GEN3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £97.80
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) £74.99
1 x OCZ ZT 550W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply £63.98
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £40.79
1 x Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
1 x OcUK Flamingo FM-12A Midi Tower Case - Black/Blue £21.98
1 x OcUK 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
Total : £705.60 (includes shipping : £11.75).

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £173.99
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.95
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £84.98
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (ST500DM002) £61.99
1 x Cooler Master Silent Pro Modular 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £49.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3X2K2/8GX) £40.79
1 x BitFenix Outlaw Gaming Case - Black £36.98
1 x Samsung SH-S222BB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £15.98
Total : £564.66 (includes shipping : FREE).




Hopefully they don't need an OS aswell. Sandybridge and the Z68 mobo are obselete really. Ivybridge uses less power to run has a better IGP and allows use of the PCI-Express 3 slot. Z77 mobos have lucid MVP which gives a free boost to the GPU

You could drop to an i3 CPU but it would be preferable to have the quadcore i5, especially one that can be OC'd. I didn't include an aftermarket heatsink but they are £20ish and could be added later easy enough.

If it's for FSX, then you must get a Nvidia card. Just a better performer with FSX full stop.

robfosters said:

If it's for FSX, then you must get a Nvidia card. Just a better performer with FSX full stop.

Click to expand...

I was already over budget fella. I actually prefer the 460 anyway but that is even more expensive than the 6850. You were WAY over budget with that cut down 570

There is no mention of FSX. He could be playing DCS A-10 or black shark. I lost all interest in FSX, it's a pain getting it to run right... far too much faff. He also mentioned using multiple monitors. You can't do that on the 560ti without buying a second card for SLI and a SLI z77 mobo will be over £100. You can run 3 screens with the 6850 on the single card but it's going to need overclocking and graphics options adjusted to suit.

+1 on the nvidia recommendation.

My last build was designed purely with FSX in mind, and I opted for the (then) top of the range graphics solution, which was the 4870X2. While it was a good card, it didn't do well in FSX.