My first ever custom gaming rig!

[Birdseed007]

I've been an Alienware fan for years but sadly my 6 yr old Aurora R6 has just died with suspected CPU or motherboard failure and so I've been forced to upgrade.

I had two viable options at this point: 1. Buy another pre-built from Alienware etc or 2. Salvage the good stuff from the Alienware and build a new custom PC around it. I chose the latter, so in fact this is my first ever custom built gaming rig and I would be grateful if some of you with far more knowledge/expertise could answer a couple of questions and validate my choices! The repair shop who are great and haven't been able to get my Alienware going again have agreed to build it for free for me and they're also allowing me to supply the parts myself rather than ordering through them.

My main use case is FS2020 and XPlane 11 in VR with the HP Reverb G2 with a bit of space sim or driving sim thrown in. I'm an airline pilot so use the incredibly accurate Toliss A319 on X-Plane 11 to practice before my formal sims and to brush up on things.

I'm re-using from the Alienware:
Memory - HyperX Fury 32GB (2x 16GB DDR4 2666MT/S CL16 DIMM
Hard drives - 256GB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD + 2TB 7200 rpm Hard Drive, plus another 1TB Sandisk 3.5 inch SSD.
Graphics - Gigabyte Radeon RX6800XT

For the build I have ordered:
Lian Li Lancool II Mesh RGB-C case
MSI Mag Z790 Tomahawk Wifi DDR4 ATX motherboard
Intel I7 13700K CPU
MSI MAG CoreLiquid 240R V2 AIO ARGB CPU liquid cooler
MSI MPG A850G PCIe5 80 Plus Gold Fully Modular PSU Power Supply with 10 year warranty

Some questions:
1. As I'd like the fans to match I'm wondering if I should have gone with: Lian-Li GALAHAD AIO 240mm High Performance RGB CPU Water Cooler - Black rather than the MSI MAG CoreLiquid 240R V2 ARGB liquid cooler... Views??

2. If I go with any of these coolers will they and the Lian-Li case fans all respond to the MSI motherboard fan control app?​

3. Does this seem like a sensible spec to you?​

4. Will my 32gb of |HyperX Fury 2666MT/S DDR4 slow this modern machine down much in terms of FPS? What about VR? Should I have opted for the DDR5 version of this board and paid for some new sticks of DDR5 memory? I didn't because to be honest I'm pushing the budget already and it's costing around £1000 that I didn't expect to have to spend!​

5. Do I need to buy a copy of Windows 11 Professional? The store doing the rebuild have cautioned against buying a grey market copy for £30/£40 and suggested I obtain a legit Windows 11 copy through them for £100 or so if they can't retrieve my Windows 10 key from the Alienware. If they can do the latter it might mean a free upgrade path to Windows 11.
6. How much FPS improvement might I expect in VR on a HP Reverb G2 running my simulators? I used to get around 30-35fps with highish detail.​

7. The Lian-Li case comes with 3x 120mm fans at the front but nothing at the rear. I'm wondering if I will need more ARGB fans? If so which ones and how many?

I would be hugely grateful for your thoughts/answers as I know there's a wealth of knowledge on here! I'm hugely excited at the prospect of a new custom build rig but am keen to do it right!

Brg,

Birdseed007


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[Birdseed007]

Hi Tetras,

A great reply - thanks so much for your really helpful reply! In relation to the frame rate question my old CPU was I7-7700 no overclock.

Brg,

Birdseed

 

[Birdseed007]

Budforce lol!!

Tetras, Yeah I guess that's true - I guess I just have to hope the CPU struggles more than the GPU in VR currently and from memory I think it does. Certainly Flight-simulators are widely regarded as heavily CPU dependent so it will be interesting to see how a 13700 benefits things. On the plus side I guess when I next do upgrade the graphics card the CPU won't be the bottleneck!