Upgrades for Flight SIM PC

[bilirubin]

A 250Gb SSD should be ample, I’ve got a lot of add ons with my FSX install and it’s “only” 50Gb - you’d be going some to break 100gb imo.
As for your current cpu, a quick google shows it’s quite a bit slower than my old i7 870, given I got such a boost from my upgrade (I bought an i7 4790, 16Gb RAM and a motherboard to suit from the Members market here for ~ £250) I would expect yours to perhaps struggle a bit, but, it’s still a better chip than the designers ever envisaged so I’d certainly give it a try and see how it handles it.

Remember, FSX is all about smoothness of running rather than high fps rates- a we’ll optimised install will play just fine @30fps so long as you can maintain that frame rate,the last thing you want is an fps drop and stuttering whilst on final approach in a cross wind!

If you’ve got a spare hour or so, read and digest this....

http://www.simforums.com/forums/the-fsx-computer-system-the-bible-by-nickn_topic46211.html

An old but probably still one of if not the best FSX guides I’ve ever read- and I’ve read more than I care to recall!

Thanks for the reply Scania and the link to the "bible", I have not seen that one before so I will take a look and read it. Please forgive all the questions however as you have probably guessed I am new to building and upgrading PC's.

Have I misunderstood you re the SSD, I take it you are suggesting I leave my existing hard drive in place that contains Windows etc and then just add Steam, FSX and any add ons onto the SSD? If this is correct I can see when you say a 250 GB SSD would be ample, I could probably get away with a 125 GB model.

Thanks again.

Mike

 

[Scania]

Thanks for the reply Scania and the link to the "bible", I have not seen that one before so I will take a look and read it. Please forgive all the questions however as you have probably guessed I am new to building and upgrading PC's.

Have I misunderstood you re the SSD, I take it you are suggesting I leave my existing hard drive in place that contains Windows etc and then just add Steam, FSX and any add ons onto the SSD? If this is correct I can see when you say a 250 GB SSD would be ample, I could probably get away with a 125 GB model.

Thanks again.

Mike

No problem re the questions, happy to help.

My thinking re the SSD was use it for Windows and Steam / FSX, As your predominant use is just FSX you will have ample room for your O.S. and a few other titles such as FSX and any add on expansion packs you buy.

The speed boost of an SSD when used as your Boot / Windows Drive is probably one of the best upgrades you’ll make to a PC.

Arguably you’d be fine with 125Gb for both but personally I’d advise spending a little extra for double the capacity ,you may well find yourself buying other games or indeed other flight simulators in which case you’d be glad of the extra capacity.

 

[bilirubin]

No problem re the questions, happy to help.

My thinking re the SSD was use it for Windows and Steam / FSX, As your predominant use is just FSX you will have ample room for your O.S. and a few other titles such as FSX and any add on expansion packs you buy.

The speed boost of an SSD when used as your Boot / Windows Drive is probably one of the best upgrades you’ll make to a PC.

Arguably you’d be fine with 125Gb for both but personally I’d advise spending a little extra for double the capacity ,you may well find yourself buying other games or indeed other flight simulators in which case you’d be glad of the extra capacity.

Perfect, I was hoping you would say that as I would prefer to put everything on the SSD and run from there. I am thinking of upgrading the PSU as well as adding the SSD as the first part of the project so looking at my spec above is there any 250 GB SSD you would recommend?

 

[Scania]

Perfect, I was hoping you would say that as I would prefer to put everything on the SSD and run from there. I am thinking of upgrading the PSU as well as adding the SSD as the first part of the project so looking at my spec above is there any 250 GB SSD you would recommend?

I’d certainly recommend this one, I have one myself as my boot drive...

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/king...lid-state-hard-drive-sv300s37a-hd-052-ks.html

Any reason for changing the PSU? - I assume your current one is some generic unbranded type put in by the pc manufacturer? - rarely of high quality! - I’d recommend Corsair as a PSU, I have an 850w Model of theirs but you won’t need that much power I’m sure -I’ve got two GTX 1070’s and 8 hard drives!

 

[bilirubin]

I’d certainly recommend this one, I have one myself as my boot drive...

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/king...lid-state-hard-drive-sv300s37a-hd-052-ks.html

Any reason for changing the PSU? - I assume your current one is some generic unbranded type put in by the pc manufacturer? - rarely of high quality! - I’d recommend Corsair as a PSU, I have an 850w Model of theirs but you won’t need that much power I’m sure -I’ve got two GTX 1070’s and 8 hard drives!

Thanks Scania, funnily enough I was looking at the Kingston and the Samsung so I will go for the Kingston based on your recommendation. My PSU is a Pentium P4 Model E-600BR 600w which as you say was installed by the manufacturer. Most of the lads above ripped it to shreds and suggested I upgrade to a better model in the 600-650w range.

 

[Scania]

Around 600w should be ample, your cpu is very power efficient and does not draw huge wattage from what I’ve read about it, assuming you bought say a GTX 1060 - another very efficient piece of kit which draws less than 300w at full load - you’ll be way inside the limit for such a PSU, quality is everything with a power supply as already mentioned, a decent model @ 600w is far better than a cheaper one with a supposed rating of say 900w in my experience (learned the hard way!)

Manufacturers build systems to tight margins and most wouldn’t expect you to drop a high power GPU in it and, I’d argue, they’d assume such a user would upgrade the PSU were they to do so.

For office / study use the PSU they put in is usually just fine but they are not suitable for higher end gaming cards, you can’t blame the manufacturers though for this, they have to make a profit and will find this by cutting corners, and this is why a dedicated gaming PC such as an Alienware costs so much more than a non gaming marketed one that otherwise has a similar specification, one will have a bargain price but components to match...

Age old adage but, you get what you pay for!