Hi community,

This weekend I should be putting together a new system. I generally use FSX, SF2, and Rise of Flight. I'm a bit limited in budget at the moment, so I am kind of "locked in", but here are the specs of my new system:

Corsair 500 Case
XTX 680 watt PSU
Intel i5 3750k "Ivy Bridge" @ 3.40Ghz
16Gb G-Skill Ripjaws 1600 RAM
ASROCK H77-M motherboard (no intentions to overclock).
1x128Gb Crucial M4 SSD for Windows.
1x250Gb Crucial M4 SSD for FSX only.
1x1Gb WD Caviar Black.
1xAFOX GTX550Ti Video card with 3Gb VRAM.
Windows 7 64-bit.

My main sim is FSX, so, should I get reasonable performance with the above?

All opinions appreciated.

Thanks,

Andrew.

That should do pretty well. A very capable video card, more than enough RAM and fast, high capacity SSD's for the system and for FSX itself will really help FSX shine. The PSU would be a good place to check for an upgrade, to 750 or higher if possible given the budget constraints. You could drop half the RAM if you need a little extra headroom for a more capable PSU. But even as is, your new build should run FSX very nicely.

I hate it, its ugly and its slept with my sister!
















But for running FSX it looks ideal (PSU concern as it does sound rather small)

LOL

Thanks guys :-)

The PSU's fine FishTaco as long as it's a quality brand. PSUs have an efficiency band and between 650 & 700 watts would be a perfect supply for that system.

Edit: it's the quality of the psu and how the rails are configured that's more important than raw wattage. People seem to be more concerned with the raw wattage rather than the quality recently. At peak that system would probably draw 500 watts and on continuous load about 440 watts. A premium 650-700 watt psu would last for donkeys years running that and not die.

If you want to spend more on the PSU get better quality and a modular design.

Looks good Fishtaco, the only thing I am not sure about is that NV550Ti card, and I don't see any scores for it on the AVSIM FSXMark11 benchmark results site:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...=CMSSocoI#gid=0

You might want to consider bumping up to a 560Ti if the price difference is not much, I had good results with my 560Ti until my recent upgrade and you can see on those charts lots of others with good results with it.

Just something to consider, but maybe the 550Ti is fine and just no-one did a benchmark with it.

Nice Kludger, im considering upgrading to the 670 very soon.

Thanks Paul, indeed I am very please with it so far with FSX and Arma2, but the real test will be this weekend when I setup triple monitors again for iRacing and DCS, I will let you know how it does with that.

I think you've got more than enough to run FSX and ROF smooth as a baby's bottom, without sacrificing too much visual quality. Two questions:

1. Why no overclocking?

2. Are you sure you really want a critique or are you trying to impress the hot chicks of SimHQ with your rig? (Please be honest, because if it works, I'm gonna upgrade too.)

I agree with the PSU recommendations. Corsair is boss in that department, imho.

If FishTaco want's to start running High end scenery (Aerosoft Cities, ORBX) and an environment conversion (REX), with a complex, high end aircraft (VRS Bug, Milvis Hen, PMDG 737), and an AI program, the stock clock might not cut it.

I'd also consider dropping a dedicated FSX SSD. You'll be able to fit both on that 250 gig, and with SSD prices continuing to drop by the week, I'd say wait on the second one till the fall. The other titles can go on the HDD till then. plus, the real hog will be something like REX, which can be installed to the slower HDD (with the space hogging texture library), and load the active textures (much smaller foot print) to the SSD.

I don't know how those Ivy Bridge CPUs fare with FSX, but I've found my Sandy Bridge i5 to be a little overwhelmed in the kind of situations described above (I also like to listen to music while flying and have Fraps running in the back). Of course newer tech with higher clock speeds will fare better, but it might still be a bottleneck if you want to push FSX to the limits.

I don't know what specs you're upgrading from, but my own system (see specs in sig) handles FSX, RoF and SFP:2 very well with fairly high settings, so yours should be doing an excellent job

Cheers

Nico

As some have already said, OC this CPU, FSX needs at least 3,4 GHz for running smooth with higher settings.

I think OCing is as easy with Ivy Bridge as with Sandy Bridge. My older CPU runs absolutely stable at 4,5 GHz on air-cooling. So don`t waste the potential of your CPU.