I'm considering two. This is momentous decision because at my age (knocking on the door of SS) this will be my last PC purchase. My current gaming PC has been wonderful. I bought it from a boutique gaming PC maker and have been extraordinarily happy with it. But it's old, in my view. And I want something more powerful for the few remaining sims worth playing, like FSX, that are CPU intensive. I have about a thousand dollars in add-ons and peripherals just for FSX. Of course, I will also load the whole DCS series on the new PC, to speed them up, and the Total War series.

I've narrowed it down to two, although the configurations are not identical, they are close. Both are part of the new mini case PC trend. Big ass towers no longer interest me. I'm budgeting up to a maximum of 4K. I don't always go for the most expensive set up.

PC A (Falcon Northwest):
Tiki model:
Silverstone 450 Watt SFX
ASUS Maximus VI Impact mobo
i7 4770K 3.5GHz (overclocked)
Asetek Liquid Cooling
1866MHz 16GB
Geforce GTX 780Ti 3GB
On-board audio
Crucial M500 SSD 240GB Operating System Drive
WD Green 2TB second drive
Windows 8.1
Price: $3,220 U.S.

PC B (Digital Storm):
Bolt II model (released this week)
i7 4770K 3.50 GHz (overclocked)
Motherboard: ASUS MAXIMUS VI IMPACT
System Memory: 32GB DDR3 2133MHz
Power Supply: 500W Digital Storm Bolt II Edition
Corsair 120GB Solid State
Crucial 960GB Solid State second drive
GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB
Integrated Motherboard Audio
240mm Radiator Liquid CPU Cooler (Extreme-Performance Edition)
Airflow Control: Digital Storm HydroLux Thermal Management Control Board & Software
Windows 8.1
Price: $3,873 U.S.

PC B looks way cooler, I think, and the mini-tower is designed to be used horizontally like a console or vertically. It also comes with kind of STeam controller thing which I don't want. I don't want a combo PC/Steam box. FSX doesn't need Steam.

I know some of you love building your own. I have no interest in doing so and am fortunate to be able to afford a new PC to replace my ancient, overclocked i7 920 with 12GB RAM, Creative Sound card, GTX 580 3GB vid card, and no SSDs. Pretend you are me. Kind of. Which of the two configurations would you buy?

Problem with both systems: Minimum recommended power supply is 600 watts. With all you've got going on there I would bump up at least a bit for peace of mind and get maybe a 700-800 80 Plus Gold power supply. Be sure the power is there on a single rail for the gpu, which shouldn't be an issue at that level.
Have to watch these pre-built systems, they like to cheap out on the power supply to cut corners. Might be enough power to get going, but it will be the first thing to go or to give you issues when you push the system.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139011


On the first pc, the smaller SSD is fine for your OS as long as you relocate your directories for music, docs, video etc and don't plan on installing much on there at all.
Swap that WD green drive for a 1 TB green drive and a 1 TB regular speed drive (doesn't have to be super fast black drive). Green for your backup and the other for your games. It would be ridiculous to spend this much and not have a dedicated back up drive for your system image and regular backup. Best would be to keep the 2 TB for that and add a 1 TB so you can cover your OS as well as game drives.

On the second: that's a VERY expensive 2nd drive. If you're ok with spending that, then go for it. You still need to grab another drive for system image and backup though.

It sounds like you're saying SSDs are no good for storing photos, videos and such? Having two SSDs is not good?

No, just saying that space goes fast. And you need backups.
A 120GB drive isn't likely to actually be a full 120GB. Then throw on the OS, etc and you quickly use up space. I have almost nothing installed on my 120GB SSD but Win7 and it's barely got 20GB left.
Green drives are fine for backup, but not so much for running off of. Especially if you ever do any video capping.
If you have a good sized backup drive, you can create an image of both your OS drive as well as your gaming drive.

thanks. Great advice. How important is system RAM? Will 32MB of 2133MHz Ram make a huge difference for gaming (especially FSX with add-ons) versus 16MB of 1600MHZ RAM?

Have you anyone who will build a system for you if you have no interest doing it yourself?

For the amount of money you are prepared to spend can get much better components and ultimately a better return when cherry picking the components to make up this rig.

Actually, 16GB probably won't make much or any difference above even 8GB for now, and I doubt that difference in speed is noticeable either. However, memory being cheap, don't sweat the $50 to go 16GB over the 8GB. I wouldn't bother with 32GB unless I wanted to use half of it for a 16GB RAM drive (would FSX fit on that, including installation space?).

I have no idea. You're talking to a non-techie. I don't know what a RAM drive is. But I can say that FSX with my add-ons would need considerably more than 16GB. Triple digits at least. Sounds like I should just go for the 16 and save money.

I think you're getting mixed up with storage and system RAM?

FSX is a 32-bit app therefore can't use any more than 4GB anyway....obviously your OS and any applications running in the background (including the add-ons) can also take an additional chunk of the memory but 8GB should be fine and 16GB more than plenty to cover the most demanding FSX load.

No, he's right in the case of what I mentioned. A RAM drive (or RAM disk) dedicates ___ GB of system memory to be used as if it's a hard drive rather than system memory. When the pc shuts down, since memory is volatile, it's writes an image of what's on it to another drive. Boot up the pc and it reapplies the image. The result is having the fastest drive you could have to run off of, but not much space for it.

http://www.radeonmemory.com/support_tutorials.php

So if FSX takes up that kind of drive space, this wouldn't be feasible. Yeah, I'd stick to the 16GB of memory since even that's still overkill.

Both are overpriced, by about $2000

Both are underpowered, the thing will throttle itself left and right, or crash left and right.

I don't even know anyone who participates in PC gaming much less care about PC technology.

I don't know about that. I've had a Digital Storm mid-tower for four years now and it runs like a Swiss watch. And customer service, on the rare occasion I've needed to call them, has been outstanding. And Falcon Northwest has an impeccable reputation. They are only overpriced if you are used to building a PC on your own.

Both systems are powerful. Both systems should give almost identical FPS with identical games -- because all that really matters is CPU speed and GPU speed.

Memory speed and hard drive (or SSD) speed have virtually no effect on FPS (but SSD in rare games sometimes prevents "hiccups" during scenery loads -- I found SSD never impacted my games).

I'm thinking like you. For this exercise, I pretend I have the money. So what I want is the best and I want NO problems later. In that connection, I second some of the above statements.

Get a 650 to 850W Gold power supply. 650 is actually plenty for the systems you've picked. Only go 850W to allow for eventually adding a second GPU for SLI.

If GTX780 is the fastest card made, get it. Otherwise, get the fastest card made. Down the road you may want to go to triple monitors (I've done so and will NEVER go back to one monitor -- the wrap around view is great for flight simulators). You need the fastest SLI (or AMD CrossFireX) for triple monitors -- hey, money is no object -- just get the best setup

Don't get a "green" drive. They are slower and are more likely to fail. Get the 2TB WD Black. The computer builder used "green" to save power to allow the small PSU. You can afford the necessary 650 to 850 PSU as in the big scheme (spending $3000 to $4000) the extra cost is not much as a percentage.

Going SSD for the OS makes sense. But, get 240GB minimum (I have 500GB SSD -- and I'm economical). With the larger SSD, if you find a few games that actually can run better on an SSD, you will have the room to install them.

Summarizing drives: Get at least 2. I would get a third for backup of your most important stuff. Can be a separate drive on the desk hooked up by USB3 -- should only cost $100 from Amazon.

$3000 to $4000 is not really much. When I was working (now I'm a Pensioner), back in 80s (IIRC), I bought my own $4500 PC for work at home at night (a lot of money back then for 60MHz Pentium CPU and 2D graphics) -- yes I was a workaholic (btw, the management found out and unexpectedly reimbursed me -- nice). Back in the 90s I bought a $1500 CRT monitor and a $2000 CRT monitor for my home system (they did not find out -- so not reimbursed). Times have changed for the better -- price and performance wise. Now I'm cheap -- so, I build stuff out of "on sale" components

Thanks Allen. Good explanation. I appreciate it, but I'll never go SLI or triple monitors. I don't have the desk space or the inclination, really. Based on your advice, I'll stay away from "green" drives and get "black" instead.

I would say a 120+ GB SSD for the OS, or at the very minimum a 90+ GB SSD. Then get a separate SSD, 250+ GB or greater for your games. How big is your FSX install now?

Having said that, don't think that you do not need a standard HDD. SSDs are for when you need speed (gaming, video recording, etc.), HDDs are for when you need storage. SSD is your sports car, HDD is your family van or pickup truck. For the amount of storage you get, HDDs make the most sense economically. Use it to store photos, videos, documents, etc. I use mine for non-speed-essential gaming such as turn-based stuff.

As for triple-screen gaming, don't diss it until you tried it. If you're getting the best GPU you can afford, it'll probably support triple-screen gaming straight out of the box. Find a couple of extra screens, either via eBay or borrow some from a friend for a while, set it up (won't be much of a pain), give it a good go, THEN come back here and tell us what you think about it! Oh, and you don't necessarily need SLI/Crossfire to drive 3 monitors.... depends on what you're playing and how much eye candy you can do without.

Oh, and +1 to all the sentiments about building it yourself --- you'll get it much cheaper, you'll gain more understanding about your hardware, and you'll be more comfortable opening it up later when overclocking or troubleshooting. Bonus is that the way these things are designed nowadays, it's hard to screw things up (such as wrong CPU placement and bending the pins!)..... Plenty of internet guides as well, and of course, SimHQ members too.

Good luck!

Ah my bad.....but yeah, can't see a RAM drive being cost effective for FSX - far too big with all the scenery addons.

"I don't know what a RAM drive is."

Through software emulation, you're able to load an application directly into system's ram and based on how you have the ram drive software setup, you're app or game will be able to run in "real time" and save any changes.

OFF TOPIC.....

Super Micro will be offering Intel's C610 chipset, incorporating trim for raid-0, on LGA2011 UP motherboards for E5-1620/1660 v2 cpus that will support up to 512gb DDR3-1866 ram (Hynix). Currently, SM tech will not disclose if the new bios will incorporate "bclk overclocking" with multipliers along with the ability to lock ram and device frequencies. If it does, E5-1660v2 can be "bclk'd" @ 1.25 with a 40 multiplier = 5ghz. An E5-1660 has already been "oc'd" like this on an ASUS motherboard.

The jist of all this "techno babble" is that it may be now possible to "dump" core FSX, P3D app along with addons and external mesh (FS Global Ultimate) into system ram. The ram drive I'd setup would be OS/VC ram(buffer)/App. Under W7_64, this would give a ram drive offering of a least 110gb drive for 128gb system ram or 238gb drive for 256gb system ram to run FSX, P3D or ?. 128gb is my target based on current addons and; however.....

This would be a fully dedicated, specialized "simulator" build with "pc" function as an after thought.

I've been waiting 7 months for this to finalize and will be doing this type of build IF the bios pans out.

ON TOPIC.....

I now return you to the discussion at hand.

OMG! I don't understand a word you wrote. You might as well be speaking Mandarin. But thanks anyway. There are so many engineer, computer science, techie people on this board. And you all seem to have a social circle of similar type folk. I don't. Where are the poets, social workers, Kindergarten teachers, philosophers, professors of literature, and artists? Building myself is out of the question. I've always purchased my gaming PCs. Boutique companies like Digital Storm and Falcon Northwest always deliver a high quality product with the exact components I would pick if I did build it myself.

I'd offer to build it for you, Plainsman.... but I suspect you are in the USA? I used to build computers for office work, worked at a computer store when I was in college. It was fun assembling 14 computers over a weekend, but this was when Pentium 4 first came out, so it was a long time ago. I've always built my own PC though.

The point between building vs. buying pre-built is not what components you can install -- I think any proper computer store can spec and build your PC for you. The point there is being able to have it for cheaper (or having a better PC for the same money) and being able to gain knowledge of your PC which will help you when things go wrong.