looking for a new FSX suitable silent system

[bstolle]

Guess it's time to slooowly start thinking about switching to win7 (especially due to the upcoming ie9) and a new system.
As I don't like the whine and noise of the PC fans, even my present PC is already almost a silent system with heatpipes and slow rotating fans.
After looking at a few companies the following questions remain.

Due to the heatpipe cooling I think that OC the CPU and/or GPU is out of question.
My old core 2 duo E6850 runs at the default 3.00GHz so switching to an i7 with 2.8GHz doesn't make much sense.
Guess going for the i7-960 with 3.2GHz is best ? (as everything else is too expensive).

Are 6GB RAM enough, or are 12GB significantly enhancing win7/FSX.

For the GPU only rather 'slow' ones are available due to the fact that they need to be passive cooled.
The Radeon 5750 or 5770 or the GT220?
However, any of these will be better suited for FSX / Win7 than my GeForce 8800GTS

Mainboard either the GA-X58A-UD7 or the P6X58D-E ?

With the rather low powered GPU, 550W should be enough or even 450W? No need to go for 750 I assume.

Last but not least the SSD question. Either from Super Talent, Intel or Corsair.

Thanx guys in advance for your help :)

Best regards

Bernt

[Daube]

Guess it's time to slooowly start thinking about switching to win7 (especially due to the upcoming ie9) and a new system.
As I don't like the whine and noise of the PC fans, even my present PC is already almost a silent system with heatpipes and slow rotating fans.
After looking at a few companies the following questions remain.

I've just changed my computer too, I'll try to help.



Due to the heatpipe cooling I think that OC the CPU and/or GPU is out of question.
My old core 2 duo E6850 runs at the default 3.00GHz so switching to an i7 with 2.8GHz doesn't make much sense.
Guess going for the i7-960 with 3.2GHz is best ? (as everything else is too expensive).

That's the CPU I choosed. I don't know if it's really the best choice, if you are comfortable with overclocking, perhaps some smaller I7 might be a good choice too. I mean, the i7 960 is still very expensive, isn't it ?
Also, I took a aircooling Noctua NH-U12P and it's quite silent, since the fan is big and not spinning so fast.



Are 6GB RAM enough, or are 12GB significantly enhancing win7/FSX.

For FSX, 6 are more than enough. FSX is a 32 bits application, so it won't be able to use more than 4 Gb of RAM, even if the system is.
I have Seven64 as well, with 6Gb of Kingston HyperX, running FSX Acceleration with FTX NA and a complex plane, I haven't experienced any "out of memory" errors. And yes, I have completely disabled the swap file, no virtual memory.


For the GPU only rather 'slow' ones are available due to the fact that they need to be passive cooled.
Why ? The GTX480 that I have is not so loud. Also, you can tweak the fan speeds if you really need.



Mainboard either the GA-X58A-UD7 or the P6X58D-E ?

The motherboard is something I consider extremely important. My personnal experience over the last 15 years made me prefer Asus boards.


With the rather low powered GPU, 550W should be enough or even 450W? No need to go for 750 I assume.

450W might be just sufficient. Just go for a good one. Also, you don't know what you'll install in this case next ;)




Last but not least the SSD question. Either from Super Talent, Intel or Corsair.

I went for two Intel 80Gb. Perhaps not the best choice, I don't know, I didn't compare. The fact is that I bought the first one some months ago, and since I was extremely satisfied with it, I took the same for the new computer. So now, I have one SSD for the system, and one for FSX. 80 Gb is a bit small, but I can always put some sceneries on the system's disk :)
Also, I have a 250 Gb "normal" harddrive, for normal storage (movies, archives, normal games etc....)