New PC for FSX and P3DV2. What do you guys recommend?

I didn't want to hijack JIMJAM's thread, so I thought I would ask here about building a new PC that can handle FSX and P3Dv2. Here are some questions I have;

1) I currently have my FSX installed on an external HD. If I build the new rig, I would assume I would have to install FSX to the new rig then redirect it's installation (Drive letter) to my existing HD and then copy over the config settings from the old rig to the new rig to get this to work? I have moved it from one ext HD to another before, but I haven't moved it from one rig to another and I'm not sure if it can even be done. I'm hoping so, because I have years worth of scenery installations and aircraft tweaks on it.

2) I'll eventually go over fully to P3Dv2 once many of the aircraft I like in FSX can be moved over, so I would consider the new rig to be optimized for running P3Dv3 more than FSX. Though I would like to be able to run both with all of the sliders to the right.

Thanks,

Ken

Hi Sundog,

I don't think that you're doing yourself a favour running any sim on an external hard disk. The data transfer rates will never reach those of SATA3, especially if you opt for SSD drives. So I wouldn't. There is however nothing that stops you from copying over the aircraft, addon scenery and so forth to the new install. I guess it would even be easier that what you described.

As for P3D v2.5xxx the main thing to consider is a graphics card that supports DX11 (most current ones do) with preferably 4 Gb's of its own RAM. I use an EVGA GTX970 and am very happy with it. Also (and this will benefit FSX as well) overclock the CPU tot about 4 GHz. Seems to be the sweet spot for most sims. 8 Gb's of RAM (the fastest possible) are a nice thing to have. If you have the cash, go for 16.

Operating system? Windows 7 64 bit is nice, but you could also wait for Windows 10 to come out. We're testing Windows 10 at work and it is very promising indeed.

Hope this helps.

Johan

After years of operating FSX on a low spec machine I finally upgraded. I run FSX-SE.

I got a Cyberpower build for about $2000 USD.

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i7 6700K @ 4.00GHz 25 °C
Skylake 14nm Technology
RAM
8.00GB Dual-Channel Ripjaws @ 1510MHz (15-16-16-35)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z170 PRO GAMING (LGA1151) 26 °C
Graphics
ASUS VE278 (1920x1080@60Hz)
4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (ZOTAC International) 31 °C
Storage
476GB Samsung SSD 850 PRO 512G SCSI Disk Device (SSD) 29 °C

Optical Drives
HL-DT-ST BDDVDRW UH12NS30 SCSI CdRom Device
Audio
Realtek High Definition Audio

It runs very good but I still see autogen loading in the distance when I'm at lower altitudes (1000-5000' AGL) I don't overclock and I have most sliders at the ORBX recommendation.

Hope this helps.

Obie