In search of a new computer

[Quicksand]

Hi all. I've not posted in a long while, as my computer is making my flying experience an exercise in futility. I'm unable to fly the newer aircraft. They will load and display, but for framerates I'm getting a slideshow. My old machine is a seven year old HP Pavillion laptop, and served me well until recently. What specs should I look for when picking out a new machine. I'd really like to get back in the air soon. Thanks for any insight you guys can provide.

[blanston12]

Are you looking for a laptop or desktop?

If laptop I got one of these last year and have been very happy with it.

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-...ware-17-laptop

[Priller]

I'm afraid that, in this day and age, laptops are futile for flightsim if you're looking for the biggest bang for the buck. I.e. laptops are more expensive and offer less performance.

You should be searching for a machine with at least this (for FSX or P3Dv4)

• Intel i5 CPU as close to or surpassing 4 Ghz
• at least 8 Gb's of RAM
• nvidia GTX970 or 1070

This is of course just my humble opinion.

Priller

[Quicksand]

Thanks Joe. I'm really wanting to stay away from any more laptops. I'm doing everything I used to do with my laptop, except fly of course, on my phone now. You are right, Priller. I was fortunate that my laptop kept up as long as it did.

[blanston12]

I use the laptop so I’m not locked away in the den separated from everyone else, and with that laptop the only compromise I made was a GTX1080 instead of the TI, of course I had to pay for it.

[Jafo]

I'm afraid that, in this day and age, laptops are futile for flightsim if you're looking for the biggest bang for the buck. I.e. laptops are more expensive and offer less performance.

You should be searching for a machine with at least this (for FSX or P3Dv4)

• Intel i5 CPU as close to or surpassing 4 Ghz
• at least 8 Gb's of RAM
• nvidia GTX970 or 1070

This is of course just my humble opinion.

Priller

This....except forget a 970...go with a 980 - much better card.
Keep well away from laptops if you want to run around in FSX....[instead you'll be walking]...

[Stefano Zibell]

If your only concern is FSX, you don't even need to spend much, as FSX doesn't care for core count. Even a cheap pentium today should get the job done, although I'd go with an i3 8100, which is actually a quad-core like previous generation i5's.

As for graphics cards, a GTX 1060 is roughly equivalent to a 970, and doesn't cost much, I'd go with that. (get the 6gb one)

[blanston12]

Keep well away from laptops if you want to run around in FSX....[instead you'll be walking]...

Your living in the past, the modern gaming laptop has more than enough power for the 12 year old FSX.

In my rig I have an i7-7820HK, 32GB of ram, a GTX1080 video card and a 1TB M2 SSD (with a 2TB magnetic disk for extra storage). Not only does it run FSX well, it runs P3D4 well.

Biggest downside is that when a newer better video card comes out it will be very hard to upgrade.

[Stefano Zibell]

Your living in the past, the modern gaming laptop has more than enough power for the 12 year old FSX.

In my rig I have an i7-7820HK, 32GB of ram, a GTX1080 video card and a 1TB M2 SSD (with a 2TB magnetic disk for extra storage). Not only does it run FSX well, it runs P3D4 well.

Biggest downside is that when a newer better video card comes out it will be very hard to upgrade.

Biggest downside is it costs a fortune.

[blanston12]

Biggest downside is it costs a fortune.

Well, that's not far from the truth.

[ThomasAH]

Do you want to run Windows 7 or 10? Beware that Windows 7 is only supported up to the 6th generation of Intel chipsets+processors (and similar generations for AMD, but I don't know the exact details there).
I just upgraded from a 10 years old computer to an i7-6700K on a Z170 mainboard with 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM. I would say this is the best you can get if you want to stay with Windows 7 (as I do). There are 6th gen CPUs with more than 4 CPU cores, but they (and the corresponding mainboard) are far too expensive.
I already had an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, which I consider enough for a single monitor with 1920x1080px, but if you can afford a bigger model, that will probably be a benefit.

[blanston12]

I think the only time to consider win 7 or 10 is when win 7 is already installed. If your getting a new machine get 10.

Also so are you going to stick with FSX or upgrade to P3d? If you thinking of trying P3d (I recommend it) get at least a GTX 1070 video card and 16gb of ram.

[Victory103]

I normally agree with the gaming laptop coming from a long running ASUS 17" G-series rig that was doing fine with FSX and my other sims (settings lowered). I was just going to upgrade to the latest series gaming laptop, but honestly I don't bring my TM Warthog on the road, so hauling this huge brick around was now pointless. I was also so worried about it I purchased a Pelican case for my overseas trips. Agree with specs as I also transition to P3D, take a look on Newegg.com.

[Daveroo]

ve a look at http://www.ecollegepc.com/ ,you can buy one "off the shelf" or have it buuilt with what you want,i did that and now have an awesome pc for p3d

[Stefano Zibell]

It takes about a couple hours to put together a PC, less if you have some experience. Anyone can do it. It's cheaper, more personal, and the only one responsible for the build quality is you. My opinion.

[blanston12]

It takes about a couple hours to put together a PC, less if you have some experience. Anyone can do it. It's cheaper, more personal, and the only one responsible for the build quality is you. My opinion.

Yes I have done that many times, but make sure you get quality components (especially the motherboard), otherwise when things go wrong it can be very harry.

[Quicksand]

Honestly, I've never thought about running p3d. When I upgrade, my biggest concern is to make sure my rig will keep up with the increasing complexity of the add-ons that are available now, and those that are on the horizon. Thanks for all of replies. I appreciate everyone's insight.

[ThomasAH]

I think the only time to consider win 7 or 10 is when win 7 is already installed. If your getting a new machine get 10.

Yes, I was still using my old hard disks, and despite skipping 10 years of hardware it worked absolutely flawless, but of course I needed to activate Windows 7 again (via telephone), and FSX (boxed), too.

[wombat666]

Honestly, I've never thought about running p3d. When I upgrade, my biggest concern is to make sure my rig will keep up with the increasing complexity of the add-ons that are available now, and those that are on the horizon. Thanks for all of replies. I appreciate everyone's insight.

To be brutally frank, it comes down to how much money you want to spend.
Like tuning a car 'How fast can you make it go?'....................'How much money can you spend?'
Building your own rig is worth considering, at least you can choose your own components with an eye toward upgrading and it is a very satisfying experience.
While you might want to stick with FSX eventually you might also to go P3D4 and it is nice to have the option of tweaking your very own custom built box!
And a BTW:Laptops suck, good for business purposes etc but not much else.

[blanston12]

Honestly, I've never thought about running p3d. When I upgrade, my biggest concern is to make sure my rig will keep up with the increasing complexity of the add-ons that are available now, and those that are on the horizon. Thanks for all of replies. I appreciate everyone's insight.

That was my concern also, its already getting to the point where the limiting factor is FSX itself, thats why 64bit P3D4 should be considered.

[Stefano Zibell]

To be brutally frank, it comes down to how much money you want to spend.
Like tuning a car 'How fast can you make it go?'....................'How much money can you spend?'
Building your own rig is worth considering, at least you can choose your own components with an eye toward upgrading and it is a very satisfying experience.
While you might want to stick with FSX eventually you might also to go P3D4 and it is nice to have the option of tweaking your very own custom built box!
And a BTW:Laptops suck, good for business purposes etc but not much else.

I wouldn't say they suck because for some having the mobility is important.

They do however operate under severe thermal constraints, which impacts performance, and have a blocked upgrade path. Also cost a lot.


And for FSX's sake alone there's a point when throwing more money simply won't make any difference. Between an i3 and an i7 you'll gain 2 fps. GPU's are a better investment, but only because some developers go full psycho with poly counts and texture sizes (an atrocity that happens far too often if you ask me).

[Bjoern]

Laptops are okay if the CPU can do at least 3 GHz, the video card has its own, dedicated memory, the RAM is fast and there is a large SSD.
For exclusive home use, a desktop PC is still superior though, since laptop keyboards are not what they used to be and trackpads are absolutely the worst.

For people that are out and about, often staying in hotel rooms, at the mistresses' or generally outside the house dragon's domain, a powerful laptop and an XBox 360 pad offers a good, compact flightsimming setup. With a long enough HDMI cable, one can even (ab)use the TV in the room as a second monitor. Heck, with the webcam, Opentrack and a basecap with an Aruco tracker, even a cheap TrackIR substitute is possible!


Never had an issue with thermal throttling on my laptop. Only third degree burns on my thighs when laying in bed with it.

[Stefano Zibell]

Laptops are okay if the CPU can do at least 3 GHz, the video card has its own, dedicated memory, the RAM is fast and there is a large SSD.
For exclusive home use, a desktop PC is still superior though, since laptop keyboards are not what they used to be and trackpads are absolutely the worst.

For people that are out and about, often staying in hotel rooms, at the mistresses' or generally outside the house dragon's domain, a powerful laptop and an XBox 360 pad offers a good, compact flightsimming setup. With a long enough HDMI cable, one can even (ab)use the TV in the room as a second monitor. Heck, with the webcam, Opentrack and a basecap with an Aruco tracker, even a cheap TrackIR substitute is possible!


Never had an issue with thermal throttling on my laptop. Only third degree burns on my thighs when laying in bed with it.

Change that to an Xbox One controller nowadays. Superior d-pad.

About opentrack and the aruco paper thingy... Best thing I've not spent any money on, ever.

[Bjoern]

Change that to an Xbox One controller nowadays. Superior d-pad.

Eh, I only need it for panning the view (the right stick only snap pans by default), so precision is not that relevant for my usage.

[Rudyjo]

About three years ago I was in your shoes, I also asked a lot of questions on these forums.
One thing that so many people said was "Build it yourself, you'll get a better computer and it's not hard to do".
All I could think was "Me build a computer? No way!"
I ended up watching some videos on building a computer and had to admit that there isn't much to it. I ordered all the parts from Newegg that had excellent reviews. When I was ready to put it together, I watched the videos again and then putting it together was almost like doing it for the fifth time.
Everyone was right, there isn't much to it, for the most part, everything snaps into the motherboard.
If I could do it, anyone can if they really want to.
If you ordered a computer, the computer shop would have it put together in an hour, even if it took you five hours, you'll save a bunch money, get a better computer and you'll feel great about doing it. I've never regretted it and I have never had a problem with it.