LOOKING TO BUILD A NEW PC FOR FSX THEN LOOK HERE!

[txnetcop]

Thanks Ted, I am running 2 monitors on an GT9600 now and it works fine, I think the biggest problem may be heat and power, I think the performance should be fine for my purposes, I am just not sure a 750Watt PSU will drive 2 high power cards and I am a little concerned about heat as well.

Looking at the cards I mentioned they have dual DVI outputs so they should work fine I just wonder how much power they will require and hot hot they will get. I have a coolermaster case and it cools fine but I think this might push it just a bit...

1000 to 1200 watts is probably a good idea if you go with 570 or 580GTX. I talked to James and he told me I could come in on Wed and setup a full system to include different power supplies to see what works. I'll let you know. Kilo Delta mention the AMD (ATI) Infinity the only problem I have the AMD video cards is that the cockpit lines around the radios and on all the FS9 portovers seem too jagged for my taste...but that is a personal thing. ATI 6870 is a real sweetheart of video card. I had tested three of them and liked them all...not overly impressed with the 6970s yet.
Ted

[gigabyte]

Thanks Ted, I will be interested in your findings, I did see a card roday that will support 4 monitors, first time I have come across a single card with 4 digital outputs. I might get a chance to test it next week and I am interested in how that works. I didn't have time to get the details the shop was closing, but the box clearly said "Supports 4 Monitors and there was a sticker showing 4 DVI output connectors. Mind you the price is up there, $479.00 (I know they will give me a break on the price but it will still be costly).

I will look at what you have to say first, the idea of a single card is appealing I suspect it would require less power, and by the time I bought two cards, and a bigger PSU I expect the costs will be close anyway.

Of course the real issue is always getting this stuff installed without the wife seeing... the card(s) I can manage but when a 4th monitor appears on the desk I am betting she will notice...

[txnetcop]

ROFL about the wife not seeing...it's funny my wife says she knows nothing about computers but she always knows when I sneak something onto mine...I think it must be the look on my face when she comes in the room! LOL

[AndyE1976]

Having got permission from the misses last night I took the plunge and ordered an i7-960, Asus P6X58D mb, 12gb RAM and a Gigabyte GTX580. All sitting in a Cooler master HAF932 case and cooled by a Zalman CNPS10X.

750w Thermaltake PSU and HDD's are coming from my current machine.

I was going to go with a 2600K, but Newegg appears to be out of all 1155 motherboards except the really basic ones.

It'll be my first build, but having read through the online mb manual I don't think it should be too tricky.

Looking forward to finally being able to fly in Aerosoft's London or Manhatten X at double digit FPS

Thanks to txnetcop for all the great information you've posted in this thread.

[txnetcop]

Having got permission from the misses last night I took the plunge and ordered an i7-960, Asus P6X58D mb, 12gb RAM and a Gigabyte GTX580. All sitting in a Cooler master HAF932 case and cooled by a Zalman CNPS10X.

750w Thermaltake PSU and HDD's are coming from my current machine.

I was going to go with a 2600K, but Newegg appears to be out of all 1155 motherboards except the really basic ones.

It'll be my first build, but having read through the online mb manual I don't think it should be too tricky.

Looking forward to finally being able to fly in Aerosoft's London or Manhatten X at double digit FPS

Thanks to txnetcop for all the great information you've posted in this thread.

I like the SandyBridge boards with 2600k and 2700k CPUs but I am partial to the i7 Core PERIOD! Good choice and you are right it will not be that hard! Holler if ya need help!
Ted

[AndyE1976]

It seems to be really hard to track down an LGA1155 board at the moment and I like the idea that I can go to a 990X just by changing the chip.

One tip that I could use is with regard to the thermal paste. I've ordered arctic silver, but do you have any tips for applying it to the CPU so I don't kill the damn thing!

[txnetcop]

It seems to be really hard to track down an LGA1155 board at the moment and I like the idea that I can go to a 990X just by changing the chip.

One tip that I could use is with regard to the thermal paste. I've ordered arctic silver, but do you have any tips for applying it to the CPU so I don't kill the damn thing!

It really depends on the type of CPU/FAN heatsink you buy...for instance:


[Step #1 - Thermal paste application on 3rd party H.D.T Direct-touch Heatsink]
* if your heatsink is the standard flat base-plate model, then skip this Step and proceed to Step 2.

This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 600x488.

Directions:-
1. Shown above is an example of the base of a standard 3-heatpipe H.D.T design Heatsink (Xigmatek 1283). (yours might have 4 exposed pipes, etc..)
2. Apply thermal paste by gently injecting the syringe along the grooves in between the copper and aluminium parts. (not the 4 yellow dots but the 4 strips of grooves in between the exposed copper!)
3. Use a flexible card (name card, playing cards, etc) to spread of the paste evenly and ensure the grooves in between are filled properly.
4. Clean off the excess paste on the exposed copper areas and it should resemble the picture above.
5. I would personally put 4 THIN-LAYERED drops at the yellow spots as shown above, to ensure corner coverage after the heatsink is mounted.

This is only one method. Some 3rd party fan/heatsinks for the core i7 already have Arctic Silver or the new Ceramique paste so let me know which fan/heatsink you buy.
Ted

[AndyE1976]

Thanks, that helps.

I have a Zalman CNPS10X Quiet heatsink/fan coming.

This one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118052

[txnetcop]

Yours is a flat surface type of head. Zalman is one of the best coolers and makes a very good paste I would go with what is on it...although some of the newer ones do not have it applied. If that is the case a single stripe of paste deadcenter is adequate. They supply your paste last time I looked. AS5 or Ceramique either is really good. Some engineers here at TechCorp prefer ceramique for heat dissipation.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/ceramique.htm

This tells you how to apply AS5 or Ceramique and is correct!
http://www.arcticsilver.com/intel_ap...on_method.html

Ted

[AndyE1976]

Thanks for your help, everything arrived and got built up last night and today it even booted (well after I put the memory in the right slots!)

Just trying to get W7 to like it's new home as I brought my HDD's over from my old machine in the hope that it would just pick up the new hardware, but that might have been optimistic.

Hopefully get a chance to try FSX tomorrow.

[txnetcop]

Wow Andy I would start out with a new fast hard drive for Win7...my opinion! Glad ya got her workin'!!! WOOOHOOOO!
Ted

[AndyE1976]

I think the problem is the bios is seeing the drives in a different order than when they were in the old machine so Windows is confused. Reinstalling W7 is no biggy though.

Minor heart attack when it wouldn't post until I figured out the memory was in the wrong slots!

Everything seems to be working though and I have stable temps of 32.5c on the CPU acording to BIOS.

New HDD's are in the plan, but just not quite yet. The old one's will have to soldier on for a few months.

[paulb]

New HDD's are in the plan, but just not quite yet. The old one's will have to soldier on for a few months.

Hi Andy

Your spec looks great! Good luck with it.

Re the HDD's - on my old pc I became very fed up with the long loading times. Even when I wanted to change aircraft in sim, it seemed to take ages. So, for my new pc I went for SSDs. Originally I was going for one biggish one, but after looking at the prices I went for two - a 64GB and a 128GB. I loaded W7 onto the 64GB and FSX (only) onto the 128GB. BTW, my current FSX install is a bit over 80GB. I also have two normal 7,200 1TB HDs for everything else.

Anyway, to the point of my post - the SSDs are amazing! No other word for it. Everything is just so fast now to load. It probably even helps a little with the frame rate as any new scenery that I fly over (I use OrbX/FTX a lot) will load much faster.

These are the ones that I bought -
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...64mag-1g1.html

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/p...28mag-1g1.html

I have had them for about a month now, and they are great.

I thought that it might be of interest to you.

Cheers

Paul

[AndyE1976]

Thanks, I'm looking at getting a PCI-E SSD at some point as there are some reasonable size drives now in the $400-500 range, I purposely got a MB with enough space for that. I also have two free SATA III ports which I also think might find an SSD attached to them at some stage.

I had to keep this build within somewhat sensible limits hence sticking with the old drives, but as soon as I can get away with it I'll put something better in there - at least a RAID 0 array if not SSD's.

My first quick test flight over London with all the sliders to the right got me 50fps steady, so I'm looking forward to trying Aerosoft London and PNW. Aerosoft London was always a bigger killer for me than Manhatten X, so I'm interested to see how that performs.

Definitely no regrets so far.

[gigabyte]

1000 to 1200 watts is probably a good idea if you go with 570 or 580GTX. I talked to James and he told me I could come in on Wed and setup a full system to include different power supplies to see what works. I'll let you know. Kilo Delta mention the AMD (ATI) Infinity the only problem I have the AMD video cards is that the cockpit lines around the radios and on all the FS9 portovers seem too jagged for my taste...but that is a personal thing. ATI 6870 is a real sweetheart of video card. I had tested three of them and liked them all...not overly impressed with the 6970s yet.
Ted

Hey Ted, were you ever able to test out the Gigabyte 5770? I am pretty much sold on it for my needs but would be interested to see any comments you might have. I came across a deal for a 5770 for $150.00 Cdn and the 5750 for $160.00 why the new better card is less I am not sure? I am going t go look at it tomorrow to confirm my plans will work but I think it is what I want.

I also confirmed I have an 800 Watt PSU so this is a better option for now, it will support 3 monitors on one card and the total draw is only 45 watts so Ithink I am ok n power for the time being.