Building a PC for MS Flight Sim or X-Plane

[houseafire]

New to building a PC and have done considerable research. Wonedering if anyone would be willing to review my choice for a Gaming PC. Here are my parts list. This should spec out to the requirements of the X-Plane minimums, but I'm not sure if everything will be compatiable. Thanks for the help

RAIDMAX SMILODON Extreme Black ATX-612WEBP 1.0mm SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Foldout MB Computer Case With 500W Power Supply

GIGABYTE GA-880GA-UD3H AM3 AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

SAPPHIRE 100287VGAL Radeon HD 5670 (Redwood) 512MB 128-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 ...

Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz LGA 1156 73W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80616I3530

Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model BL2KIT25664BN1337

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

[glc]

You have a major issue there. You have chosen an Intel processor and a motherboard for an AMD processor.

Change the motherboard to an Asus P7P55D-E. Get standard 1.5 volt ram, not Ballistix. Upgrade the video card to a 5770. Check the price difference on faster i3's, last I looked an i3-540 was the same price. Buy your case without a power supply if you are going to get the Corsair PSU (recommended). The rest looks good.

[houseafire]

Thanks for your help GLC, I will make those changes.

[David M]

MFS is CPU and RAM intensive. This means you do not want one of the slower CPU's out there. You probably also want 8 gigs of RAM. Your graphics card is a little less relevant than with most games, it still makes a difference though.

You picked the X-Plane minimums. I am not aware if you know this but the minimums that software manufacturers list are the specs at which the software will run very slowly. This means you might get frustrated at how slow the flight sim runs on your computer.

You may want to re-think your specs. Go to the X-plane forums and MFS forums and ask for the specs of their computers to start getting a feel for how fast your computer needs to be to run the software at decent speeds.

PCMech can of course help you with putting together a cost effective, quality computer, but as far as the specific numbers go, you should probably ask the people at the relevant flight sim forums. Ask them and then come back here and we will make sure you get good quality reliable hardware at a fair price.

What is your budget? You will probably need to spend at minimum around $1000 for a decent flight sim computer, not including the monitor, joystick or yolk and throttle.

Then please post your new specs for everything.

[houseafire]

OK, I read the following post at A guide to building "the optimal machine" for X-Plane - X-Plane.Org Forum

And after ome of the suggestion on PCMEch, this is what I've put together. Trying to keep the budget at or around $1000 - can go higher if it really improves the performance.

Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D-E Pro LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel

Video Card: SAPPHIRE 100283L Radeon HD 5770 (Juniper XT) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support

PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power

CPU: Intel i7-920 2.66GHz LGA1366 8MB CPU

Memory: OCZ Gold 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Low Voltage Desktop Memory Model OCZ3G1333LV8GK

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

DVD: ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM

[ryuk999]

That processor is not compatible with your motherboard socket. Try this one. i7 860

[David M]

For another 10 bucks, you could go with the LGA 1156 i-7 870.

I would scale your graphics card up card up to a AMD 5850 or an Nvidia 460 w/1GB of RAM.

Go with a more reliable brand of RAM such as Corsair. Eight gigs is not overkill for your application. Go for the 1333, 1.5 volt DIMMS.

The 750 watt Corsair PSU is a good one but you can cut back to a 650 watt Corsair unit and save a little money.

One thing about flight simulators is that they are amazing on multiple monitors. You really get much more of a sense of flying because you see much more of the ground out your peripheral vision. It's also easier to see other aircraft or taxiways off to the side....or the bad guys who want to shoot you out of the sky.

If you ever think you want to have three monitors then get nothing less than a 5870, which is capable of running three monitors in Eyefinity. I have tried MSF with two monitors but is is annoying having a monitor bezel right down the middle of where you are pointed. With Nvidia it takes two cards to run three monitors.

[glc]

Unless you are planning on using SLI or Crossfire, save a few bucks and get the P7P55D-E - not the Pro board.