Aapje

If the only heavy thing with the PC you do is gaming, then neither of the 9950X or 9950X3D are the best choice. You are better off with the 9800X3D.

I would say that this is a big part of the problem. That people are making comparisons to a mod for a 27 year old game, shows how limited the offerings are. If there was a modern alternative to DCS, where that alternative makes different choices, then people who don't like the choices that ED makes, would have an alternative. In general, I think that having that alternative would be very healthy in a lot of different ways (for players, third party developers, but also for ED).

It's still DDR3. The GPU that is in there is already 6 years newer than the CPU. Generally the GPU can be a decent bit newer than the CPU, but I have strong doubts that the current CPU can cope with a 1080, let alone something faster. Keep in mind that even a 4060 is over twice as fast as his current GPU. And upgrading the current platform means being limited to PCIe 2.0, so that is also going to limit the performance.

That CPU is almost 15 years old and as a Xeon, is not made for gaming (workstation CPUs are made to do a lot in parallel at a steady pace, not relatively little very fast). If you only get a new GPU, it will be really held back by the platform, especially in simming, with is relatively CPU-heavy. So my advice would be to do a platform upgrade designed for further future upgrading (by getting a cheap AM5 CPU that is still way faster than what you have now and that later can be replaced with an X3D CPU). There is no point in buying a way faster GPU and have it held back so it performs like a much slower one.

No. Save up and wait for the release of future hardware.

The 14600K is quite a bit faster and it should probably help quite a bit. That said, I would advise against getting that processor unless you also run productivity software that benefits a lot from the e-cores, since you are buying into a dead platform, and cannot do a cheap upgrade in the future. With AM5 you can go for a solid upgrade with big upgrade potential, for example by getting a 7500F (from Aliexpress), 7600X or 9600X. The former is especially good value for money. For AM4, we saw that AMD released fairly cheap X3D CPUs for AM4 once they released their new platform, so going this route probably allows for a big upgrade for relatively cheap later on. You can then keep your motherboard + RAM + cooler, and only have to drop in the new CPU. Another option is to directly go to a 7800X3D or 9800X3D. Then you have a processor that is top of the line (and substantially faster than the 14600K or the cheaper AM5 options) with still a reasonable price (in particular the 7800X3D).

There is a bug in the software where they effectively lose 1/3rd of the power of native effects. They fixed that in an internal build and it should be released at one point.

The primary source are the solid review channels like Hardware Unboxed, Gamer's Nexus, etc, although they don't test DCS. But they tend to see a consistent advantage for the X3D-CPU's. We also had people here who switched to AMD and generally were happy with it. That said, I would not necessarily switch if you already have a 14900, unless money is no object and you want the last drop. The difference is not so massive that it would make a huge change. And supposedly the degradation issues are solved if you get the newest BIOS for the motherboard.

A dedicated access point in line of sight with Wifi 6E or 7 is generally strongly advised. So basically, you make a separate Wifi network on the 6 GHz band and use that only for the Quest.

Brake axis works and almost all buttons work, except for the flip trigger, that is not mapped in a useful way. The software doesn't have any way to configure the mapping, so you get what you get.

https://discord.gg/s4TUAjwA

To start off with, I'm going to ignore your irrational constraints and give the actual best advice. Then later on I'll give the fanboy advice for the CPU. For the GPU, a 5070 Ti should be able to about to hit your performance targets. A 5080 is going to have about 15% more headroom, but it probably going to cost a lot more than 15% extra. Check your local markets for the price difference and think about whether you want to spend the extra amount. A 9800X3D or 7800X3D is going to be the best CPU. The 9800X3D seems to be much more overclockable, so it is probably worth the price difference. The Intel option is a 14900, which is slower and runs way hotter & is thus much more problematic with cooling. You'll also be buying a motherboard with zero upgrade potential for the CPU, while an AM5 motherboard will get at least one more generation. Of course you are free to make bad choices in life, but after already making the bad choice of getting the 10600 (a stopgap solution released because Intel couldn't get their 10 nm process working), do you really want to make another bad choice just because Intel used to do well for you? PS. Get 64 GB of DDR5-6000

Yes, but you need an adapter: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSflUrHfM9AB0f-0WGyhOLxvXQNMr7E8TBDSYYJUBQ8kqaDC7g/viewform

You should give your rough location so people will know if shipping is going to be an issue. And your picture is broken.

Just keep in mind that Virpil has long delivery times and that you should take the displayed delivery times with a huge grain of salt. If you get their CDT stick, I would suggest getting at least one Throttle Module with it. You can never have enough axes, IMO.