Aapje

I have other priorities first (including an FFB base, but it does look very interesting).

The 5800X3D is now discontinued, but the 5700X3D is a good alternative.

Interesting. Do you plan to make a kit for those who already have a Crosswind?

A 5% discount is their standard discount that anyone can get by leaving stuff in the cart for a while, so it's not really compensation.

Technically that is true, but if you enable XMP/EXPO, then the motherboard uses the timings that are defined on the RAM stick. So if you have RAM sticks with different XMP/EXPO settings, you get a mess. Of course you can override that, but very few people run custom timings. Figuring out what timings work by yourself is beyond most users, and my advice to replace the entire kit is exactly to prevent people from getting into a situation that they are unable to get themselves out of, because of a lack of skills, time, or willingness to take the effort.

@kksnowbear Building a new system with 4 populated RAM slots is far less error prone than going from 2 to 4. Any difference in timings can wreck havoc with stability, but most people only understand the speeds and think that any 3200 kit (for example) is the same as any other 3200 kit. Even if you buy the same product name at different moments, you might actually be getting memory from different manufacturers with different timings (almost all memory is made by a different company than the one that is selling it and they can switch manufacturers to save money). Only when buying the 4 sticks of the same product name at the same time, are you almost certain to get 4 times the exact same thing, that comes from the same batch. This is why I would always advise replacing/installing all memory in 1 go, if reasonably possible. For a gamer with relatively low RAM requirements, that would generally mean something like removing the existing 2x8 or 2x16 kit and replacing it with a new 2x16 or 2x32 kit.

With the Rhino, we know that telemetry-based FFB in IL-2 is much better than the native FFB. Here someone who tried both, called the native FFB anemic in comparison to using the Rhino software: https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/87017-vpforce-rhino-modern-ffb-joystick/?do=findComment&comment=1329498 But my expectation is that it will take quite a while before Moza is up to par with the Rhino software, although they do have the benefit of being able to learn from it.

Interesting choice of music.

Yes, there is a benefit, since you are also pumping less heat into your house, need less cooling in your PC and will have a less noisy PC. A 7800X3D seems to save roughly 100 Watts compared to a 13700k, which probably uses about as much as a 12900k: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78lp1TGFvKc So that is 0.1 KWh saved per hour of gaming. With the current average prices of of 32 eurocents per KWh in my country, that is 3.2 cents per hour of gaming. If you game 20 hours a week, that is 64 cents a week, and 33 euro and 28 cents a year. So if that CPU lasts 3 years until the next upgrade, then you save 100 euros on electricity during that period. And again, because you guys keep misreading me, I am not claiming that you will earn it all back. How much you earn back depends on all kinds of factors, like the pricing of components at that time, your electricity prices, how much you game, at what settings, etc. And you also need to factor in that the depreciation of the 7800X3D or 9800X3D is probably less than for the 12900K, if you resell it. What actually matters is the TCO. Of course, right now the situation is pretty much as bad as it can be, with the current inflated prices for the 7800X3D. But I've seen the 7800X3D go as low as 329 euro in my country, so with that kind of pricing you would in fact earn back the difference completely in 3 years of 20 h/week gaming.

Well, you will probably use it for years, and I never said that you would earn back the difference, but that it reduces the gap. There are a bunch of other benefits, like having less heat and being able to get a simpler cooling solution.

@pierscockey Yes, that is the exact same text as in the racing wheel software.

Rumor has it that the 9800X3D will be out before the end of the month, so I would definitely suggest waiting for that. AMD does tend to overprice their product at the start, so Intel may still be cheaper, although I would personally be willing to pay a premium for a less power hungry part (it will save money on the electricity bill anyway).

The number of threads doesn't mean very much unless you know how much CPU time the threads use. Lots of threads can share one CPU core, if they don't actually do that much.

Knowing that Winwing will come out with one as well and that the Moza software still has a way to go, helps with the FOMO.

The car racing FFB bases also have aggressive or conservative temp control modes, with a 10 degree (celsius) difference, although in that case, the aggressive mode warns that the the housing may get very hot. But I think that there is far less ability of heat to go from the motors to the housing in the flight base, so I wouldn't expect the housing to experience any significant heat before it would throttle down.

Like I said before, AMD is the best for gaming right now and provides the best upgrade path in the future. This is roughly what I would suggest for a top tier DCS VR gaming build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/MGVmdH Except that I would replace the 7800X3D with the 9800X3D which should come later this month, and the 4090 with a 5080 or 5090, if you are willing to wait until early next year. Going with the 5080 should probably cut the cost of the build by around $1000, for very similar performance. And the 5090 should be considerably faster. For the components, I didn't optimize for value, but went with the better components even if it cost a bit more, when you actually get a meaningful improvement for that extra money. I chose lots of RAM, because DCS likes that. And a 4 TB drive should provide plenty of space to start with, and the motherboard has room for 3 more (slower) storage drives, so plenty of room to expand the storage. For the case, it is a matter of taste whether you want the one with a glass side panel or a closed side panel. And then pair it with a Pimax Crystal Light. So all in with the headset that should come to around $4k if you wait until early next year and go for a 5080, or more like $5k if you get a 9800X3D/4090 or 9800X3D/5090 setup. Of course, getting it build would add the builders fees to the price, which can be considerable.

It's not really that complicated to put a system together yourself and merely requires a Phillips screwdriver, sufficient patience and some Youtube video's or other guides. You can also just ask people whether parts work together (well) and the site pcpartpicker.com even tells you when the parts you select don't work together. So pcpartpicker.com is a good place to start, also because it shows you what is popular. For example, the top two CPU coolers in its list are amazing value products that are perfect for most sensible builds. Note that it's generally not that hard to find compatible components, and the more common mistakes are creating an unbalanced system, or simply spending way too much money on certain components. For example, you can spend a lot on very expensive motherboards that will not make your system any faster or noticably better than a much cheaper motherboard. The biggest risk to self-building other than dropping stuff is that you don't have spare components to test with, so if you have faulty components, it can be hard to detect the cause in some cases. But faulty components are fairly rare and most of the time you can still figure out the cause. And you generally save so much money that even buying an extra component in rare cases still keeps you ahead financially.

Dell/Alienware is really in a category of their own, since they don't just assemble components, but use custom designs, so you very often can't upgrade anything or replace faulty components with something off the shelf. And even worse, their custom designs tend to be really poor, so their systems often perform very poorly. So I would avoid them like the plague. Gamer's Nexus has a list of prebuild reviews and the titles already give a good idea of what builders are good: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLsuVSmND84QuM2HKzG7ipbIbE_R5EnCLM The issue with a local builder is that there is no organization to hold them accountable, so the quality they provide is purely dependent on their own personal abilities/experience/biases. Linus actually did a video on this and the experience was highly variable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzVS2Z_ZP_g

I think that this is the bargaining stage of grief. It's almost certain that there is no realistic way for a volunteer to replicate all the work that MS did, without MS open sourcing their code, which they are clearly not doing. It would also be a waste of effort, because each day more people abandon the G2, and no new headsets are going to be released for WMR. You can use the G2 safely for one more year and I would suggest getting a replacement before then.

Most people asking that sort of question have probably already decided anyway, they just want 'permission.'

I basically agree with the above. A PC supplier is unlikely to know DCS. Instead, I would create a shopping list based on advice you get here and then you can get someone to build something like that for you. I could give specific advice, but it is a bit hard to do so if you decide to take my advice and wait a little for new components to become available, because then we have to speculate. But the basic gist of it would be: The 9800X3D once it becomes available, preferably with a good air cooler (water cooling doesn't last as long and is more risky). Any decent AMD motherboard that has the features you want (Wifi?). At least a 850W power supply. 64 GB of DDR5 6000 or better Lots of storage. 2 TB minimum, but a 4 TB drive is better. And then a 4080, 4090 or preferably a 5080 or 5090. That would drive the Pimax Crystal Light headset very well.

First of all, my advice would be to upgrade early next year. February or March, probably. The reason for this is because a lot of new hardware is coming between now and then, and they are preparing by stopping production of some parts, so right now you have less choice and you pay extra for parts that soon will be replaced by better things. If you upgrade early next year, you can probably get a 9800X3D + 5080/5090 system, and then pair it with a Pimax Crystal Light. That would be a very good setup and it should come in at the low end of, or below the $5k-$10k range.

A lot of people seem to have a bias for Intel and assume that the situation is like it was over 10 years ago, where Intel had a clear advantage. And the reason why I am suggesting the 9800X3D is not because it is necessarily going to be much better than the 7800X3D, but because the latter is in short supply and very overpriced. It looks like AMD misjudged demand late in the 7800X3D lifecycle. So the only thing the 9800X3D has to do is to not be any worse than the 7800X3D, and to actually be in stock and reasonably priced.

Some profiles are being shared on Moza's discord.

I agree with the above, although I would also keep an eye out for the 9800X3D processors from AMD. The 7800X3D-CPUs were the best gaming processors, but they are at low stock levels and inflated prices now. But the 9800X3D should be the top-tier gaming CPUs once they release.