Aapje

Converting is doable, but a faff. In hindsight I probably should have gone for the XL. The issue with converting is that the Stream Deck software doesn't actually show the buttons outside of the 15 that are on the smaller model. I found that one can use the Lorby Editor in combination with the Stream Deck software, but it is not that convenient.

While the new CPUs should be announced in just over a week, the X3D parts always lag behind half a year or so. Basically, the regular CPUs have to be fully validated first, before they can start validating the addition of the X3D-cache. This takes about half a year. In the meantime, the 7800X3D is probably still king for gaming. The prices of the old generation might go down a bit after the announcement, though. Or one could wait half a year and then either get the new part, or a 2nd hand 7800X3D from someone who upgraded to the 9800X3D. And I decided against suggesting a 5800X3D since he already has a 5700X, so the 5800X3D might not be a good enough boost if he experiences significant bottlenecking now. Perhaps he constantly play on busy MP servers or has a different configuration that loads the CPU more. He also has a lower end AM4-board and slow memory, so all in all I would just replace it all and be done until the end of the AM5 generation, when he can just toss the last X3D-chip for the AM5 generation on there and get a huge boost, assuming things go similar to how it went with AM4.

The big upside of AM5 is that you might be able to get a large upgrade later on by merely getting a new CPU at the end of the AM5-lifecycle. Your current memory is very slow for a non-X3D CPU, so you are probably getting bottlenecked there a lot too. I'd suggest moving up to a 7800X3D with a PCIe 5 motherboard and DDR5-6000. It's such a shame to have a 4080 Super getting bottlenecked.

Looks great.

Not sure why you picked CH since the products are pretty much ancient. I'd instead suggest the Trustmaster AVA, which seems to fit your site much better. And my advice would be to team up with someone who has extensive experience with a lot of flight sim hardware, where you focus on writing a story for a general audience and depend on the other person for the technical expertise. I don't see how you can build up a sufficient knowledge base quickly enough to not make major errors otherwise.

@wikz I'd suggest the Fractal Design Torrent case. It has extremely good airflow, so will cool everything well. The 5 included fans should be sufficient. I'd go for air cooling, which is much less of a hassle. The 7800X3D is quite efficient, so air cooling is plenty good. The Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 is a great cooler for an excellent price. Insider info tells me that it's a temporary oversupply so they are selling at bargain bin pricing despite being a high end product. For the RAM, I'd suggest getting low profile RAM without RGB. Otherwise it can interfere with these big/good coolers. The G.Skill Flare X5 or Kingston Fury Beast are examples of good RAM to get. Make sure to get a single 64 GB kit of two sticks. I'd suggest the MFG Crosswinds for the rudder pedals. Way more moddable than the TPR, so you have options for a damper, different pedal platforms, different CAM profiles, etc. You don't have to do these mods right away, but you have the option. When it comes to the GPU, Nvidia demanded so much cooling from their partners that there is little between the brands. I personally like the ASUS TUF cards for the quality of the components and tuning. But there is not much in it and ASUS does have some issues with not honoring warranties as they should. The Corsair RM850x and RM1000x are top tier power supplies. I think that you can figure out what wattage they are based on their names Your pick for joystick combo seems good. There are already a bunch of people who really like the Warthog stick, but run it on a Virpil base, since the Warthog base is so bad. The early reviews for the AVA base and the shots of the internals all look excellent, so I expect it to be a perfectly good combo and very solid to learn the F-22 with. I personally wouldn't get the Warthog throttle. It isn't that bad, but it also isn't good. The VKB, Virpil or Winwing offerings all seem better. PS. since you are getting a sim pit, I'd advise a Buttkicker at one point. This is something you can and probably should add later, since otherwise it is too much at once.

Why not a 7800X3D?

Someone is selling it here:

There is a mistake in the review, with the deflection values being off. See the pinned comment.

I generally agree, although he wants to fly the F-22 mod to study and I just checked out the flight stick. It is very similar to the Warthog. So I can see the case for getting the AVA base with the Warthog stick.

@wikz The 7800X3D CPU is pretty much optimal from a bang for the buck point of view. Top of the line performance for a not so top of the line price. Don't overspend on the motherboard. The very expensive motherboards don't help performance and are mostly snake oil (fancy looks). In principle, it should cost less than $300. Get plenty of storage. It's still relatively cheap and DCS with the modules quickly take a lot of space. Getting two 2 TB NVMe's is the minimum I would suggest (one for DCS and then one for Windows and everything else). Also get 64 GB of DDR5 6000. When it comes to the video card, the best bang for the buck at the high end is the 4080 Super. Especially with new cards coming relatively soon, I would not get the 4090 because the depreciation when the new cards come will be very bad. The upcoming Crystal Light will save quite a chunk of money and weight on your head, so it is going to be much more comfortable. And please don't get the Thrustmaster Hotas Warthog unless you can't get anything better shipped to Hawaii. It's very old hardware that they've refused to update, while competitors kept improving. Get something from VKB (Gladiator NXT Premium is great for a fairly low price or you can get the Gunfighter IV if you want to run it with an extension or want a metal stick. For the throttle, you can get the STECS MiniPlus), or get something from Virpil or Winwing. But then others can advice you better on those brands. The Trustmaster Ava also seems like a decent option, although it is only just now being released. You can use that with the Warthog stick if you are dead set on that. Keep in mind that a proper setup includes a set of pedals. Depending on which ones to get, you may need to rig something to keep your chair in place or build a sim pit. In general, a sim pit is where you can spend a decent amount of money as well. Getting/building a sim pit rather than game on a desktop is something that allows you to really get a comfortable setup. But of course, how far you want to take it is your choice. Keep some spare budget in any case for things you learn and need to address along the way, since everyone is different, so you may need to adjust/change some things so that you are happy.

Very good review.

The actual link is missing.

Power supplies tend to be most inefficient at low load, so getting a bigger power supply to gain efficiency at high load may just cause you to have more wasted energy while you use the PC for browsing. And power supplies are not all equal, so I would personally suggest looking at reviews and not be overly focused on the wattage. The official wattage they put on the box is in many cases just a marketing choice anyway, and quality brands tend to underspec their power supply's, so a power supply rated at 750 from a poor brand can actually be worse than a power supply rated at 650 Watt from a quality brand. Also keep in mind that the more wattage the PSU supports, the bigger it tends to be. So make sure that whatever you get, fits in the case.

Only modern jets or also warbirds? And do you ever get it to go into lower force mode? And did you have to do any maintenance?

I think that ray tracing should play very little role in the decision, also not to be 'future proof'. Nvidia has touted ray tracing since 2018 and in the 6 years since we've seen rather few games where ray tracing was really good and none of those were simming games. The people who got a 2000-series card with the idea that they are future proof due to their ray tracing ability, now have cards that are too slow to run newer games with ray tracing. What is marketed as ray tracing is actually a very simplified version with so many limitations that it is very hard to make it look much better than a rasterized game. The actual proper ray tracing is marketed as path tracing, but this is so demanding that even a 4090 is too slow for current games that you want to play at a decent FPS and future games will just be even more demanding, so no future proofing there. And I think that a 1000 watt power supply is plenty now and very unlikely to become too little in the foreseeable future. The total system consumption of a basic 4090 system is less than 600 watts and if you look at what technology they are working on like backside power delivery, then it seems that a lot of focus will be put on efficiency. I can only see them selling hugely power-hungry GPUs if they ever figure out how to combine multiple GPUs in one package using chiplets, without getting all the stuttering and instability issues that you had in the past with SLI. That is a very hard problem to solve. But even then, would you really want to buy a video card that makes your system use close to 1000 watts of power? It will require a complicated cooling setup and will pump so much heat into your room that it's going to be very uncomfortable..

The Varjo XR-4, but last I heard, the software is a mess. The upcoming Somnium VR1 may be a good one. But right now, it is hard to look past the Quest 3.

@Waxer The Rhino does have overheating protection and there is a Finnish guy who has done a bunch of stress testing: From what I've seen from reviews/experiences that others had, the temperature of the device (which is measured with a sensor) stabilizes once it gets into the protection regime. The issue that people have is that the overprotection cuts the force feedback strength, so the experience is not consistent between the max power and limited power state. So you can suddenly get a different experience during an intense dogfight, which seems very undesirable. The Beast should not have this issue, which seems like a solid benefit, unless you want to run the Rhino with low power anyway, so it never gets into the protection regime, or you only fly planes with proper trimming, which seems to reduce the overheating issue to some or a large extent. It took Walmis and Propelor quite some time to work things out to get where they are now and they didn't do the work to get their designs ready for mass production, which itself can be a very long process. I do think that with the big waiting list and the quality of the product so far, it would make a lot of sense for someone to start a company and get mass production going in China, which should cut costs quite a bit and which means that enough units get produced to serve the demand, which Walmis and Propelor seem unlikely to be able to achieve with their current way of working. It's a shame if many people miss out on a FFB stick due to lack of supply or because the price is too high. I would prefer if Walmis and/or Propelor either start a company themselves (if they have the skills or can find people with the needed skills to run a company) or go work with/for one of the big companies to get mass production going. But please no Trustmaster, who are not the right company for this, for a bunch of reasons. It could be a very good financial decision by Walmis and/or Propelor, with relatively little downside, because there are ways to avoid major financial risks, while potentially getting rich if the product sells well enough.

What are you referrring to? I'm missing the context here.

Winwing is releasing a new joystick, which seems to be the new budget king, basically copying the mechanism of the VKB NXT, but for a cheaper price. Review: https://t3chtronics.wordpress.com/2024/05/15/winwing-ursa-minor-closed-beta-now-public-review/

See the USB test in the bottom right of the second picture? Use that to determine what speed you are actually getting.

If you do upgrade, it would be great if you would give us a nice comparison review from a consumer's perspective.

Even if it is expensive, it is a big win for consumers in places where importing things yourself is cost-prohibitive. They now finally will get an option in their local stores, which is (most likely) an actually good product. And it's also a win for less savvy consumers who get the most expensive thing in the store. They would get a Warthog set before, so now they get something actually good.

It's a little one-sided when you don't name any downsides.

Does the FFBeast software simulate the same extra effects that are not natively passed on as the Rhino? For DCS and the other two sims? For example, the Rhino manual mentions a special 'Low Hydraulic Pressure Effect' effect for some DCS planes. Is this implemented for the FFBeast? The manual also mentions that it implements extra effects for IL-2. Are those also implemented in the FFBeast software? I personally don't look for maximum fidelity, but to have fun. Perhaps it is helpful to have more power, but this is also something that is hard to judge without having some proper reviews of the products.