Konovalov

I really doubt that in real world terms and flight sims you would be able to distinguish or see any difference between tri and dual channel memory. Bottom line is that you will get slightly better stock performance from Sandybridge with massive headroom to easily overclock your 2500k or 2600k which will extend the performance life of your rig. All of this with dual channel memory. On the case, as I said earlier they are personal things because it is your most visible component. Just make sure your case has good airflow, room for upgrades if required, good cable management, and quality built. Haf x, corsair 800 or 700 all tick these boxes along with others. So go with what fits your budget, feature set, and of course looks good. Happy building of your DCS killer rig.

It does come with wheels if that helps and pretty much all full size cases are heavy unless made of aluminium. Yep that is correct. Sandybridge (LGA 1155) supports dual channel memory so you will be best to go for either 2 x 4gb sticks or 4 x 2gb sticks of RAM. One final thing that I would add regarding memory choice is that there appears little problem in populating all 4 memory banks with RAM sticks and overclocking your system. With some of the old Intel chipsets if you filled up all memory banks it would limit overclocking. A page from a Bit-Tech article highlights that this is not a problem with Sandybridge as per the below link: Sandy Bridge Memory : 4GB (2 DIMM) vs 16GB (4 DIMM)

+1 to exactly what Pilotasso said on all of the above. The i7 2600k is newer and better than my i7-950 and it also has the same features such as quad core, HT but it will overclock considerably higher that the i7-950. The Coolermaster Haf X is also a great buy and if I didn't have my components inside this Antec P182B then today I would go for the Haf X. Excellent cooling, loads of space, front hot swappable drives and a pair of front USB3 ports to boot. If you don't like the rugged style then obviously look elsewhere. And again on the SSD a single 120GB Sandforce drive such as the OCZ Vertex 2E will be perfect for Windows 7 along with all your premium sims. Get a mchanical HD such as a Samsung F3 1TB or something to store mdeia, photos, and other games and programs on. :thumbup:

Just an update I have not had a problem since in that training mission. ILS works but it is perhaps I do not hit the 1 nav key while overflying the airfield that you are to land at. Anyway I fly over the airfield to land, swing around over the sea for final approach and hit 1 to bring up ILS on both the HUD and the HSI. Happy days. :)

SovertAviator, My advise is to install Lockon (LOMAC) disc but DO NOT run the game. You only want to install this on your system for one reason only in my opinion. That reason is to allow you to install Flaming Cliffs 2 (FC2). Flaming Cliffs 2 is a stand alone simulation and it only requires you to have Lockon installed on your machine before you can install and run FC2. FC2 is totally separate from Lockon and should not be installed in the same folder as Lockon. In fact once you have installed FC2 there is nothing to stop you from uninstalling the original Lockon sim. One other thing, if you have purchased the Flaming Cliffs 2 disc then you will not need to patch it as the hard copy disc is already patched to version 1.2.1. Actually one other tip is that not all the training videos are included on the disc install. So you will have to download the other training ones and install into FC2. Enjoy. :thumbup:

March 15. Will have to put that in my diary. :smilewink: I really hope that this is good. I played the original STW back in the day. For me I started going off the Total War series with Empire Total War. Rome has been my favourite closely followed by Shogun.

Training in FC2 I know crummy screenshot but I think it's my first having got FC2 up and running. Absolutely loving it now that I have the computer and time to get into it. :happy: Overkill perhaps. At least that was the truck drivers last thought before this came crashing through his windscreen.

I would go Sandy if it wasn't for the fact that I only upgraded to a i7 950 back in late October. It will be interesting to see AMD's Bulldozer and if it can provide an alternative to Intels offering. I'm just hoping that 2011 brings a shakeup in the SSD market that brings better value for money along with higher capacity.

Possibly the only way you are going to find out what is causing this irritation is to add one component at a time and test. Then keep adding another component and test until the problem crops up again. Hopefully you will then be able to locate which component is the pain in the butt.

Sandybridge doesn't suck juice Not sure if this has been mentioned but the other great thing about Sandybridge is it's gentle sipping of power. Compared to my i7 950, the i5 2500k uses at least a quarter less juice while running at a higher frequency. No wonder these things reach such high OC's of 4.8-5Ghz and on air no less! Impressive.

Microsoft were decent enough to provide a 32bit and also 64bit version on disk so you could choose which one to install.

I agree on the above from Nate. Windows 7 64bit runs DCS Blackshark and FC2 great. Hold off on GPU to release of DCS A10c if you can. Hopefully by then you will be looking to build a complete new rig. :thumbup:

Jase, If I was in your position replacing an old Core 2 Duo based system then I would have gone with the i 52500k in a blink. Best bang for buck and really there would be no need to consider an i7 unless you desperately needed features such as hyperthreading. So really for flight sims and CPU dependent games Sandybridge looks the first and best choice. :thumbup:

Is that a typo in the price difference? Back in October I paid the following for my upgrade (current price at Overclockers in brackets): i7-950 GBP 210 (GBP 234) Asus P6X58D-E GBP 155 (GBP 150) 6GB Tri-chan RAM GBP 100 (GBP 75) Total GBP 460 / (GBP 459) Current prices for i5 Sandybridge similar to your shiny new rig at Overclockers: i5-2500k GBP 192 Asus P8P67 Pro GBP 148 Patriot Viper 2 Sector 5 dual-chan 4GB GBP 66 or 8GB GBP 132 Total GBP 406 (4GB RAM) or GBP 472 with 8GB RAM Not quite the massive price difference between the Sandybridge and older i7.

That's an excellent result with just a minuscule drop in FPS of 1 or 2. Congrats on your build which should see you well placed for DCS.

Well said. So many things can be learn't by building, tweaking and overclocking ones system. And it can be fun in doing so and for many is a bit of a hobby.

When I see the word bloated I think reformat. You might want to consider possibly reformatting your OS drive and start from scratch. If you have a well organized backup plan a reformat of your hard drive with Windows 7 is an easy task. You have a top of the line rig there and you shouldn't be experiencing serious performance problems.

Making the jump from a old Core 2 Duo E6xxx based rig to your shiny new Sandybridge system is a significant jump up in performance so I'm not surprised that you noticed such a big noticeable gains. Sounds like you have a great build there so congrats to you. :thumbup: For those here that are still holding on to 3 or 4 year old rigs I guess they would really like to see some hard data and more so real world performance figures such as in the DCS series.

Indeed, here is to another 20. :thumbup:

The hard copy manual is A5 size about 230mm x 170mm approx.

As above Windows 7 works great with Lockon Flaming Cliffs 2. Just make sure you get Flaming Cliffs 2. It is much better than just plain Lockon as both the Su25 and Su25T have the advanced flight model along with a whole host of other improvements from Lockon.

The NH-D14 is one of the better air heatsinks. I run my i7-950 almost stock 3.07 ghz 1.15v and temp idle is 30c and at 100% load reaches 60c. High rpm fan only drops temp by a degree or 2 and is inaudible with the low noise adaptor.

Yep, anyone with a X58 i7 9xx series based system will be wasting money on a Sandybridge based system by simply moving sideways in the performance stakes. Sandybridge is not the holy grail of the CPU world. What Sandybridge does do is present better value and bang for buck which is great for consumers. Hopefully AMD can come up with something to compete against the blue juggernaut.

Windows 7 64 bit like pretty much everyone else.

The good news for you is that Sandybridge may just offer similar performance to the top end X58 i7 based systems for a lot less hard cash. The future looks good so don't despair.