BitMaster

My suggestion is, no matter of NVMe or Sata SSD, get 1 for the OS and 1 for DCS/Games/Apps and for sure 32GB. You can also add another SSD drive any time later on. I would start with an NVMe 1TB and maybe add another if the budget allows but forget the HDD, that's for NAS or ext. USB storage. If you intend to do VR or heavy MP or both, 64GB is not a bad idea either. It has been said that once Vulkan ( whenever that is is another topic ) arrives it will make use of 32+GB. Also, some heavy MP missions scratch the 32GB already, so if you are into heavy MP etc., consider 64GB and maybe add the 2nd drive later on. It's easier to add a drive than RAM. Decide yourself if you think 64 are for you.

Horror stories about exploding PSUs ? Just google it up, it's no secret. Aiming at a constant 80% load..... please do your homework before you give false and dangerous advice.

some1, I am sorry to say but you are far from hardware reality here. If you intend to run a System at 400-450w for a long time, often, then you would never ever buy a 550w "Gold" PSU. Whoever does this doesnt know what he is doing or the guys who sell that don't know what they are doing. The quality of the DC current delivered is FAR from ideal at 80% load on Gold rated PSU's. There is a lot more to it than just raw wattage. You should read up some reviews from HardOCP about PSUs. It's eye opening how quick some fail, some catastrophically. SIlentSierra, you won't regret selling it for a better device. The trend is still going UPWARDS in wattage, both for CPU and GPU on desktop parts. Rather buy 100w more than less.

Ehhhh, wrong way round pal ! The 500w it draws from the socket is what goes INTO your PSU. Take that x 0.93 and you get what is leaving the PSU towards the board, the other 7% end up as heat in your PSU. So the 500w is the real deal, that's the load that the PSU has to deal with in order to get the said 93% left to the board. Once you have repaired a dozen of those "it made a loud noise, smoke and shut off..." you tend to get cautious with PSUs, marketing specs and 1000w for 99€ offers. Your GPU will almost always draw full tilt power while you game, if it doesnt then something is wrong elsewhere or you play at low LOD and 1080p with capped fps etc..

If you somehow find yourself in the need to run some stress tests to find an error you will be happy if the 650w holds what it says. I can, if need to be, push this system with a 1080ti north of 600w under full load. You dont want to do this with a 650w Gold PSU if you paid big bucks for GPU and CPU/Mobo as if it fries, chances are it fries it all. Sure, everyday computing is way below that and even gaming with full power on the GPU is +/- 375w with this 5900X/1080ti combo but 550w sounds borderline to me, knowing many lower end PSU with Bronze or Gold don't hold up to their rating when tested and just explode, go up in smoke and flames, etc.. many many articles and YT vids about that.

From what I have read DCS needs certain Windows DLL's. It's likely a matter of a lot of work, money and time if you take the challange to rewrite the part which is incompatible and I dont think it is gonna happen anytime soon due to the effort needed. So, I didnt get DCS to work after all and also Ubuntu refused to fire up my desktop speakers but only my headphones which I couldnt solve this time, one of those mysteries you can come across if you stroll into Linux Land. On the other hand, while my sound worked on Ubuntu, I installed Project Cars 2 via Steam in Linux, attached my buddies Fanatec Wheel and just drove off, no hassle, no drivers, just click & drive, THAT'S how it should be. So there are 2 examples of Proton supported games, 1 so lala and the other one is "golden" state or what they call it and that works fantastic. Less trouble than in Windows and same locked 144fps down through Fuchsröhre at the Nordschleife;) That was inspiring to be honest, to see it CAN work if enough work has been put intoi it.

Change the board+CPU and fire it up. Windows will say it will get your new drivers and hardware ready, do it's thing..and reboot. That's basically it to do it quick & dirty. What might happen else where is that you void one or the other license of various software that is tight to your HW-ID that will obviously change. That you have to deal with if you use such software. Apart from that, I would check that you deinstall all SW that the new board does NOT have prior to switching and maybe copy the needed drivers onto your disk/ssd before you change it. That might help if the board needs a LAN driver etc.. best to have LAN/WLAN ready to install, the rest is business as usual.

The main bottleneck is and will be your GPU, there is some to gain plus smoothen out the experience since you jump two generations forward, your IPC & Clock will greatly advance. Since it is a drop-it-in replacement with your board it might not be a bad idea in general. I would rather think 5600X or 5900X.

Regardless of any GPU issues, man, get a SSD !!

If it came with a cable, use that one. It should not have an active PIN20. That's not easy to find out. If you buy a new DP cable that's when that question really rises in importance and I have no answer. Best would be to read the specs thoroughly and make sure it does not say anything about an active PIN20 feeding voltage into the GPU or iGPU/motherboard/CPU.

When you boot to Bios all Ports should work. The wrong DP cable can kill your components, this is widely unknown but true. It is referred to as "Pin20 Problem". Make very sure you do not run such a setup where it is WRONG or you have a high risc of frying one or the other part. I have had this with a Dell Optiplex with Dell 4k screen, all came from Dell and the DP cable they sent killed the motherboard eventually. Dell fixed it, took them 6+ months to find the root cause of this PC doing "strange" video related "things". That's how I learned that lesson.

Short answer: Not yet, but as time goes by and faster DDR5 modules arrives at a cheaper price, yes, then it will be better.

Yes, basically that's how it presents itself right now. As soon as you have more than a supported Game Controller, like Buttkicker, VR, TiR, Hotas..it becomes Quick Sand pretty fast and you can burn hours between Wine, Proton and "sudo apt install my_app" LoL. To be fair, I love it, Ubuntu Server pays part of my bills and I have the Desktop version installed it on numerous older machines of family and friends to keep them alive and secure for everyday computing. Most like it, some went back to Windows, but hey, you cant please everybody My personaly feeling is that MS will put brute force on any company that tries to make Linux a real alternative, despite they themselves use it heavily in their data centers. Their is no substitiute for Postfix, Apache and many others

My modules are Dual Rank btw, 2Rx8 and they dont slow down my CPU at 3600 at all. If you have a non-B-die kit at those speeds the Latency is usually higher and thus easier for the IMC, so that speaks against this theory. None of the reviews I have read over the past years meantioned what you say and even AMD themselves speak differently. That is what makes me think you are not 100% right. Might be with your rig, your mobo and Bios version or specific CPU but it is not the general consens of how AMD Ryzen 5000 series and RAM work together in general. Why by all means does AMD "OFFICIALLY ADVERTISE" ( see my link above )the sweetspot is 3600 and you can go till 3733 before things start getting worse. Why ? And I dont think anybody in here is concerned about breaking a warranty by setting XMP to something higher than 3200. I doubt that AMD could verify how fast your RAM ran when it broke. That is a weak point, again, with AMD advertising 3600/3733......cmon..be realistic. I once send a 6700k to Intel and told them it fried when I overclocked it, plain truth. They sent me a new one without any comment on overclocking etc..

My 3600 DDR4 kit does not throttle down in any situation, not that I could measure a drop in performance in any load test ( which are likely more brutal than DCS can ever be ). Let's test this statement you make on more than 1 (your) system, ok ? IntelBurnTest IBT ? that one for example measures the time it takes to calculate math and it really kills your system. BTW: Here's what AMD says about this topic ! https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-ram-scaling-effect-in-games,1.html

That sounds like a network/bandwidth issue to me. Could be your end could be the server struggling or even both.

One would think a 8c/16T modern CPU that is no slouch should handle them together...but as we can see, it does not. I dont think this is per se standard as many have TacView installed and always running when using DCS. Does it only happen online or do you have the same low GPU usage when flying offline with TacView ON ?

It installs and it tries to load but gets stuck for ever in a black screen as of now. I followed a few threads on how to fix some issues but none has helped so far, seems like I need to try out different Nvidia drivers, currently using the newest one Ubuntu offered but I know from the past that older ones are far more stable...so, when I get the time I will try different drivers until I can fly the Su-25T online It's not trivial as of now, so I dont think it is suited for users who dont want to mess around in a shell and heavily modify the OS. Once it's only click&fly in Steam it's where it should be.

Let's see...

Proton seems to have overcome the library issue. DCS, according to others, does run on Linux via Steam/Proton. Make the server a Linux thing !

I hope one day each game comes as a bootable Linux distro with all tools onboard that you need and nothing else. It's not too far fetched btw. Boot DCS and fly edit: just watched this update video: He mentioned DCS... so there is that. Wonder which controller/Hotas setups work and which don't. Iirc, my TM WH is not picked up in Ubuntu/Mint but also never tried to use it. Well, maybe I shrink one NVMe a little bit and install Ubuntu bare metal, fire up Steam with my DCS and give it a shot. That really interests me how far it has come now. Most sense would make if the Server would run on Linux w/o Steam, that would cut the monthly cost some pay to have their server hosted with MS lic included. Linux is usually ~20€ cheaper per month. If the hoster doesnt mind Steam it could well be already in action if Steam offers DCS Server on Linux, don't know if they do.

Booked my Bird Cannot resist the Helos, LoL, now bring it on

Right now, I advice people like my 20y old nephew to forget about upgrading his Gaming PC just because the market is nuts. Nowadays a GPU costs as much as you'd payed some years ago for a complete rig. I told them to either buy a console and forget about gaming on the PC or lower the expectations and get a Ryzen 5700G to start with in Full-HD and wait &see what the market does. For ordinary people or youngsters with limited budget the times are very very tough. They are killing the market slowly and I can see it dying in my own circle of people I know.

Yes, afaik to get it all from the 12th gen you need Win11. Which imho is a strategy from MS to force people to leave 10 behind, which I can understand to some extend. Baseline, most rigs suffer from weak GPUs. As long as you have a decent CPU it will likely not be the main bottleneck unless you fly low LOD at lowest Res to max out fps. If you fly above Full-HD the GPU quickly becomes a bottleneck, way more intense and often than the usual "on the carrier deck my fps drops"...that's a CPU thing. There is a wall no Hardware can overcome, you can get close to the limits but the effort and money needed is substantial.