Aluminum Donkey

Ok everyone, I broke down and got an EVGA Supernova 750 G2. It was a little pricier than I would have liked... Ok, a *lot* pricier than I would have liked! But, she works great so far and has a 10-year warranty :) Also has a dual ball-bearing fan, which is nice, because I hate busting open power supplies just to change the blinkin' fan after it seizes. On Eco mode, the fan doesn't run at all until I put a whopping load on the card and CPU :) Turns out the CPU cache will actually overclock slightly better with this one than the cheap old Rocketfish. So, I can run 4.5 GHz on both cores & cache without bumping up the voltage. Nice! Finally, I hooked up an AC ammeter to the input, and it uses about 4.2A of current from the wall outlet with the card and CPU under AIDA and Furmark stress tests... about 480W. Looks to me like the 750W was overkill, and I spent more dough than I had to. Oh well, it's a nice PSU, and I can flog my graphics card as hard as possible now :) Thanks everyone, Peace and happy warfare AD

Yep, it sez I need about a 650W PSU. So, that means I need an 850W one or the sucker crashes :) AD

Awesome, thanks! AD

Hehehe actually, I usually take them apart and put all the bits & pieces into a set of little plastic drawers, 'cause sometimes I can build something out of them. I actually built a 1.5HP DC motor controller with tacho feedback for my father's milling machine using mostly old PSU parts. The power transistors and rectifiers are nifty too. I have a huge pile of 'em stashed away somewhere. I've dismantled a *lot* of old PSUs :) AD

Greetings, I just got a Zotac 1080 Ti Amp Extreme Core Edition card, and my computer keeps crashing :) Read on. My system was fine with my old 1070, but the new 1080 Ti uses a lot more power. It's fine if i set the power limit to about 60% in MSI Afterburner, but then it performs like a 1070 :) I'm still using my cheap old Rocketfish 500W PSU, which is probably really inadequate (18A per 12V rail, 2 rails). When I have the power limit set higher than that, my PC crashes, and it reboots with a warning that my Asus Z170 mobo has detected a power supply fluctuation and has shut down. Everything works normally on restart. Checking the PSU 12V supply in AIDA64 shows the voltage dropping to 11.8V under load, and the graphics card's funky LED lights all turn red. Can anyone recommend a PSU for this beast of a card? I figure it'll be around 750-800W rating. AD

I can talk graphics cards. Holy smokes are the blinkin' things ever expensive!! Even the older used ones! AD

Possible bug? The two outboard underwing stations (just inboard of the wingtips) can't carry the AIM-9X. When loaded, the missiles don't appear on the aircraft when you start the mission--just 2 empty stations. The two wingtip rails are fine--but when four 9X missiles are loaded, it only shows up as two. Stations 2 and 8 won't carry them. It works fine with the LAU-115 two-missile loadout on the same stations (four missiles total on 2 and 8, but not one missile each.) *Edit: Stations 2 and 8 work fine when carrying one or two AIM-120Cs each, but not one AIM-9X each.* AD

That's cool :) I think I skipped playing for an update cycle and never noticed. I'm using the 417.01 Nvidia driver if it matters :thumbup: Peace AD

This sounds reasonable to me for a start--power supply is ready to quit. If your computer starts, and works normally until you put a load on it (Stress test programs, or DCS) then quits, it could be a bad (or inadequate) PSU. You could try using a different, known-good PSU and see if that works. Alternately, try removing one stick of RAM. See if it boots and runs normally. Then remove that one, install the other one, and try again. Also, remove the graphics card, use the on-board graphics and see if the computer is now usable. The trick is to find and eliminate the bad component(s), and do as much of it as you can yourself. Don't just keep spending all your dough!! AD

Congrats on your purchase of a new TM flight control set, and welcome to the flight sim community :) (Oh yeah, like the other dude said, trim the sucker) AD

If they "repaired" it, how come it doesn't work now? Anyway, we'll try to help you sort this out :) Before we indulge in speculative jibba-jabba, decribe your computer to us in detail. AD

Just starting to try out the Maverick D and G's myself, using the Gulf map. No problem here, moderate rig specs. AD

Seriously, if you're going to blow that kind of money, DEFINITELY get the 2080 Ti. I wouldn't even bother with the regular 2080. If you're gonna settle for the 2080, get the 1080 TI instead. If you're gonna go second-best one something, make it the CPU. i5-9600K has 6 cores/threads--much more than you need, but about half the cost of the very expensive i7-9700K, which has 2 more cores you dont need at twice the price! See what I'm getting at? Even the "crappy, low-end" i3-8350K has 4C/4T and is plenty--and pretty cheap. All of these CPUs should quite easily reach 5.0 GHz--and DCS will *still* bottneck on the graphics card!! Honestly man, for forging the mightiest of gaming rigs, go as overkill as you can on the graphics card, and get a fast CPU (4.0+ GHz default single-threaded) and set the CPU in BIOS/UEFI to Sync All Cores, so they all run at the highest speed under load, and overclock to taste (not really needed). You'll get a much better performing rig than you will lumping everything onto the CPU and getting a lesser graphics card. AD

Looks like a *very* expensive build. You can get better performance without spending more by: -Getting a cheaper CPU. Anything that's 4.0 GHz or faster on all cores is fine. The 9700K is pricy and most of its threads won't do much. i3-8350K is excellent, so is i5-8600k (6 cores, a little overkill). It's not that that the 9700K isn't any good-it certainly is, but it's very costly and DCS can't do anything with most of it. Hyperthreading doesn't do much of anything in gaming, but costs tons of extra bread. -Get a different video card. The 2080 non-Ti is pricy, and it's good, but DCS doesn't use its real-time raytracing and probably never will. You're better off with a 1080 Ti (faster/better, more VRAM), or a 2080 Ti ($$$!!!). Both have 11GB of video RAM, which is great, and the 1080 Ti is much cheaper than the 2080 Ti (also 11GB) but it's still really fast and will probably out-perform the 2080. The regular 2080 is expensive, has features that DCS can't use, and 'only' has 8GB of VRAM (still very good, but DCS can always benefit from more). In other words, you pay too much for a regular 2080, and DCS can't use all that expensive, proprietary Nvidia goodness. 1080 Ti is probably better and cheaper. 32GB of RAM is great, not absolutely necessary. You'll probably still need a pagefile on an SSD, or DCS will crash to desktop. It's just how DCS works. I wouldn't put the pagefile on an expensive M.2 NVMe drive! Just use a regular SATA SSD for that. It should last quite a long time. Pagefile can be huge during longer, more complex missions, 20+ GB. Hyper 212 EVO is a great cooler, I use one myself. Reasonably cheap and very effective. PSU probably doesn't have to be 850W, but that's fine. All in all, get the fastest video card you can find, but stick with 1080 Ti or 2080 Ti. You're spending **lots** of bread--don't half-arse it with a regular 2080 and don't go faaar overboard with an uber-expensive CPU, because DCS can't do too much with one. It just has to be fast, 4.0+ GHz and 4 cores is great, don't bother with anything hyperthreaded :) A little "choosiness" will give you better performance for less dough. AD

There are 2 kinds of M.2 drive: -SATA. Same as a regular SATA SSD, same speed. Uses M.2 slot. -NVMe. These are the ultra-fast ones. Samsung 960 Evo is a classic. Make sure you know which one you're buying! Don't go by price alone--check the details first! For DCS, 120 GB probably isn't enough. I'm using more than that on my 960 Evo, which is only for DCS. Get a 250GB one. Finally, it will reduce load times, and may reduce stutter on very long flights due to terrain loading in mid-flight. It will NOT increase framerates or do much of anything else. AD

YESSSS!! People gripe about shadows, ground troops, clouds, properly simulated relief tube function etc. etc. etc. but it's the STUTTERING in combat that kills it! I have a fairly modest PC by some people's standards, but I find the overall performance of 2.5.x to be excellent. Framerates are good at high detail settings. I have DCS installed on an NVMe drive and have my pagefile on my SATA SSD, so I get fast texture loads. Just flying around, even with a large number of aircraft (30+) in one area, framerates are good and the sim runs smoothly. But, actually pop an opponent? Stutter. Dude ejects? Stutter. Plane breaks up as it goes down? Stutter. Aircraft finally augers in? Yet another stutter. Large missions mean lots of engagements, and that means lots of stuttering. As I've mentioned before, and so have numerous others, this *really* needs sorting out! AD

That's what I was thinking! My blinkin' bonuses always expire anyway, which sux... I've already blown far too much bread on DCS, but if I could use my remaining bonus, I'd get either the F-5 or the M-2000C. Either one would cost single-digit dollars at this point if I could use the bonus. The bread situation isn't too rosy for me and I've already overdone it :) AD

I have a Zotac GTX 1070 Mini (not the Ti version, regular 1070) and it's actually very good! It was the cheapest 1070 I could find when I upgraded from a GTX 760 2GB :) The cooler is actually very good, but I use a custom fan profile in MSI Afterburner. With my card overclocked about as high as I can get it to go, I rarely see temps approaching 65C. Runs mostly high settings in DCS on my 2560 x 1440 display. I clamp my framerate to 50 FPS, and it rarely dips below that. I use 2x MSAA and no other antialiasing. If you get a good price on it, go for it! AD

I don't know what the problem is, but I really gotta admit, I want to know!! Hope you get it sorted out. Since your other games seem to work fine, it's probably something minor and not hardware-related. Did you do a complete driver cleanup (DDU) and install the latest drivers for the RTX 2080 Ti? AD

Ok, here's one: I have 16GB of system RAM, and another 8GB on the card (GTX 1070). DCS only uses about 10GB max system memory, but 20GB pagefile. The bloody sim crashes if there's no pagefile, but doesn't use anywhere near all my system RAM! So, dub tee eff is going on?! AD

16 GB system, 8 GB on the graphics card (1070). What I don't understand is, while DCS commonly uses 7 GB or more on the card, it only usually uses 8 to maybe 10 GB of the system memory--yet, if I don't have a Windows pagefile, the sim crashes. Any ideas? AD

GTX 1070 is probably unsuited for VR in DCS World. Go for the 1080 Ti if you can find one. I wouldn't go any lower than that for the graphics card if you want VR. Instead of a Core i7 of any kind, which doesn't improve gaming performance but costs a lot more, get a K-type i5, or even i3-8350K (4C/4T, 4.0+ GHz). AD

Any suggestions? I'd love to hear 'em AD

DCS World 2.5 is, quite simply, the most demanding video game available. Bar none. That means 4.0+ GHz processor (i3, i5, i7, i9, i37.28675, it doesn't matter), 16 GB of system memory, and a GTX 1080 Ti. Less than that, it might run pretty well--just not nearly as well as any other game on a much lesser system. It's not because of poor optimization, or an outdated graphics engine, or poor this or neglected that--it just means DCS 2.5 is demanding as all hell on PC hardware. I have a good, but dated, system, and DCS 2.5 runs pretty decently most of the time, barring long-time oversights (the classic stutter-on-weapon-hit, ejection, and crash). Any other game under the sun? No problem at all. If 1.5 works great for you, that's awesome. Enjoy :) AD

Here's a great way to find out! Take your existing system, and go into the BIOS/UEFI and down-clock your existing memory. For example, if you have 3200 MHz memory, run it at 2133. Load up a really "heavy" mission with lots of units doing lots of things--especially ground units. See if it makes any difference. There's your answer :) AD