JaseGill

Unless I'm reading it wrong the Overclockers website screwed up. I saw the P8P67 Mobo and 2500K on the site this lunchtime and ordered them, 2 hours later they were listed as unavailable again. Looks like it was an error to me. I guess I'm in the queue for them though so here is hoping i get them on release day. A little longer to wait I guess. I'm glad I hadn't started dismantling my current system in preparation :)

I have just been informed that my i5 2500K and ASUS P8P67 Pro has shipped so should have it tomorrow. Give me a couple days and I should have a comparison though its with my old e6750. The news from the official reviews is all good though. I wouldn't be surprised to see my 460GTX the bottleneck now... J

Rusty, Makes total sense. I'm waiting personally (well almost Mobo and memory are ordered already) for Sandybridge. I just wasn't sure if you knew it was coming and had the ability to hold off a while in case it became useful to do so. J.

I always insert the CPU, mount the Heat Sink, install the memory and then install the motherboard. As far as strain on the board is concerned it makes no difference, there is strain as soon as its mounted on the CPU as the weight is there once its on anyway. If you were to worry about HSF strain on a motherboard you would never mount it in a tower case (motherboard vertical with HSF out hanging) as this has it hanging in the fresh air. No one makes supports to take the strain of the HSF off of the motherboard so you have to assume the weight isn't an issue. I've built over 100 PC's for personal use, professional use and for friends and not one has had issues with motherboard strain. In fact fitting memory or the HSF once its in the case could induce more strain as its only supported from below by the case spacers. If you do it out of the case you can support it on a non-conductive surface and the weight is spread across the whole motherboard as you fit it and there is no flexing of the motherboard as you sit the CPU, HSF and memory. It also makes it much easire to see what youre doing and easier to get a better, smoother covering of thermal paste on the CPU. If you want hardly any weight on it do what I did, go water cooled heat sink blocks, much lighter. Just my tuppence worth. J.

Rusty, How come you're upgrading at the moment. Do you know that in 5 days the next generation of i5 and i7 are released on the 9th of Jan. They even reckon that the price wont be significantly more than the current generation and will have the added bonus of lowering the price of the current generation. Just a thought. J.

Very Cool. I have an i5 2500K on order along with a ASUS P8P67 chipset as soon as they are released officially. They aren't around officially until the 9th though according to the Intel website and press releases I have read. Where did you order them? My supplier is a reputable UK PC Hardware store so willing to wait, I'm just very very curious. Especially as Intel have NDA's with all the magazine publishers and hardware websites until official release of all the relevant hardware performance figures by Intel themselves. J.

I read the header "Support for Logitech G940?" and thought someone was actually expecting some from Logitech. Then I read the post and had an even bigger laugh. Tongue firmly in cheek mode on. If youre willing to pay $250 for a HDMI lead though I'd go spend some of the rest of the obvious limitless supply of cash you have on a TM Warthog then go plug and play. Good luck on the CDU though, it reads like you may need it ;) Tongue firmly in cheek mode off.

Says a guy with a G940. It may have been a personal issue or a problem with the fact that the G940 was left hanging support-less for almost a year and had some serious issues (the Rudder pedals being the only bit I would have kept) but I thought it was awful. I know, I put up with it for over a year. I'm glad I traded up, and I'm betting had you been in the UK when it was selling for 199 pounds (go do the maths, thats cheap!) you'd have snapped one up. I paid full price and still think its worth it. Personal opinion of course, but then had you not bought it up neither would I have. J.

Vega, That's a great solution. Did you have to thread the pipe yourself? It looks like the way I should go. I just built a new base for my office seat out of the plastic pipework you see some people use, its good but I cant see it being a long term solution so fitting something to my office chair would be much better (and better received by the other half). I'd like to add a USB hub and some cabling for my headphones and the Track IR Headset to mine too though I think there is plenty room on the base under the seat. Good to see another Rotary Wing guy here too. I'm ex RAF Puma, Sea King and Merlin. Just as an aside how do you stop the seat moving when you're using the pedals? I'm guessing you have one or 2 locking wheels on your seat? Rgds, Jase.

Thats very sweet and what I have been looking for. What materials did you use for the mounts and the bases? How is attached to the seat. I've been thinking of something like this for a while but the weight of the WH has always seemed to be a problem on the relatively slim kind of fittings you seem to have. Any pointers on how you did it would be very useful. J.

Great work Glider. Nice to see a UK based person working this stuff too, if only due to the fact that if you start producing them the postage will be cheaper :) I know nothing of CNC and I'm a pretty lame handyman too, though I'm learning slowly. Should you start producing panels though I'd be interested. J.

+1 to Pilotasso. That's exactly how I'm configured and I noticed a significant difference. All I'm thinking now is that I may have to get an I5 and a new mobo to get the bet out of DCS. Waiting on Beta4 1st though to see how it performs on my current hardware. J.

That will have a bunch of the naysayers reaching for credit cards I bet...

Bumfire, I bet plenty who have been saying its a cheap piece of crap that they wouldn't touch with a sh!tty stick if their life depended on it in the various forums will suddenly have their credit cards out too ;) J.

Boot, Again thanks very much for taking the time to keep us all up to date whilst doing development work too. Its a very cool plan for a very cool, authentic looking bit of kit and I'm sure I speak for others here when I say I'm watching this with great interest. Rep incoming too. J.

Boot, Sorry, not trying to turn you into a manufacturing plant. Very very interesting thread though and like the others here I appreciate all your hard work. Also like the others I'm no manufacturer or have any idea how to go about it. If you find that we can somehow mass buy the panels and the custom buttons though and that in itself somehow lowers your prototyping costs I'd be happy to join in on a mass purchase of "bits". Its the hardware that I find difficult, like Sweinhart I have some experience of the software side and could help if necessary. Crowd Surfing for us Sim fanatics it seems is alive and well, long may it continue :) J.

Rocketeer, Thanks for the heads up. I didn't even consider HELIOS for anything other than a touch-screen. Now you've proven at least Leo Bodnar connectivity, of which I have one, I'm very interested. HELIOS looking very much my cup of tea now. I'll watch development with interest. J.

I'd buy that in an instant. Or even buy a kit if you thought of doing one. Its just what I have been looking for. Will be following thus thread with great interest. J.

TowBells, I have OCZ Vertex 2e's although they're both 60GB each not 180GB (one for Boot one for BS & A10C. Cant recommend them enough. J.

Guys, Sorry been away. I didn't move the page file at all. I followed the OCZ guidelines to the tee. With Windows 7 and the associated other OS drive stuff I have I decided to get the 2nd OCZ only because I wanted to keep the Flight Sim and general PC stuff separate and the deal at Overclockers at the time was good. I have a standard spinning 1TB Spinpoint F3 for any other games as it seems, and has been mentioned in the forums, that stutter isn't so bad with non-flight sim related gaming. not that I play many PC games other than flight sims. That's what the PS3, Xbox360 and Wii attached to the big sceen plasma are for :) J.

I just have the manual on my Kindle (eReader). I can go to whatever page I like and read live there rather than needing a paper printed one. I must admit to printing certain parts of the manual though for off line reading as PDF's aren't amazing on the Kindle and its only B&W. J.

Guys, Lets get some reality in here shall we. I was in the RAF for 12 years have stick time on Gazelle, Puma, Merlin and some fixed wing which was mostly due to the fact that my last 4 years were in the Test and Evaluation arena and I had good access to people testing fixed wing that offered trips to me as I did to them. So, take this from someone whose done it for real, and done it for real whilst getting shot at in some instances. If you want perfection I would go out and acquire a military grade flight stick, throttle and rudders and convert them to PC flying. You'll then get what the guys in the field get, warts and all. Would it surprise you to hear that all the metal linkage in a Puma between Cyclic, Collective and Yaw pedals introduces a few tight spots, lose spots and general non fluidity of movement across the whole range? Mention it to the maintainers though and you'll get what I did when I mentioned it one "Sorry, but a bad workman blames his tools". You know what the perfect joke flying in the military was? Every time you climbed into an aircraft you knew you were climbing into the one supplied by the cheapest, good enough just to do the job supplier. If you'd rather get something closer to perfection then I'd suggest that you order from a supllier here in the UK (Flightstore) who do a helicopter set of controls for £1499.00. Have a look here: Thats 3 times the price of the hog and I can tell you from having a go with it, not a massive amount better for it. Its for rotary wing I know, but I'm sure there's something else on the market for fixed wing too if you look for it. My Hog and a set of rudders came in at under £450. So, there's the rub. I know the Hog isnt perfect, and yes it could have been made completely of metal and yes it would have been more expensive at a guess. I'd rather get the best on the market (in my opinion anyway, and everyone has one) than the old worn Cougar that I had, and for a short time the abysmal G940 that was nothing but trouble. The price is right for what you get and I think its as good as you can expect for the price. A great suit is £2500, a good one is £500, an OK one is £200. I think we have a good stick, and throttle in the Hog for the right price range. We could all go make our own and have something perfect for us, as is we have something that's perfect enough for the market. It doesn't make it bad, it just makes it affordable (ish) and good enough, that's all. Just like all the real machines out there that every nation asks its youngest, strongest and best to go into harms way flying, good enough for the job at the best price point the seller and buyer could agree on. By the way I'm not affiliated with either Flightstore or TM. I'm just a user like everyone else here.

If only I could spell "smooths". Of to IcantspellorshouldjustcheckpostsbeforeIhitpost.com for some posting advice ;)

Guys, You may have read this elsewhere from others (and this from me if youre on the Beta Forum too so I apologise but put it here too for those with no Beta Forum access yet) but I have just installed an SSD for my games drive (OS already on an SSD) and wanted to pass on my experiences. Both are OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB SSD's and I immeddiately noticed a benefit of the OS drive some weeks ago. Now that the games drive is also SSD again a serious improvement. Why only 60GB, well bigger is much more expensive and I dont have many "games" on my PC. The not so hungry ones (Company of Heroes/World in Conflict) can all run from a spinning drive with no problems as they arent as hungry as WH or BS, or for that matter FSX). All stuttering seems to have stopped so even though my standard airport/city frame rate is around 20 - 25 constant and 60 otherwise the difference is still noticeable, I think due to the fact that stuttering really wrecks the experience. Im guessing stuttering comes from in game retrieval of data from the hard drive and the SSD is much faster read than a spinning drive (even though previous was 1TB Spinpoint F3). Its now smooth between 20 and 60 depending on ground details. I run most on high. Loading time is also reduced at start of the sim, down to around 30 secs when before it was a minute or two, less important I know but Im in the cockpit doing more of what I want to do much faster now rather than waiting for the sim to load. As an aside I got much better performance too by overclocking my processor from 2.66Ghz to 3.2Ghz. Im watercooled so please take this into consideration when OC'ing your processor. A10C therefore I assume, as has been said before is CPU intense. At 3.2 and a GTX460 OC its a very useable sim in Beta 3 and BS in comparison runs at an almost constant 60FPS. If (and I doubt it as BS view distance is less than that in WH as youre low and slow in the BS most of the time) the final release runs as smooth as BS I'll be a very happy hog driver :) J.

No, read Robert Smallwood's book on the A10 in Desert Storm, he interviewed just about all of the A10A crews that flew in the conflict. The A10A's were tasked with Scud hunting and were given a kill boxes in the tri-border area in which to search. They searched by Mk1 eyeball and binoculars (getting some serious eye strain as a result) and then killed them visually or by using the Maverick. At night they used the Maverick as a FLIR (even though in initial training this was forbidden). Though to quote one of them "this was like flying looking through a 6 degree FOV straw, not great but best available at night". I think, cant quite remember, that they were also given night vision binoculars later in the war. The A10A wasnt set up for NVG as it was considered a daytime aircraft right up until the start of Desert Strm Get the book, its great. Also get his F15E book, in which they did scud hunt but generally the F15E's went after fixed Scud sites in the 1st few days of the war using the ground mapper to find the site, of course they had the benefit of TFR and a FLIR HUD mode to help too. J.