Waxer

I have not seen any Ryzen 3000 clocking as low as 5GHz on LN2. Can you post a link to these low LN2 overlocks that you say you've seen? Meanwhile, you'd like a link to my statement that air-cooled OCs are coming in at 5.0-5.1GHz... sure. Here is one: Gamers Nexis words were "That 5100MHz overclock was done with air cooling on the CPU and is a result of better trace layout and a new controller design." https://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3481-amd-navi-rx-5700-xt-specs-overclocking-architecture Weren't you the one suggesting we wait for independent tests before comparing AMD and Intel earlier in this thread? I agreed with you. Fact is we don't know yet, but I imagine they will be pretty close to each other on a core for core basis. Besides, like I said earlier I am more interested in the 3950X because it is likely that the better binned chiplets will outperform the 12 core CPU's chiplets, albeit by a relatively small degree (100-200 MHz on an equal number of OCed cores on air or water)*. Whether that is worth the additional cost to you comes down to personal circumstances and choice. Very welcome. (* As an aside it looks like the 3900X chiplets are less efficient / more power hungry than the better binned parts. Such silicon is considered "leaky" due to higher proportion of electron creep over the transistors. Sometimes more leaky silicon can be forced to overclock higher than cooler running silicon, if you can cool it sufficiently. Hence it sometimes appeals to the LN2 crowd. But that is beyond my experience... I never got into that rabbit hole!)

Well... that ain't going to happen. So start breathing again, if I were you. You'll have to wait and see what AMD comes up with after their recent mid-range Navi launch.

Why? Because the 3950X is using higher binned chiplets. And I was simply considering max performance, not value for money (the OP is asking about driving top end VR headset, not 1080p monitor starter computer). Both in terms of out of the box turbo and overlock you are likely to get better results on the 3950X, compared to the 3900X, provided you can cool it. (105W TDP, so not improbable). Testers have had it at 5.0-5.1 on air, but it is not clear if that is a stable OC or just a benchmark result. 9900K can run 5.0-5.1 stable OC with the right MB and cooling. And on clock for clock comparison, I agree with you... we will have to wait for independent reviews. It looks like the myriad of architecture changes to Zen 2, the cache and memory controller in particular will put their IPC on par, perhaps even a little ahead of Intel.

Few points: 1) There is currently no CPU / GPU combo out there that will push the HP Reverb at steady >60 fps in DCS. Todays technology... can't be done.* You can get steady >60 fps in simpler games, but not DCS. 2) Ryzen 3000 looks excellent - particularly on price / performance - but it is not quite the knock out blow against Intel that many hoped prior to E3 and Computex. Some of the leaks suggested 5.0GHz turbo speeds. However their $750, 16 core 3950X will sell in Sept and probably require a top end / strong VRM $400-500 X570 motherboard to get the most from. And that turbos at 4.7GHz, not 5GHz. Compare that to 9900K which is cheaper price and turbos at 5.0GHz. The comparable 8 core AMD part clocks lower still than the 3950X. Early news about aircooled overclocking of Ryzen 3000 suggests that it will hit 5.0-5.1 GHz, but it is not clear if this is 24/7 type of overclock or really pushing voltage, temperature and stability. We will have to wait for independent tests. However broadly speaking 9900K + RTL 2080 Ti is likely to remain performance king, probably drawing with 3950X + RTL 2080 Ti (which will be more expensive, and have more cores which is useful for video editing and similar multi core applications). So should you upgrade? Up to you. Certainly a top end Z390 or X570 system will get you a performance upgrade, but you might still find HP Reverb performance in DCS lacking. It will smoke 1440p and even 4K monitor applications, regardless. One final thing: you mention the Asus Hero XI. Meh. Check out these motherboards. If you are looking for high end, I think all of these are better picks: Z390 (in order of price) + MSI MEG Z390 Ace + EVGA Z390 Dark + Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme + MSI MEG Z390 Godlike X570 + MSI X570 Ace + Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme + MSI X570 Godlike All of these are picked on the strength of their VRMs and board cooling as the major criterion with feature set being secondary (and visual element being disregarded). * Edit: You can get steady >60 fps, but only by lowering the settings to the point that there is no point having the HP Reverb.

On GPUs, don't mess around: for 4K get an RTX 2080 Ti. Sure people will complain that you are buying Ray Tracing silicon that you will not likely put to much (any?) use. True. But it is still the fastest thing out there besides the latest Titan or top end Quadros. I am using an RTX 2080 Ti with a 5K monitor and it does fine, but I still would like more raw pixel pushing power.

Ahh... well spotted. I saw the video pop up while I was travelling and never bothered to watch, not realising there was an VFX teaser. Can't wait for the F-14 grip.

Your series of posts has been very useful: thank you. I was considering Valve Index, HP Reverb and Rift-S. While I am able to spend more for better results, if a RTX 2080 Ti, nor SLI can't drive higher specifications I am better off not being too ambitious with the VR technology. The Rift-S seems to be a "best-of" existing technology choices rather than trying to push the envelop in any new direction (with the exception of Pentile to full RGB screens which is costless from a GPU overhead perspective). Ideally I would like to see a manufacturer do away with Fresnel lenses too and produce something higher quality.

Well, I have both a Thrustmaster Warthog grip and a Virpil WarBRD grip. I like both. And I am not marking down the Virpil because the grip is made of plastic... I agree that Virpil's plastic grips thick enough and tight enough tolerance that they are equally as good as metal. In fact their relatively light weight has advantages with prosumer gimbal bases. Where I do mark down Virpil relative to the Thrustmaster grips is in the quality of the buttons. Virpil uses cheaper buttons just hot glued into the grip: frankly this is a pretty low end engineering solution which effectively makes the grip a consumable. VKB uses inexpensive buttons, but at least mounts the buttons properly with daughter PCBs held by screws and captivate bolt heads. So in theory, replaceable. Thrustmaster uses higher specification buttons and mechanisms generally. (Although on they occasionally lapse like they did with the Warthog throttle slew sensor which a significant minority of people end up upgrading). So I imagine some of the Thrustmaster cost is accounted by the button specifications.

You are looking at the wrong specs: The most important spec difference - by far - is the switch from Pentile AMOLED to RGB LCD. (Another underestimated aspect of these headsets is the adjustability of the screens to differing head size and eye positions. This can make a major contribution to effective FOV.) The Rift S is an exercise in optimisation effectively: a collection of incremental changes, and best choices of existing technology alongside with the one major change above (full RGB not Pentile matrix). I just recently had a go at the Rift S in Microsoft's store at Westfield mall in LAs Century City. Check out the demo if you get the chance. (They don't offer as DCS demo, but you can still get the idea of how good the image quality, comfort and tracking are like). Personally I am unsure whether to get the Rift S, or wait for the HP Reverb or Steam Value Index.

Right: and the Thrustmaster F/A-1C grip looks higher quality than the MCG Pro. Note the video review which points out the difference in quality of buttons.

Well... 8 core is now mainstream nowadays anyway for new CPUs. My little 6 core was never cutting edge, but now it is looking rather blunt in contrast to 5 GHz all 8 core Intel CPU and 3800X and potential 3950X AMD CPUs. It makes sense for software developers to invest programming resources into this. Even if some of their user base will be using older 4 core legacy computer systems.

Sure: 1) I emailed Slaw and requested pedals. Told him which colour combo. 2) I paid him by direct bank transfer. He sends you the account number when your pedals are manufactured. He does not take pre orders. I understand that also offers payment by PayPal, but I think he charges a higher price to reflect PayPal charges.

Just looking at your winwing.cn english language website. Question on pre-order: 1) 9pm chinese time, therefore 1pm GMT correct? 2) i see that you are setting up Paypal which is good. Is the e-commerce portal going to be via your winning.cn website, Or a third party solution? One other comment: 3) I intend to buy grip, base, throttle and instrument panel. However I agree with others that the option to buy individual elements of the package would be something attractive to the HOTAS / SIM community. Maybe you can re-consider this later in the year, following the launch.

Well today I paid for my RX Mk.2. Very excited to get them from Slaw in Poland. That reminds me... I need to buy a damper off eBay. Wiaczeslaw: are the required dimensions for motorcycle steering dampers the same as on the original Mk.1?

Winwing: Me too. I just think that it is nice for the community to have options. Especially for people that already own a Warthog base and want to focus on the new F/A-18C, the older AV-8B and upcoming F-15E modules without spending as much as $800. $230 for the new T/M grip on its own is not insane, and if you already own the T/M base and don't mind swapping out the A-10C grip that is all you need to spend. Of course it would have been nice to include a base for that price, or sell the grip alone for a lower price, but competitor pricing really just highlights the fact that the original Warthog combo is a fairly good deal. (I personally don't like the base which is why I like the option to go with VPL for that).

Oh okay, on that I agree with you: I will probably get the Winwing solution myself, as I want and can afford the extra to get a matching F/A-18C throttle and switch panel too. But you just need to recognise that the Thrustmaster solution comes in at a totally different - much lower - price point. Thrustmaster F/A-18C + VPL WarBRD is what... c. $400? Vs $800 for the Winning which includes the throttle and panel?

Other options? Like $800 for Winwing's grip and throttle? You get a throttle too, but the bundle is c.4x the cost of Thrustmaster. What other options for F/A-18C are there? As a VFA-25 guy I would have thought you would be happy. Even looking at VPC / VKB Russian grip options they are more expensive excluding a base. So I don't understand the negativity regarding the price. If you are arguing that the A-10C grip is too cheap, then maybe you have a point.

If you don't know how to choose components and build yourself then get a premade PC from someone like Dell's Alienware or Overclockers. Particularly on lower-end gaming PCs all the assembly work they do doesn't actually cost you anything compared to the cost of buying and assembling yourself. (On top specification PCs, you can save more money by building yourself). As your PC is old you could start afresh with something like this: https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/desktops-and-all-in-ones/new-alienware-aurora/spd/alienware-aurora-r8-desktop/D00AWR801 Make sure you have an SSD in the system, even if you have HDDs as well. Make sure - for DCS - you have a bare minimum of 16GB, and frankly it is better to upgrade immediately, if you can afford it, to 32GB. I appreciate that you end up spending a lot of money... but hey, that is the nature of PC gaming / PC Master Race, compared with consoles.

Good advice, but the dampers are left panel, not right.

No problem: On the fans, I would try reversing the back fan so you got 2 intakes and the exit is top of the case through the radiator. Having said that if those are peak temperatures under a stress test, then you have nothing to worry about... those temps are fine. You are outputting to that VR headset? Not a monitor? (I use a monitor, not VR so I don't have direct experience of the performance overhead of that). I've heard that running DCS outside of Steam has lower VR overhead. There is a video discussion here of some tricks to get DCS running faster on one of those 5K VR headsets... not sure if there are any ideas there that can help you.

A 360 kit is made of 3x 120mm x 120mm of fin area. Typically the kits will have 3x 120mm fans. For example I know EK does a kit like this with Varder fans which are decent performers. However the rule of thumb for water-cooling is this: Minimum number of 120mm fan space / radiator required = 1 + (number of components being cooled). In your case minimum requirement = 1 + (1+1) 120mm fan / radiator space = 360mm. So you are at the minimum. And this is without overclocking. Add 1 per OCed component. But most people doing water-cooling kits will want to exceed this minimum. Things you can do to improve your watercooling rig: 1) Make sure you have a lot of ambient air coming from outside the case. Preferably set up so that convection helps you. ie. Cool air in the bottom of the case and/or from the front intakes. Radiator / fans pushing warm air up out the top of the case. Make sure you have intake fans (don't leave it to passively draw air in) and set intake fans high enough to make sure you have positive net pressure inside the case. Listen to some JayztwoCents videos for tutorials on this kind of thing. 2) Consider upgrading your fans from Vardars to Noctua NF-A12x25. 3) Consider setting up push / pull (ie fan on both sides of your radiator). 4) Fit a 2nd radiator if you can find space in your rig. Otherwise at some stage you could consider getting a larger case with more room for radiators. FYI: I had been using a small mATX case for a 1 CPU + 2 GPU system in a custom loop (using 240 + 360 radiators). It was sufficient, but did not have much headroom for any more. Now I switched to a much bigger EATX case which has so much room for radiators that the limitation on my system is CPU and GPU chip quality, not cooling. So yeah - I moved the bottleneck. By the way... there was a recent test which demonstrated that the cooler RTX 2080 Ti cards run, the more stable they are at overclock settings. If you are running them stock it does not matter, but if you overclock you only get the best speeds by keeping the chip cool. Similar deal if you are trying OCs with CPUs. My 4.8 GHz is quite a high OC with Skylake-X, but only possible because of my overkill cooling setup. Link to RTX test which shows clock vs temps.

1) I am using a 6 core, 12 thread Intel CPU at 4.8GHz fixed clock. I get good results (with a RTX 2080Ti at 5280x2880 resolution). However, while DCS is running all threads are active / busy. So I am only 2 cores and 300 MHz ahead of you... 2) My CPU does not throttle at all. Hence the solid OC. You said you have a custom loop: how are your temps and is there any CPU throttling? It looks like you are using only a 360 for OCed CPU and powerful GPU... this is bare minimum. Anything you could do to improve your loop efficiency would probably pay off. But I'd need to know your temps to be more confident vs a guess. For example my CPU has it's own loop with 1 D5 and a 480 rad. The GPU has its own D5 and separate rad. If you can't upgrade radiator area, consider upgrading to the best fans you can get. And or make sure that you are getting a high volume of cold air puched from outside, into your case. Best fans are NF-A12x25 in 120mm size. Arguably they are as good as the best 140mm fans. An NF-A14x25 is on the cards but will be at least a year before release. 3) If I were you, I would upgrade (most likely) from the OCed 6700K. But I would definately wait to see what AMD come up with Ryzen 3. It will have more cores, probably run faster (certainly single cores will clock faster) and probably be more energy efficient and therefore cooler running at similar clock speeds. Given that you are using limited radiator space that could buy you some extra performance. So, for now: check on your cooling. And wait a few weeks for the AMD presentations at Computex. Probably in 4-6 weeks you could have attractive CPU / MB upgrade options.

I don't know for sure, as I have not tried. Plus my Warthog base is in storage so I can't easily try it out for you. I would imagine not because the Warthog base uses Target and is programmed to look for the Warthog or (with firmware update) the Hornet grip. I anticipate that you might have problems with the Virpil grip on the Thrustmaster base, even though the pin connectors are the same. However I see no reason why you would match the Virpil grip with the Warthog base: to me the Warthog grip is a good bit of kit, whereas I find the Warthog base quite disappointing. And that is even when it is brand new, let alone a used example. My review was specific to the Virpil grip. However, if I were to review the Virpil WarBRD base, I would be even more enthusiastic with the praise: that really is a quality item. So much so that I am considering a second Virpil base (either the WarBRD or Mongoos to use with my Thrustmaster A-10C grip).

Jezus Krist Jester? You been eating Tex Mex AGAIN!??!!!

There is a Reddit post from a Quality Manager with HP's VR team that posted this. Basically there was a minor issue that they were unhappy with on production units, so they have recalled the initial batch of sets with retailers and have delayed the launch. Read his post for the full detail / exact words.