pieceofmind

Just an update, I'm now looking at turning this into an upgrade to my existing system rather than a new build. The motherboard I have already (aBit IP35 Pro) already can handle 1066 DDR2 RAM, and I've had to cut back my budget a bit. This way I won't need a new powersupply, M/B and case. And I can probably continue to use my current Thermalright U120 extreme. I'm not sure the xigmatek would be a huge improvement over that cooler - certainly not enough to justify the cost.

Thanks for the replies everyone! Nice to hear a similar machine runs the game mostly smoothly! May I ask which graphics card you use, as in which brand of 9800GTS? Re the E8400, turns out it's only slightly cheaper in price (30AU) whereas the E8600 is 104AU more! Re the thermaltake heatsink, how is it? Do you run it with a fan on it, and if so what sort of volts or RPMs do you use it at when under load? Mind if I ask what case you use or what overall cooling system is employed? The case I have in mind has a mother of a fan (200cm) almost directly above where the heatsink will be so I'm wondering whether it might be unnecessary to have a fan mounted on the heatsink. After all, the S1283 has slightly larger fin spacing than similar sized heatsinks meaning it could run pretty well with no fan attached. The decision to do this or not will depend on if and how much overclocking is done on the CPU! I also run a 1920x1200 display at the moment so your mention of it has helped me get an idea what to expect. Thanks. Overkill much? :) That must've been an expensive machine! Similar components would be a little outside my budget unfortunately. Ignoring the fact it's probably not a very quiet system (but only you - not I - can judge that), I prefer to steer away from hardware that is leading edge because of the price spike. The 9600GT passive card I linked is actually very cheap by my standards. Since I will most likely use this machine for some other possibly more demanding games, it seems a safe minimum. But for what reason were you worried about the choice of 9600? From the context it sounded like you thought it was overkill, but if that's the reason then you needn't worry for the reason I mentioned above. Also, the Gigabyte 8600GTS passive card I already have has never let me down and stays very cool, giving me some faith in their newer cards with the same idea.

This is my first post here so I hope I'm starting this thread in the right place. Buying DCS has really fired up my interest in flight sims again and I'm finally going to get round to building a machine that can run this game well. I'm just looking for some general advice about what hardware components should receive the most attention. My main priority for this build, as the title may suggest, is performance in DCS Black Shark (and possibly the subsequent titles from DCS). I'll briefly list the proposed specs then I'll have a couple questions... (well, more than a couple:lol:) Motherboard: ASUS P5Q PRO Turbo CPU: Intel E8500 with Xigmatek HDT-S1283 attached. VGA: Gigabyte GeForce 9600GT SilentCell RAM: OCZ 2x2GB DDR PC8500 (1066MHz) HDD: One or two Samsung spinpoint drives I already own. 7200rpm. PSU: Vantec ION2 C Series 460W Case: Thermaltake Element S I intend to overclock the CPU and probably the graphics card as well. As such I'll be keeping a close eye on the thermal dynamics in the system and I'll be adding more fans than are provided by the case alone. First, a couple of points. I'm a fairly regular reader of the SPCR forums so you might be able to guess that low noise is a high priority for me. I've built one system before (in an Antec P182) and I was very pleased with how quiet it was. It convinced me to never buy a pre-built desktop PC again! i.e. A DIY'er was born.:) Anyway, the low noise is the reason I have toyed with the idea of the passive graphics card. However if DCS would benefit significantly more from a more powerful graphics card then I will be willing to sacrifice some of the peace and quiet! This is one of the things I am looking for advice on, as I know my current graphics card is probably well behind the average that you all probably have by now (a Gigabyte 8600GTS fanless card). I have read advice that a dual core CPU is best for DCS, so I have gone with the relatively good value (compared to the E8600) E8500. Is this overkill for DCS or not enough? The very low power consumption is one of the things that attracted me to this line of CPU. The other questions I have are mainly about the operating system. I will initially use Windows XP 32bit but I want to leave the Windows 7 upgrade option open as well. In that case I'd probably create a separate partition for the new OS and keep XP for the older games. I actually don't know much about the difference between 32bit and 64bit OS's or CPUs but I'm mainly interested in their effects on DCS performance. :D Any tips here? For the record, I'm hoping to use this machine for the other sims I've come to love (Jane's FA18, FSX, IL2 Sturmovik and a couple others). In particular, does my choice of RAM, CPU, and graphics card look reasonable? If one of the things is clearly going to bottleneck the whole system then please argue that! Is there some massive blunder I have made with these component choices? One final thing.. I'm assuming the hard drive performance is not a big priority so I am probably going to start off with a couple of the drives from my existing PC. Is there any gain to be hard from using a 10k RPM drive? I'm not even going to touch SSD! :lol: Assuming I use two drives where one is better than the other, would it be wise to place the OS and game install on separate disks, and if so, which of the OS or game should get the better performing drive? Thanks in advance! Piece EDIT.. Fixed a typo. The VGA was meant to be a 9600GT not a 8600!