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Need help, new to DCS and need to build a system


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hey guys,

I am new to dcs and I would like to get into the game ASAP. I have a budget of around $700 aud but I can push it up to $1000. I need help parting out a pc. I've been talking to a friend and he seems to think I should get a 1060, but theyre $400 right now and I think AMD has some better prices.

 

Is the RX570 decent on dcs, I can't find any benchmarks anywhere?

 

Should I get the RX580 8gb or GTX10606Gb for the same price?

 

Do I go for Ryzen 5 which is cheaper or should I save more for an i5?

 

Do I need an SSD to start out in DCS or can I upgrade later?

 

Do I need 16Gb of RAM straight away or can I get away with 8Gb and upgrade later?

 

If I can get answers to these questions soon that would be great.

 

Thanks, Nick :):helpsmilie:


Edited by nick.j.walker
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Need help, new to DCS and need to build a system

 

Can only answer 2 questions.

 

You need 16gb of Ram. On my old pc I had 10 and a monitor showed 9.8 being used. And that was with every little extra process switched off. And I expect the page file was being used heavily.

 

I would say yes also to a ssd.

With a normal hard drive DCS takes an age to load. Ssd made a Massive difference in load times when I switched


Edited by Alligin
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Is the RX570 decent on dcs, I can't find any benchmarks anywhere?

 

 

You can use the RX570, but it has 2/3 of the GTX1060 performance ... so you will have to reduce the graphics detail a bit.

 

 

 

Should I get the RX580 8gb or GTX10606Gb for the same price?

 

 

They have about the same performance, but probably the nVidia has better resale value.

 

 

On my case, I chose a second hand GTX-970 .. has almost the same performance as the GTX-1060, but costed me just 200 dollars.

 

 

 

Do I go for Ryzen 5 which is cheaper or should I save more for an i5?

 

 

 

I use a Ryzen 5 1500X and I'm happy with it .. with the GTX-970 my Ryzen rarely has over 70% utilization, so it has headroom for a better card (playing on 1920x1080 resolution)

 

 

When comparing costs between Ryzen and Intel, look at the price of the mainboard+cpu combo, as sometimes the Ryzen mainboards are more expensive than the Intel ones and this erases a bit of their price advantage.

 

 

Do I need an SSD to start out in DCS or can I upgrade later?

 

 

You can upgrade it later ... but at least on my country the SSD are dirt cheap these days, a 240 GB unit cost less than 50 bucks.

 

 

Do I need 16Gb of RAM straight away or can I get away with 8Gb and upgrade later?

 

 

No, you really need the 16 GB .. on single player my DCS is using a bit over 11 GB these days.

 

 

 

Best regards

 

For work: iMac mid-2010 of 27" - Core i7 870 - 6 GB DDR3 1333 MHz - ATI HD5670 - SSD 256 GB - HDD 2 TB - macOS High Sierra

For Gaming: 34" Monitor - Ryzen 3600X - 32 GB DDR4 2400 - nVidia GTX1070ti - SSD 1.25 TB - HDD 10 TB - Win10 Pro - TM HOTAS Cougar - Oculus Rift CV1

Mobile: iPad Pro 12.9" of 256 GB

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DCS often tends to be heavy on the hardware and many people run it on very expensive systems. You may also need some money for controllers depending on what you do (I've been starting out with just a good $60 joystick from Logitech).

 

You can upgrade it later ... but at least on my country the SSD are dirt cheap these days, a 240 GB unit cost less than 50 bucks.

 

SSD can improve the disk performance (eg. for booting and the system) if you have some budget. DCS is bit of an unusual game since some users even report increased FPS on a high-end SSD, could be due to the huge maps. I think mission loading times would be tolerable without though (that said my DCS nowadays is on a new but bread-and-butter Samsung EVO). 256GB is not a lot of space nowadays if you want to fit in the system, DCS and a few other games, could be workable and it's easy to add more SSD later (my newish system has already 3 and few other upgrades...). Check that you actually go for an SSD that has the performance, a number of major brands have been offering SSD that doesn't match the performance leaders like Samsung and a bunch of smaller brands.

 

How much video RAM does DCS need if you select a lower texture quality? Maybe you could go for a cheaper GPU and leave that as an upgrade option (the other components would be quite adequate for general gaming for a while).

 

What I gather CPU and RAM are the real bottlenecks. Single thread performance might be what you should be looking for, not sure about this point though - you can read the numerous hardware/beginner threads to get better informed.


Edited by Varis

SA-342 Ka-50 Mi-8 AJS-37 F-18 M2000C AV-8B-N/A Mig-15bis CA --- How to learn DCS

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Yes to minimum of 16GB of ram, yes to install DCS on an SSD. My DCS install takes up about 130GB, so, if limiting yourself to one drive, get at least a 500GB drive so there's enough room for your OS and DCS. SATA III should be sufficient, so don't feel like you need an NVME drive or anything.

 

As far as budgeting the rest of your PC parts that's all up for grabs. If you're patient might be worth spreading your component purchases out over time so higher priced parts don't hurt as much, but if you want it ASAP definitely get the best parts that you can afford, keeping in mind single core CPU frequency and VRAM. 1060 6GB should be okay @ 1080P.

 

DCS is a resource hog, and people have been bruteforcing it for years trying to increase performance with systems that would be overkill for other modern titles. And it kind of makes sense given the size of the maps, and all objects that are able to render at a distance in DCS.


Edited by Headwarp
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Win 11 Pro, z790 i9 13900k, RTX 4090 , 64GB DDR 6400GB, OS and DCS are on separate pci-e 4.0 drives 

Sim hardware - VKB MCG Ultimate with 200mm extension, Virpil T-50CM3 Dual throttles.   Blackhog B-explorer (A), TM Cougar MFD's (two), MFG Crosswinds with dampener.   Obutto R3volution gaming pit.  

 

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Also, I was just wondering if 6 core cpus have an advantage over 4 cores

 

Not yet for DCS specifically until Vulkan gets put into the engine, but more cores definitely are better if you run things in the background while you're playing DCS.

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

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Ryzen 5 2600X for 200€ or another 80-100€ extra for an i5-8600k.

 

 

 

I'd grab the AMD system, not only because of the money.

Gigabyte Aorus X570S Master - Ryzen 5900X - Gskill 64GB 3200/CL14@3600/CL14 - Asus 1080ti EK-waterblock - 4x Samsung 980Pro 1TB - 1x Samsung 870 Evo 1TB - 1x SanDisc 120GB SSD - Heatkiller IV - MoRa3-360LT@9x120mm Noctua F12 - Corsair AXi-1200 - TiR5-Pro - Warthog Hotas - Saitek Combat Pedals - Asus PG278Q 27" QHD Gsync 144Hz - Corsair K70 RGB Pro - Win11 Pro/Linux - Phanteks Evolv-X 

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