New upcoming build

[dburne]

Hey gang,

 

Ok so dang now I am really hooked on these flight sims. Pre-ordered the Premium Edition of BOS. Donated to the DCS WWII Kickstarter project. Both of these types of transactions, are the first for me in all the years of flight simming.

 

Now today, I decided it was time to finally upgrade from my X58 motherboard and I7 920 processor. This thing has run like a champ for over three years now without so much as a hiccup. But I normally upgrade every couple of years, three at the most. I guess I will be moving up a couple of generations.

 

So today I ordered the EVGA X79 Dark socket 2011 board:  http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=150-SE-E789-KR

 

And to go along with it, the Intel I7 4820K processor ( unlocked ) Ivy Bridge E .

 

Still have to get the other components, but I like to do a little at a time. Hope to have all ready and the new build done during the holidays.

 

Btw, I hope this is not frowned upon but I gotta say, I have really gotten into Cliffs of Dover the last few days, with the TF mod it runs fairly well on my system. I have been learning the ins and outs of full realism, CEM, etc. I am hoping that will also help prepare me for BOS when it becomes available. So now I am flying ROF and Cliffs of Dover, anxiously awaiting BOS.

 

Any recommendations on video card would be appreciated - sticking with Nvidia, I am thinking something along the line of the GTX 680.

 

Also, I would love to hear thoughts on a good SSD drive. I have yet to cross over into SSD land, and am thinking with this new build it may be time. I know I hear that a SSD really is great to put the windows os on, in terms of fast load times - what about the flight sims themselves? Anything appreciable to be gained from having them on a SDD?

 

Thanks for any tips,

 

 

 

[Dakpilot]

GTX 770 has better performance than GTX680 and is cheaper, the saving over any more expensive card, GTX780 for example can be used for an SSD 256GB and closed loop watercooler, H100i or similar, overclocking is now so easy and usually just a button press or slider move, with a good cooler the performance benefit from an O/C +H100i is cost/performance much better than the higher spec GRX card at that level. Something like MSI GTX770 4GB Twin Frozr is what I would recommend as best performance/price value, plus very quiet/efficient non reference dual fan cooler is an extra benefit.

Any of the later SSD's are pretty much comparable in real world performance, and for a new build compulsory nowadays to get the benefits of a new system, a platter HD WILL be a bottleneck

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[dburne]

Thanks Dakpilot.

 

Ironically, I was looking and comparing video cards last night and that is what I was comparing, the GTX 680 versus the GTX 770 ( 4gb), and I certainly noticed the 770 was cheaper - have it saved as bookmark now after your comments, will most likely go with that one - except I will probably  go with EVGA.

I will also check out SSD's, I am sure I will go with at least one, maybe two. Do you install your flight sims on the SSD?

 

Thanks,

[sop]

Install the OS(for faster boot time) and whatever games you wish to take advantage of it, I purchased one for the arma 2 and 3 series primarily and it really does make a difference in that simulator,load times in ROF I noticed a difference as for recommending a brand, Samsung or Crucial seem the market leaders atm I have a Crucial M4 512GB myself and everything else on a

1tb WD Black

Edited September 25, 2013 by sop

[dburne]

Thanks for the recommendations and advise sop, I will check those two out.

[SYN_DerHesse70]

EVGA GeForce GTX 770 4GB Dual w/ ACX Cooler

 

http://eu.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=04G-P4-3773-KR&family=GeForce%20700%20Series%20Family&uc=EUR

 

Biggest bang for the buck. Do the rest with MSI afterburner.

Edited September 25, 2013 by DerHesse70

[dburne]

Thanks DerHesse70, I was looking at the one without the ACX cooler, after checking out this one with it - have pretty much made up my mind to go ahead with it.

 

Appreciate the feedback,

[6./ZG26_Emil]

Get two SSDs. One for windows and one for games, then have a bog standard spinney HDD for all your movies and what not.

 

Personally I would go Intel SSD. Don't be suckered by the fastest ones just get reliable!

[FuriousMeow]

Regarding 2GB or 4GB 770GTX: http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/

 

I have the 2GB, and not even close to using half the cards memory at 2560x1600 with RoF. No other game I have is pushing the memory. That could of course change, so 4GB for much higher than 2560x1600 and/or multi-monitor for future proofing could make sense.

 

Don't know if you're in the US, but this is the 770 I have: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125463

 

Price in cart is currently $380, about $20 cheaper than what I paid for it and it's been great for all my gaming titles. Even running physx with Planetside at 2560x1600 in massive large scale battles.

 

And also for memory - people will try to sell you with high speed memory, but all reviews indicate that the sweet spot is 1600MHz with low latency (CL7 is great, but CL9 is fine) in both terms of price/performance and generally in availability/reliability. Nothing I've seen has indicated any advantage to going above 1600MHz as long as it's CL7, 8 or 9.

Edited September 26, 2013 by FuriousMeow

[FuriousMeow]

Get two SSDs. One for windows and one for games, then have a bog standard spinney HDD for all your movies and what not.

 

Personally I would go Intel SSD. Don't be suckered by the fastest ones just get reliable!

 

I have a Samsung and an OCZ. Both have worked great for the past year and a 3 months (9 months for the OCZ even though those are supposedly awful).

 

Naturally, now that I say that - they will go up in smoke shortly.

Edited September 26, 2013 by FuriousMeow

[dburne]

I have a Samsung and an OCZ. Both have worked great for the past year and a 3 months (9 months for the OCZ even though those are supposedly awful).

 

Naturally, now that I say that - they will go up in smoke shortly.

 

Well I certainly hope not, hate for you to point the finger at me that one!

Thanks for the feedback!

 

I actually pulled the trigger this morning on both vid card and ram.

Ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233346

 

Vid card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130948&Tpk=EVGA%20GeForce%20GTX%20770%204GB%20Dual%20w%2f%20ACX%20Cooler

 

Regarding SSD, any thoughts on this one?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148696

Really not sure I need to start with one that large a capacity, might get around a 180-200 gb to start with, can always add a second later.

 

Seems to have some pretty positive reviews. Thinking about just getting one of these, to put the OS and flight sims on. I have over a terabyte of space combined, with 4 ea WD platter hard discs, to put a lot of my other stuff on...

Speaking of the OS, what do you guys think of Windows 8? I was thinking I would just stick with Win 7 64 bit Home Premium that I have now, since I will be doing a new install should I consider giving Win8 a go?

 

Emil: Thanks for your feedback as well ! I am also looking at some of those Intel SSD's as well.

Edited September 26, 2013 by dburnette

[FuriousMeow]

With SSD tech as it is right now, still relatively new and costly, I would go with more smaller size drives that come on sale than a single large one. I only purchased the Samsung at the time because it was about $50 on sale for a 64GB, which I made into a dedicated game drive. The OCZ was also on sale a few months later, 256GB for $156, so I picked it up and made one partition the OS and another an extra game drive. My platter disc is only download storage and accessory/utilties storage (unzip location, fraps, antivirus, browser, etc). But unlike platters, if a SSD goes - the whole thing goes instead of sectors of a platter(unless of course the motor goes out - which is fairly rare these days). So you might be better off getting a few on sale of smaller size. That way if one goes, not everything is gone.

 

Again, YMMV and it's just something of a precaution - and if you can get them on sale it's somewhat financially sensible since the smaller sizes tend to go on sale for a significant reduction. By no means is this "how it should be done!", simply what I chose and think makes sense.

 

960GB for almost .50c a GB is of course a great deal. I'd just be worried about the whole drive going, just something to think about and by no means is it an absolute. That drive could last for years.

Edited September 27, 2013 by FuriousMeow

[dburne]

With SSD tech as it is right now, still relatively new and costly, I would go with more smaller size drives that come on sale than a single large one. I only purchased the Samsung at the time because it was about $50 on sale for a 64GB, which I made into a dedicated game drive. The OCZ was also on sale a few months later, 256GB for $156, so I picked it up and made one partition the OS and another an extra game drive. My platter disc is only download storage and accessory/utilties storage (unzip location, fraps, antivirus, browser, etc). But unlike platters, if a SSD goes - the whole thing goes instead of sectors of a platter(unless of course the motor goes out - which is fairly rare these days). So you might be better off getting a few on sale of smaller size. That way if one goes, not everything is gone.

 

Again, YMMV and it's just something of a precaution - and if you can get them on sale it's somewhat financially sensible since the smaller sizes tend to go on sale for a significant reduction. By no means is this "how it should be done!", simply what I chose and think makes sense.

 

960GB for almost .50c a GB is of course a great deal. I'd just be worried about the whole drive going, just something to think about and by no means is it an absolute. That drive could last for years.

 

Thanks Furious,

 

I ended up going with this drive , ordered it this morning:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147193

 

Figured I would start with just one 256 gb - will install the OS and my flight sims on it, along with some applications that may benefit. Hey, did you partition yours,  or is there no longer any benefit to doing that with an SSD?

I can always add a second one later. me new motherboard has two Sata 6 ports. Then I will put some of my regular drives in , for my date, documents, etc.

 

Thanks,

 

 

 

[FuriousMeow]

I did partition, just so I could keep things separated. Primarily just for the OS so I could know if it was eating up it's own partition with log files/error files/random temp junk that needs to be cleaned out. Mostly for a house cleaning purpose than a real technological need.

 

That's a solid drive, I have the 830. The 840 and 830 are MLC, which is Multi-Level Cell, vs some drives that are SLC (Single of course) and the latter cost more. They are faster and more reliable, but quite a bit more expensive and the speed difference is really only evident in constant data transfer with tons of data. Loading Windows, and our games, not going to be noticeable.

 

Here' s a worthwhile read to assist with your next purchase, and to answer any questions: http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/MLC-vs-SLC-Which-flash-SSD-is-right-for-you

 

But for this purchase, you made a great decision both in terms of product and price. You'll be very happy with your decision. OH! Also, make sure you configure your motherboard properly before installing Windows - it makes the Windows installation take full advantage of SSD speed. You CAN do it later, but it's more of a pain and you may not get the full benefit - but very close to it.

 

So for your mobo, you'll want to enable AHCI in your bios for the ATA contorller and make sure that during the Windows install - only the drive that you plan on installing Windows onto is hooked up(in this case your brand new SSD). Windows will pick up automatically how to install for optimal SSD performance as long as AHCI is enabled, it's a fresh install of Windows and just the SSD is plugged in. The latter is mostly just a safety precaution, but it's worth erring on the side of safety.

 

Here' s a couple of guides to read through, but the steps with registry settings - that's typically what would be needed in the case of a non-fresh Windows install when AHCI wasn't previously enabled and no SSDs existed, but I'm providing them here so you can peruse through and ask any questions you may have here so some of us can assist.

 

http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

http://www.thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/?ModPagespeed=noscript

 

When this is all said and done, enjoy your boot to Windows in under 15 seconds and reboots that will take an agonizingly second longer. I will tell people on TS playing a game that I'm rebooting, I'm back on TS before they finish their stories. It's simply amazing.

[dburne]

Thanks so much Furious, and for the tips on setting up the new MB. I have bookmarked those links - looks to have some very good information. I do like being as well prepared as I can be when I start this new build.

[Bearcat]

Thanks Dakpilot.

 

Ironically, I was looking and comparing video cards last night and that is what I was comparing, the GTX 680 versus the GTX 770 ( 4gb), and I certainly noticed the 770 was cheaper - have it saved as bookmark now after your comments, will most likely go with

 

that one - except I will probably  go with EVGA.

I will also check out SSD's, I am sure I will go with at least one, maybe two. Do you install your flight sims on the SSD?

 

Thanks,

I have IL2 on my ssd .. everything else is on my other data drive.

[Jaws2002]

+1 on the pair of ssd's. I have windows on a 128gb, games on a 256gb corsair m4 and everything else on a large hdd. The things are blazing fast.

the evga acx cooler for their new video cards is another good buy. I got their GTX780 sc with acx cooler and it was only ten bucks over the price of the rference cooler, but it's much more efficient and the card can overclock better.

My card temperature never goes over 55 celsius.

[skline00]

I'm anxiously awaiting IL2 to try on Rig 2 below. I have the 3930k at 4.3Ghz with a GTX 680 all custom water cooled.

[dburne]

Update on new build:

Components are coming together, not much to go now. Still planning on doing this build during the last two weeks of Dec, when I am on vacation.

 

What I now have here:

EVGA X79 Dark MB

Intel I7 4820K processor

EVGA GTX 770 FTW 4GB video card

16 GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133 MHz quad channel ram

2 EA Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB SSD

NZXT 820 Phantom Gunmetal case ( out for delivery today).

 

Next I will get the cooler, probably H100i.

Will use my current Corsair 1000W modular power supply, and Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatality Pro, 24" Samsung LED, and 22" Samsung LCD.

I will be staying with Windows 7 64 Bit Home Premium.

Edited November 9, 2013 by dburnette