Call to the tech savvy VR Simmers - Please help me to upgrade my computer

[ZiggyZiggyStar]

I have been putting the pennies aside and now it is time to upgrade. Can you help me do this right?

I flightsim in VR and mostly use IL2 GB and MSFS2020. I may get into DCS and have IL2 COD ready for when VR Arrives. My current headset is the HP Reverb G2 and I will be upgrading (perhaps in about a year) when I figure out which is the best upgrade, so not imminently but I would expect my new computer upgrade to be able to run the  Vajo Aero or Pimax Crystal well should I decide on either.

My current specs:

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080Ti

I7 6700K at 4.00GHz

32 installed RAM

i have a 1 Tb and a 2 Tb hard drive.

 

I am 99% settled on a RTX 4090 as the starting point. Are some brands or specs to be recommended over others or are they all pretty much the same? There seem to be lots which range in price.
Is there a certain recommendation for the new power supply to go with it so there is no fire risk?
I was going Intel for the CPU upgrade but I hear AMD is the way to go. What is the consensus? And recommended spec?

i know I need a new motherboard, other than that I need guidance here.

Can I keep my current 32GB ram as is?

Do I need to get extra cooling system installed?

is there anything I have overlooked?

 

I am not personally putting this together, I just want to know what I am talking about when I get the computer people to upgrade as I don’t expect they have much (or any) VR and or flight simming experience.

Thanks in advance. 

 

 

 

[[CPT]Bligh]

If I were building a system now it would be a RTX 4090 GPU and 7800X3D.  I prefer MSI and Asus from a brand perspective.  As for the motherboard, pick one that has the features you need (wifi, number of USB ports, etc).

 

You could keep your RAM if you went Intel with a DDR4 Z690/790 board, but coming from a 6700k I'm guessing it's probably older and only rated for 2133/2400mhz so not recommended.

 

Probably want at least a 750W Gold PSU.  I prefer Seasonic and Super Flower.

 

 

My system for disclosure

 

12700k

64GB DDR4 3200mhz (DCS?)

MSI Z690 Edge DDR4

6900XT Red Devil

Western Digital SN850 SSDs

280mm Arctic Freezer CPU cooler

850W Super Flower Leadex III PSU

Phantek P500a case

 

Edited June 3, 2023 by [CPT]Bligh

[ZiggyZiggyStar]

11 hours ago, [CPT]Bligh said:

If I were building a system now it would be a RTX 4090 GPU and 7800X3D.  I prefer MSI and Asus from a brand perspective.  As for the motherboard, pick one that has the features you need (wifi, number of USB ports, etc).

 

You could keep your RAM if you went Intel with a DDR4 Z690/790 board, but coming from a 6700k I'm guessing it's probably older and only rated for 2133/2400mhz so not recommended.

 

Probably want at least a 750W Gold PSU.  I prefer Seasonic and Super Flower.

 

 

My system for disclosure

 

12700k

64GB DDR4 3200mhz (DCS?)

MSI Z690 Edge DDR4

6900XT Red Devil

Western Digital SN850 SSDs

280mm Arctic Freezer CPU cooler

850W Super Flower Leadex III PSU

Phantek P500a case

 

Thanks so much [CPTN]Bligh, this is just the kind of help I was looking for. ??

[ZiggyZiggyStar]

Any other suggestions/comments or has [CPT]Bligh nailed it in his post?

[giftgruen]

Hi. I also own a HP Reverb G2 and originally flew IL2 ( WW1 + WW2 ) with a 3070.

( i5-13600KF + DDR4-RAM 3200 Mhz )

 

This was quite funny already, though I could not max out all the visual settings

and also had go to 70% headset resolution  ( fix 60Hz - smooth enough imho - no motion reprojection )

 

Recently changed to a 4080 cause I didnt wanna spent the money for a 4090 - gaming is just a occasional hobby for me ? 

 

Now I can max out most options ( not MSAAx4 but this is not necessary imho ) and set resolution to 100%

 

YES. It looks significantly better and sharper.

NO. It doesn't really change the game experience so much, cause you simply get used to it after a while.

 

So, in the end, spending the 1000 Euros in a better AI would be the better option, but the IL2 team doesn't offer such an upgrade ?

 

[[CPT]Bligh]

2 hours ago, giftgruen said:

So, in the end, spending the 1000 Euros in a better AI would be the better option, but the IL2 team doesn't offer such an upgrade ?

 

Join with someone on Combat Box server if you can and forget about AI

[giftgruen]

On 6/6/2023 at 7:15 PM, [CPT]Bligh said:

Join with someone on Combat Box server if you can and forget about AI

 

Job, family and other - more important - real life interests dont allow online stuff atm - I fly only from time to time - when it fits to my life plan

[von_Tom]

 

If you're upgrading in a year, the best upgrade now is to do nothing at all.  Save even more pannies.

 

If you mean that you're upgrading now (with a VR upgrade in the future then split the cash between CPU and GPU to avoid bottlenecking and to allow GB to run well.

 

von Tom

[ZiggyZiggyStar]

Thanks Von Tom. I have upgraded now and IL2 seems to be running well and looking very good. I am still considering the VR headset upgrade, I'll probably be leaving that for a year or so to see what new headsets appear and also see how the Crystal beds down. 

[RossMarBow]

9 hours ago, ZiggyZiggyStar said:

Thanks Von Tom. I have upgraded now and IL2 seems to be running well and looking very good. I am still considering the VR headset upgrade, I'll probably be leaving that for a year or so to see what new headsets appear and also see how the Crystal beds down. 

what cpu mobo and ram did you end up getting

 

my strong advice is to manually set the imc and soc voltages 
you will have to get your head around the bios
but you can also probably get some easy free performance too
and its the only really option since modern intels and amds have terrible default bios settings that eat chips

[ZiggyZiggyStar]

On 6/27/2023 at 1:23 AM, RossMarBow said:

what cpu mobo and ram did you end up getting

 

my strong advice is to manually set the imc and soc voltages 
you will have to get your head around the bios
but you can also probably get some easy free performance too
and its the only really option since modern intels and amds have terrible default bios settings that eat chips

 

Hi RossMarBow, thanks for the reply. 

I ended up getting…
CPU = AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D. CPU 8 cores 16 threads max boost 5.0 GHz. 104 MB total cache

MOBo = MSI Pro X670 Wifi ATX

Ram = Corsair Dominator platinum RGB 32 GB DDR5 2x 16GB 5600MHz CL 36

 

As for manually setting the imc and soc voltages manually, thanks, but I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Any step by step videos to tell me what to do?

[RossMarBow]

On 6/28/2023 at 9:02 PM, ZiggyZiggyStar said:

 

Hi RossMarBow, thanks for the reply. 

I ended up getting…
CPU = AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D. CPU 8 cores 16 threads max boost 5.0 GHz. 104 MB total cache

MOBo = MSI Pro X670 Wifi ATX

Ram = Corsair Dominator platinum RGB 32 GB DDR5 2x 16GB 5600MHz CL 36

 

As for manually setting the imc and soc voltages manually, thanks, but I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Any step by step videos to tell me what to do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARk2Z1lZIF8 - gives a overview of the bios

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVfmHkUuByI  - gives a really basic guide to setting soc voltage
the above two should get you going
setting soc to 1.2 seems to be the way to go - verify in bios and hwinfo after setting
 

test with this https://www.ocbase.com/
20min of the different cpu and ram tests should be enough to pick up any obvious problems

 

HWINFO64 is the best monitoring tool use sensors only mode

 

with any new system you should run a memtest overnight
with any changes to voltages and speed you should test too
https://www.overclock.net/threads/memory-testing-with-testmem5-tm5-with-custom-configs.1751608/

 

always test before you start tuning, so you know you have a stability/performance baseline 
shadow of the tomb raider demo on steam is one of the best tools to check performance
7zip bench and occt bench cover everything else

 

-----------------------

 

If you want to do more than just make sure even thing is running safely 

https://youtu.be/x5U-8rvmGDc   - watch this to get an idea of possibilities 

and read these threads to get an idea of starting points
https://www.overclock.net/threads/official-zen-4-x3d-owners-club-7800x3d-7900x3d-7950x3d.1803292/
https://www.overclock.net/threads/amd-ddr5-oc-and-24-7-daily-memory-stability-thread.1800926/
https://www.overclock.net/threads/msi-x670e-meg-mpg-mb-overclock-and-discussion-thread.1803462/page-15
never trust a youtubers settings straight up especially power related, rely on a consensus built on forums

 

Pro tip: don't rush ram tuning - changing one thing at a time and leaving a stability test running overnight is much easier than changing and chopping a ton of different settings - unplug the internet to stop windows updating with potentially bunged ram

 

[I put risk rating in these brackets - lowering voltages is zero risk to hardware but can cause a variety of weird issues if not done right, the only voltage that should be increased is maybe RAM voltages - everything else for am5 seems too high at stock - which is a change from am4 which set everything too low at stock]
 

Based on my experience with tuning zen 3 and running a system in the global top 100
I would recommend just ignoring tuning CO its a giant waste of time for basically zero gains in gaming [you might get a random black screen/automatic reset a month later totally not worth it]
And tuning ram on x3d gives about half the performance boost you get on a non x3d
that being said some operations are just faster with tuned ram
XMP/EXPO default ram settings are generally just terribly slow - you can usually just copy paste some settings in 
AHOC and hardware unboxed have some youtube videos on those settings

https://youtu.be/MOatIQuQo3s - should give you easy gains and no issues

also with X3D chips its beneficial to lower SOC related voltages as it saves power budget and a little bit of heat (apparently I have no experience) 
I don't think any x3d chip gets mhz offset - so the only thing worth tuning for gaming is:
SOC speed [basically zero risk but weird things can happen if you set voltages too low] real gaming gains 
RAM speed [can cause software issues if your too aggressive without testing] real gaming gains 
(however returns on this for x3d are half what they are for no x3d chips) 
(again do not bother with CO its a giant pain in the ass for non-significant game gains)

tuning EDC to your workload [zero risk of causing crashes] no real gaming gains but*
I use 7zip benchmark to tune EDC as its the closest to a real world multicore workload
99% of MC workloads like p95 etc. are just meaningless as real world MC workloads are much lighter 
tuning to 7zip will mean the few MC workloads your CPU will do while gaming like decompressing textures and packages will run a little bit faster

 

other thing to keep in mind is making sure you on a good BIOS that is stable and not a beta bios
which might not even be possible 
but with AM4 then 2021 bios are best, which took about 2 years to come out, every bios after that are slower, every bios before that is faster but has weird issues
if you update bios make sure you reset the bios and set default settings after doing it, and re check all settings and stability 

but otherwise slowly a steadily chipping away at more performance will net you long term real gains with zero worries as you will be confident in your performance and stability (a well tuned CPU will beat a stock next gen chip; if games crash or whatever you will know its a software issue not hardware)

 

[ZiggyZiggyStar]

Wow, thank you RossMarBow, that is very comprehensive and more than a little daunting to read through. Hopefully I can follow the instructions above -so long as they don’t assume I know more than I do. Which I don’t! Thanks once again.