Hi there people,

I have been away from the scene for a couple of years now due to many reasons but am now back, grown up and now have my own place and have seriously started an interest in builing me a PC.

Ok so I have had a good read of the sticky at the top section and have figured what  sort of sysemI want.  My list consists of:-

Asus P6T Deluxe V2
I7 920
BFG GTX 285
6GB Corsair XMS3 Memory timing 7-7-7-20
150GB WD Raptor for FSX
PC Power and Cooling 750W PSU

Now I have a few questions regarding this setup. 

One is, what performance will this machine give me in FSX with the processor overclocked?. I am hoping for nice frames with maxed settings. Because I'm pondering over the I7 950 but it really is a tad expensive because I'm having to buy everything ie Monitor, speakers, case, the lot.

Another question is about the hard drives. I understand one for FSX but how many others do I need? Just the one for the OS aswel? and what type? I don't have photoscenery yet so will buy a new drive when I get some PS.

Help would be great as I am a novice to pc building.

Thanks

You need at least two hard drives, one for FSX and one for the OS and everything else.  If you can afford a 300GB Velcirator I would go with that rather than the 150GB, it will give you room to expand.  For my second hard drive I got a 750GB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM w/32MB cache.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=2459&nam...

I am getting the Barracuda partitioned into two drives, a 250GB and a 500GB.  The 250GB will have the OS and other stuff like Office 2007.  The 500GB will have stuff like GEXn and photo scenery, basically FSX stuff that does not have to go on the FSX drive.  I think that this way I will always have enough room.  One of the things that Nick recommends is to not have your HD's at more than 50% or so capacity for optimum performance.  This is why I recommend the 300GB Velciraptor.

The BFG GTX285OCFU has the fastest clocks (core, memory & shader).  Over at Tiger Direct they are only $5.00 more than a BFG GTX285OCX and both are cheaper than what Newegg is selling a slower BFG GTX285 for.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=3669&nam...



Rod

answered in PM

but you will need to OC to get results even with i7 and a 950 is much easier to clock high than a 920

Regardless, a good clocking heatink is needed.. the Intel box heatsink is not going to allow clocking very far

The deal is, to use 1600 memory correctly you either dont clock at all, or, you must clock to at least 3.2GHz+ on a 920, 3.6Ghz+ on a 950

In both cases best results are seen in clocks 3.8GHz and higher

a 975 will not change memory speed since those allow full CPU multiplier changes and they also allow the full 6.4GT/s QPI the 920/950 wont. With a 975 you do not have to deal with memory speed changes as the memory will always run 1600 no matter what the CPU speed is

System ordered. Can't wait to simming again!