The differentiator between an i7 quad and an i5 quad is hyperthreading which FSX doesn't use although rendering and photoshop use it a bit.

Get Core i5 2500 (3.3ghz, 3.7ghz turbo) or Core i7 2600 (3.4ghz, 3.8ghz turbo). The 2600 has a tiny bit higher frequency and hyperthreading but disproportionality more expensive. Get unlocked 'K' model if overclocking, they usually go to 4.5-4.8ghz with air cooling. At the moment, these are the only processors that are worth buying. The Intel hex-core processors are very expensive while only marginally faster, very cheap quad cores from AMD are too slow, slightly cheaper quad cores from Intel are only slightly cheaper yet slower, AMD hex-core processors only match the 2500/2600 in multi-threaded tasks and fall behind in single-threaded, dual cores are dual cores whereas the sweetspot is quad cores. Alternatively you can wait a week (October 12) and see how AMD FX-series processors pan out. Might be good. Might be bad.

Get 8gb DDR3-1600 (DDR3-1333 will do too, but 1600 is pretty much the same price and faster). RAM is cheap, I wouldn't bother with 4gb since it won't save you much money at all. Sandy Bridge only supports DDR3, so you don't need to worry about RAM type unless you're specifying all the parts.

GTX 560-Ti or GTX 570. Both great cards. If you want cheaper then go GTX 560 but don't go lower. Junk 8600GTS.

Corsair Carbide 400R case. Cheap, decent. I think it's sold in the UK.

Corsair HX-650 or decent quality (seasonic, enermax, ocz high current series, corsair, superflower) 650 watt power supply. I don't know how good your current power supply is so I don't know if you should keep it as wattage means nothing without knowing the conditions of that wattage.

Your budget isn't high enough for a SSD, and 10,000 rpm drives are essentially redundant. Any 7200rpm 1tb will do for OS and a 5400/5900rpm 2tb drive will do for storage. 500gb drives are redundant and poor value.

Windows 7. It is only bad if you don't know how to use the GUI properly (just kidding).

Make sure it's paired to a big screen.

Get a store to build it or build it yourself. I'm not from the UK so I don't know any stores. For the love of god, don't buy some POS dell, emachines, hp, acer.. In any case, make sure it gas i5-2500 or i7-2600, 8gb, gtx 560 or gtx 560-ti or gtx 570.

ACER sucks, it looks retarded, and has a crap processor, crap graphics, crap hard drive, less than preferable RAM and is probably 100% overpriced. HP has really good processor, less than preferable RAM, integrated graphics which is really slow for FSX, good hard disk and a formfactor that may make upgrading difficult in the future. It would be really good for FSX if you added a good graphics card to it, but it might not fit the form factor or run with the power supply since neither were specified.


I've been trying to find something good, but VAT always pushes the price to 800 pounds - everything is seemingly 15-20% more expensive than here in Australia. 

I have been playing Battlefield 3 recently and the memory and pagefile usage goes over 4gb, which is which is why I think 8gb is preferable. I'm about to upgrade to a Core i5 2500 and 8gb of DDR3-1600.

I'll try to find something good, just hang on.