In trawling through Forums I’ve come across a respectable  spec  for dedicated FSX use and full slider settings. Although a 2009 spec, this has been the bench mark in my search. I’ve tried to update and keep my budget under £2000. I’d appreciate any views you have especially if you have similar components running.

My Bench Mark

Intel® Core™ i7-975 Extreme Processor3 (3.33GHz, 8MB L3 Cache)
Operating System Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (64-bit) with SP1
GPU’s    2 x  RADEON HD 4870 2 GB Discrete Video memory 8
RAM      12GB DDR3 SDRAM Memory8
Hard Drive    2 x 1TB SATA II hard drives
Motherboard  Systemboard with Intel® X58 Chipset
Optical Drive   BluRay Combo Drive and 18X DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti Drive featuring Labelflash™ Technology9
Power Supply   1000W

My proposed Setup is:-

Intel® Core™ i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache)
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
GPU’s   2 x GEFORCE 2 GB GTX 560 Ti      
RAM    16GB SAMSUNG DUAL DDR3 1333 Mhz (4 x 4gb)
Hard Drive   120 GB INTEL 320 series SSD, SATA
Hard Drive   1TB WD WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s 64 CACHE
Motherboard   ASUS P8Z68-v-PRO/GEN3 PCI-E 3.0 READY, SLI, CROSSFIREX  Z68 Chipset
Optical Drive   BluRay ROM Drive and 16X DVD+/-R/RW 
Power Supply   750W
Processor Cooling     LIQUID  C240 COOLITE ECO 11

Queries yet to be resolved:-
The Core i7-2600 seems on the face of it, to be better than the i7-975
Would one higher spec GPU say a 3GB GTX 590 be as good as 2 x GTX 560’s
Knowing how demanding FSX is when at full whack, is there likely to be any bottlenecking in this configuration.

Get a 2600K not a 2600.  Overclock your 2600K to 4.8GHz - 5.0GHz.  To overclock you will need an aftermarket HSF.  Instead of the Coolite ECO also look at the Thermalright Silver Arrow or the Noctua NH-D14.  Look at reviews on the net and you will find the Silver Arrow and D14 do a better job than the Coolite ECO.

If your only GPU concern if FSX then FSX will not make use of dual GPU's.  Get rid of the two GTX 560Ti's and get one GTX 580.  Get the GTX 580 with the highest clocks available when you purchase.

To overclock you need a case with great airflow, two really good ones are the Coolermaster HAFX and the 932.

For best performance FSX should be on its own HD.  Look at getting a second mechanical HD just for FSX.  You could use the 1TB you have listed, just make two partitions.  The first for FSX and the second for data storage and programs that you are not going to load on the SSD.  You could put your OS and FSX on the SSD, but if you start getting a lot of addons for FSX you will quickly fill the 120GB SSD up.

Unless you are running programs that will use 16GB of ram then 16GB is overkill, you only need 8GB and see if you can get ram rated at 1600MHz instead of 1333MHz.  Also get 1600MHz ram with the lowest CAS rating you can find.

Get Crucial M4 128GB SSD.

Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB drives. The prices are about 180% higher than usual due to flooding in SE Asia. Unless you really need multiple drives or have money to burn then get one for the moment.

Make sure the 750 watt power supply is quality, I recommend Silverstone Strider Plus and Corsair HX series.


2500K is very close to the 2600K in most applications which do not use hyperthreading. FSX doesn't.

GTX 570 or GTX 580. I like MSI ones with twin frozr cooling III cooling.

Corsair 500R is an excellent case. The white one looks really nice as well. Fractal Design Define R3 is also good and is the Antec P280. The HAFX is also a good case but in my opinion it is fugly.


Noctua CPU cooling is nice.

DDR3-1600.... timings don't matter as much as most other parts, but try to get RAM that is 8-8-8 or 8-9-8 or lower. Try to get low profile RAM because heatsinks like the Noctua have a tendency to block RAM slots if they use high heatspreaders.