Over the last month there has been a number of forum posts that have ended up in rather animated discussions around what to use, how to build and settings for getting the best sim experience that you can on your soon to be, or just completed PC build.

I am guilty of wading headlong in on some of these threads, something I have until recently avoided as I knew that it would cause me much frustration.

Of course the first major bone of contention is that ole Intel vs AMD argument which I don't particularly understand why people get so passionate over their favourite brand of CPU. Its the same passion that people have over their Football team, or Ford vs Chevy, the list goes on.

I have built my own PCs since the early nineties and have built FSX dedicated PCs for myself and in the last five years for paying customers as well. I don't do this as a form of income at all, its just something that I fell in to by accident through my brothers PC store when he would every so often get requests for a sim dedicated PC. I see it as a extension of the sim hobby and something that I enjoy doing, it has also kept me passionate about the hobby.

Now I could start writing a list of components that I believe will give you results that when everything is setup correctly will make you happier than a dog with two tales, if only it was that simple.

Even before I contemplate components for a build for a sim PC, I need to have a firm idea of what the PC will be expected to do, how will it be used. Is it going to be a general purpose and FSX PC, is it going to be a gaming, general purpose and FSX PC, is it going to be a straight out dedicated FSX PC that will not be expected to do anything other than that. These questions are the most important decisions of the whole build. This is where in my experience people make the biggest mistakes, which lead to disappointment, frustration and hard earned money wasted.

The mistake they make is not the decision they have made over the PCs use but that they have already decided, most of the time unknowing even to themselves over the CPU they are going to use. It is already set in concrete that they are going to use a Intel this or a AMD that.

So build has already be compromised, and the rest of the build will become one of having to make even more compromises.

So the first and in my opinion the biggest hurdle that needs to be jumped in pursuit of your perfect sim PC is to have no brand loyalty at all. No hint of loyalty to Intel or AMD, no loyalty to i7s or FX-9590s, no loyalty to GPUs, no loyalty to a brand of motherboard. Get over that hurdle and you have made the first giant step towards YOUR PERFECT SIM PC.