Alienware or Razor or MSI or ???

hello, I am going to buy a new PC very soon. I need your suggestions what u recommend

?

http://jetlinesystems.com/

This is what they do best! These systems are designed especially for FSX.

but do they ship it outside USA?

Beats me! Why don't you contact them and ask?

I think Alienware is an outfit that builds systems for FS/gamers.. So that gives no

indication of the actual hardware they would use in a system.

I've never heard of Razor.. MSI builds motherboards and such, and happens to be

the brand MB I'm using right now. I've had no issues with it..

Myself, I build my own PC's so I can have what I want, and pass on what I don't need.

Saves $$$ too.. I have little info on the custom systems builders, except they always

charge a lot more than what I would pay to build it myself.. :p

I think Alienware is an outfit that builds systems for FS/gamers.. So that gives no

indication of the actual hardware they would use in a system.

I've never heard of Razor.. MSI builds motherboards and such, and happens to be

the brand MB I'm using right now. I've had no issues with it..

Myself, I build my own PC's so I can have what I want, and pass on what I don't need.

Saves $$$ too.. I have little info on the custom systems builders, except they always

charge a lot more than what I would pay to build it myself.. :p

whats your framerate? what kind of addons you use...

whats your framerate? what kind of addons you use...

All over the map.. I'm using a i7 4790 with a MSI Z97 MB. Default FSX, over 100+ fps

according to the counter. But in the real world of FTX Global and Vector, and then

running the PMDG 737NGX, probably in the 25-50 fps range.. A lot depends on the

clouds.. And I'm using the cheap onboard HD 4600 video.

All over the map.. I'm using a i7 4790 with a MSI Z97 MB. Default FSX, over 100+ fps

according to the counter. But in the real world of FTX Global and Vector, and then

running the PMDG 737NGX, probably in the 25-50 fps range.. A lot depends on the

clouds.. And I'm using the cheap onboard HD 4600 video.

Pretty much satisfied but you mean you get 25-30 FPS in the VC right?. That's acceptable.

Are you able to do long haul flights(more than 12 hours). Or you experience thermal instabilities?

Yayvan,

just a vote of confidence: MBKHOU knows what he's talking about.

He know how to build a good PC.

I built mine about a year and a half ago. I'll give the specs. But, keep in mind this was in December 2013 so parts have advanced a bit.

Mine runs sweet by the way.

i5-3570k

mainboard: ga-z77x-d3h

ram: 8 Gb Corsair Vengeance 1600 Mhz

Videocard (from old pc): NVidia GT430

PSU: Corsair 500Watt Modulair

HDD: Sandisk 256 Gb - Sata3 (Windows & FSX & All other programs)

HDD2: WD Caviar Black 1000 Gb - Sata3 (All my data)

DVD Burner: ASUS DRW-F1ST

Picking and choosing parts took the best part of 4 months. Looking up every detail of every part I came across.

The best info is on the manufacturers site. In "specifications".

Forget about comparing things in online stores. Because once you have found something you like, and look it up on the manufacturers website you will find nasty surprises the online store forgot to mention.

If you search on this site: fraislive il88pp

you will find a thread where I guide someone through building his own PC.

He was very happy with the result.

That was a year ago, so it's not meant as a parts list for you. It's a guide on how to choose your OWN parts.

You don't need to use search, I foun it, that was in this thread:

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?275069-CPU-Selection

This thread was a little later:

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?276091-Would-this-computer-run-FSX

Building your own PC will save you a few hundred dollar. Plus you'll have exactly the parts you want.

Also, as you built the PC, you will know everything about it, including how to fix it. No more need for 'tech support'.

Have Fun!

il88pp

Pretty much satisfied but you mean you get 25-30 FPS in the VC right?. That's acceptable.

Are you able to do long haul flights(more than 12 hours). Or you experience thermal instabilities?

Yep, all VC here.. I haven't run a 2d panel since FS9 came out, which is over 10

years ago. The puter and sim are capable of long haul flights, but I'm usually not..

I fly all real time, with no time jumps. To me, a 3 hour flight is pretty long, with most

less than that. 12 hours? Not enough time here, and I don't have the patience to

sit at cruise that long. That's one reason why I haven't bothered with the 777 yet,

and still prefer the 737. And most of the SWA flights I run are about the perfect length

I like to do. Some are even less than an hour.

Just remember for FSX, the CPU is king. You want to get the best performing CPU

you can afford. It's mostly downhill after that. And although P3D does use more of

the video card than FSX, the CPU is still very important with that sim also.

I haven't had any thermal problems. I got a water cooling setup with the bundle I

bought, and I still haven't needed to use it yet. I'm still running the stock intel fan

and heat sink. The water cooler rig is still in the box..

http://jetlinesystems.com/

 

This is what they do best! These systems are designed especially for FSX.

I just went to that site and they're quite the outfit! I have built my last few machines myself and find their prices for options about what I would expect. But man, their basic box pricing is in the stratosphere!

I suggest most people look at their specs, start shopping for parts and if you're really scared, an assembler. Figure on spending about 50% to 65% of what they're asking for similar stuff.

They are obviously a Porsche 911 class company. But especially now that I'm retired, I've got a Miata sized wallet.

But man, their basic box pricing is in the stratosphere!

.

Too rich for my cash poor blood... :(

I just calculated up about what I spent for my 4790 box, and for all the hardware so far,

I come out to about $612+sales tax. "I bought all the hardware local".

That includes a new Zalman case, an Antec 850 watt modular PS, an MSI Z97S SLI

Krait Edition MB, and the locked i7 4790 CPU, and 8 GB of Corsair Vengeance Pro 1866

ram. Also includes the new 2 TB HD for C drive, which I installed Win 7 Pro 64, which

I paid $99 online. So that brings to $712 total+ tax when you include the OS. I was

still using XP 32 on the old AMD box I was running.

The $612 does not include a video card, but so far, I haven't really required one for

the res I'm running. It does include the $29 SB sound card I bought recently trying to

cure a slight sound issue.. Turns out it wasn't the audio, but actually ASN that was

causing that.. But I left the SB card in the box, so I now can choose between either

audio, both which are 24 bit at high rates.

I just installed ASN SP3, and so far, I haven't heard that very slight audio glitch with

it yet, but I've only tried it for a short time.. Maybe the new SP will help that issue.

Bang on wood...

The $2400 i7 4790k box they offer is powerful for sure, but you could easily build it

for half that or less if you shopped the parts carefully.

For instance, being a price weasel, I found a bundle for the PS,MB,CPU, and cooler.

Got the CPU for $198, which is a $100+ off, the MB was much discounted from normal,

and ditto for the PS and cooler.. The case I got for $28.. The ram $75 I think.. Both

were on sale, but the ram was only about $10 lower than normal.

I watch all the deals.. I get daily emails from Frys, Newegg, etc.. And I'm registered

and can get the daily "promo code" deals, etc..

I have a Fry's close by, and I buy all the hardware there. They always have good deals

if you keep an eye on them, and I much prefer buying local in case a part flakes out.

Instead of having to do the PIA RMA mayhem, I just hop in the vehicular transport and

drive down the road a bit, and swap em out.

Yep, all VC here.. I haven't run a 2d panel since FS9 came out, which is over 10

years ago. The puter and sim are capable of long haul flights, but I'm usually not..

I fly all real time, with no time jumps. To me, a 3 hour flight is pretty long, with most

less than that. 12 hours? Not enough time here, and I don't have the patience to

sit at cruise that long. That's one reason why I haven't bothered with the 777 yet,

and still prefer the 737. And most of the SWA flights I run are about the perfect length

I like to do. Some are even less than an hour.

 

Just remember for FSX, the CPU is king. You want to get the best performing CPU

you can afford. It's mostly downhill after that. And although P3D does use more of

the video card than FSX, the CPU is still very important with that sim also.

I haven't had any thermal problems. I got a water cooling setup with the bundle I

bought, and I still haven't needed to use it yet. I'm still running the stock intel fan

and heat sink. The water cooler rig is still in the box..

So do you recommend an external graphics card for alienware? I just went to the store today and checked. They just have 4GB graphics(the latest one) with GTX. After all those talks, I can conclude that 4GB graphics will be no match for my addons. Well also I need a cooler. What kind of cooler I can use?

Where are you located? If in the UK, PC Specialist are well recommended. I bought my machine from there for a very reasonable price. It was quick, too. Check them out.

I am living in Abu Dhabi. There are PC specialists available but they have no idea about flight simulators and simmers like me are very less here. I have consulted various computer shops and they said there won't be any external graphics for my laptop. Its just built in where i get

Have been looking at the ailenware.com website, at the desktop offerings in particular. I am not impressed. With the two affordable systems the choice of GPU is very limited, and the Area 51 top model seems pretty expensive right from the outset.

I'd recommend, that seeing that you have PC shops near you, make a list of parts from the suggestions in this thread and let the shops figure out a price tag for acquiring and building the thing. Then you chosse the one you like best in terms of price and appearance and take them up on their offer.

btw. what do you mean by "external GPU" for a laptop? There is no such thing. There is no external connection method available that is fast enough to service a GPU. (Only if you had a large docking station with PCIe expansion slots this would be remotely possible). The GPUs you were looking at are always expansion cards that need to go inside the PC. The afore mentioned "internal Intel GPU" is actually an integral part of the "i" series Intel processors themselves, and it is always present in any modern Intel based PC. But for running FSX at high settings, that one is not going to cut it, so it is best to at least have the option to drop a NVidia GTX in the PC, even if you're not planning on getting one right from the start. That is why it is preferrable to have a system you can actually expand. This is not always the case with the ready-made systems from Dell, Alienware et. al.

If you don't want to do a few months research first, give your budget, and a list of parts you have now with the exact specifications.

Someone will give you a parts list to buy and put together.

You will then have a good system. But you will only then start discovering what the parts can and can not do.

That's why I recommend doing the work yourself. Really choosing parts and building your own system is the best decision you will make in your life.

No more wondering about what is going on in the pc. Ever.

Anyone that built his own pc will tell you it's the best decision they ever made.

il88pp.

Look at the website of stores you think you want to buy from. Select the best cpu you can afford. At leav a i5 or i7 with -k at the end of the number. Then choose parts around it but look up the specifications on the manufacturers site.

And give us your budget and a list of parts you have now if you want more advice.

There is no general answer for all.

There is a big difference if you want to spend 300 , 600, 900, or 1500 dollar.

hello, I am going to buy a new PC very soon. I need your suggestions what u recommend

?

Hi Yajvan,

All that have replied so far are regular contributors in this forum and based on their previous contributions, really know their stuff!

My questions to you:

What are your expectations with FSX?

What are the addons you already have and which ones are you considering?

What is your intended budget?

Knowing these things may be able to help guide you in what you need in a computer.

The following are only my personal opinions, and may have no basis in reality... ;)

The "lower" your expectations, generally the less high-power components you may need.

The more complex addons you want to run (smoothly), generally the higher-grade components will be needed. Just about every addon (scenery/aircraft/environment/etc.) will have some effect on how FSX will display and "feel" because of the extra little bit of CPU power each addon will require to run it.

The answer to these will affect the amount of money you may end up spending.

The hardware requirements of a plain "vanilla" FSX install to run smoothly on a single screen with all sliders to the right are lower than an "everything plus the kitchen sink," multiple screen, install. And at the moment, I don't believe a commercially available, traditionally cooled, CPU has been invented yet to run FSX smoothly with all sliders to the right, kind of install. And what I mean by "traditionally cooled" is air/H2O. Not liquid N2 or other kind of exotic cooling methods.

But I could be wrong, and there are others out there that have found they are very close to FSX nirvana with their rigs. But your definition of nirvana may be different.

And the next generation of Intel CPUs are out or about to come out - I don't know how those will handle FSX.

Many will say that in FSX you really don't need to achieve more than 30 frames-per-second (FPS) to get smoothness. While I generally agree that is the "magic" number, I find I personally need more than that - because of an addon called TrackIR. Here is an example of how an addon may require a higher powered computer part to run FSX smoothly. The head-tracking capabilities of TrackIR seems to need some overhead above the 30FPS to flow smoothly, and that is an important part of my definition of FSX nirvana.

I agree that if you consider building your own rig, it might be a bit less expensive than having someone do it for you, and you have the benefit of the experience, knowledge, and pride. As il88pp put it - you end up being your own tech support. Of course, you also have the many, many wonderful and knowledgeable members of this forum to help you - I know I learned (and still learn more everyday) so much from reading the threads here.

I built a few of my own computers over the years, including my current FSX rig, and believed I've saved a ton of money, got the best performance for the money, and gained priceless knowledge and experience (and pride when the computer booted the first time!) that I wouldn't have if I bought from a computer manufacturer.

But I do understand if that really means nothing to you, or have no interest in :cool:

I too would advise to try to stay away from companies that may put proprietary components, such as the motherboard, into their rigs. Those become more difficult to upgrade as your needs and wants change. Try to stick with name-brand, high-quality "off the shelf" parts that are not tied to computer manufacturers (such as Dell, Alienware, etc.).

Now, I'm not saying that these computer manufacturers aren't good, it's just that it seems a computer that's going to be built for running FSX as smooth as possible, may have different hardware choices than a computer built for running traditional games.

Traditional games rely more on the GPU than the CPU, while FSX currently relies more on the CPU than the GPU. And swapping out a CPU is more difficult than swapping a GPU (vid card).

What I'm saying here is that your CPU choice is the most important one to try to get right the first time, then the motherboard. The vid card is probably a lot lower on the list in my insignificant opinion - I'm still running a Radeon 6950 2GB with very old drivers, and three screens, and still get 40-60 FPS (locked @ 60) and great smoothness in Orbx regions in a Carenado Cessna Centurion, Aerosoft F14, MilViz T38, and F86.

Also, it seems the current OS of choice for FSX is Win 7. Win 10 might be promising, as there are some who have commented that they are finding FSX performance with it either the same or better, with some minor problems that seem to be fixable. I'm running Win 8.1 Pro and really don't recommend it for FSX - there are some little problems, and while I have found workarounds, I didn't have any of those problems in Win 7.

Whew, OK, enough of my (usual) verbose rambling that sometimes goes nowhere...

Hope this helps,

E-Buzz :pilot:

Ok I will chime in with my 2 cents. Before you even go starting a parts list you need to ask yourself "what will I be expecting my system to do over and above FSX". This is important as if you want a system to run other applications and other games as well as FSX then your parts list will be quite different to a system that is only dedicated to running FSX.

Having built a number of custom systems for customers over the years as well as many custom dedicated FS systems for customers I can tell you that a general purpose or gaming system is not going to run FSX as well as a dedicated system to FSX, and like wise a dedicated system will not be a good general purpose or gaming system, they are very different beasts.

The second you start expecting your system to other things over and above FSX you need to realise that you will have to make compromises as to your expectations of FSX performance, as well as performance of other applications you may be running.

The price for FS dedicated systems are expensive not because of the parts required or the build, the expense comes from the many hours it takes to set the system up to run the FS the very best it can. It requires a lot of work to not only tweak the FS software but the OS as well. To get a system that is running what I like to call a "bare bones" OS takes a awful lot of time.

With FSX you are not going to see a lot of benefit with a high price GPU, so a good middle of the road GPU will be more than enough for FSX.

As for CPU again it depends on what your system will be used for over and above FSX.

I have built both Intel and AMD systems depending on what the system requirements are, and I have achieved 35-45fps on the ground at LAX and DFW with a FX6300 overclocked to 4.1Ghz with add-ons, now that's great performance out of a cheap CPU, but it was a dedicated FSX system. If the customer was to make any changes to the system or was to add other applications outside of FSX then the performance would take a huge nose dive.

My dedicated FSX system runs a AMD CPU because I get the best performance with that CPU out of any CPU. However if I was to want to run something outside of FSX again performance would nose dive. That is where i5s and i7s are the best option.

Once you have worked out your requirements for your system and a budget I am sure you will get plenty of advice on parts. If you want a detailed part and price list for a dedicated FSX system drop me a line and I will be more than happy to supply you with a couple of options you can look at for building your own FS system.

Darryl

With FSX you are not going to see a lot of benefit with a high price GPU, so a good middle of the road GPU will be more than enough for FSX.

I don't agree. This is not true for each and every FSX setup. Run it on a high performance CPU, on DX10 at very high resolutions and unthrottle all the buffers and memory lock-downs in the FSX.CFG. It will benefit greatly from a good GPU and even max it out. But this of course only comes to pass if the CPU keeps up too.

There seem to be quite a lot of GPUs around lately that look to be "middle-of-the road", but when it comes to performance they are very much sub-par (like the GTX 750s for example).

Oke, so I am expecting something like around 50-60 FPS with photoreal sceneries such as flytampa dubai, aerosoft dubai(night),other vc's such as PMDG 777 and so on.

Coming to the "Build your own PC", I see different suggestions from so many of you. I feel literally stranded. If it is an alienware(dunno if it is expandable) any idea how much fps will I get with photoreal sceneries and PMDG VC's and Rex 4 and many other addons. I have seen few videos such as this one. This is just amazing. Any idea how much FPS will this be?

But I am aware that FSX is highly CPU oriented. So will it be possible if i connect it with an alienware i.e an external gpu because alienware is the demand here now. Its pretty hard to find PC builders here. But I need sometime to try my level best to get one.

Hey it's your money! If you want to buy a Dell, Apple, or other computer machine that uses their own in house designed stuff, go for it! Just remember, you're now a Dell (Alienware) or Apple user for the life of your box. Many, maybe most, of us who've been doing computing for some time know that dedicated boxes like Alienware (Dell) or Apple really limits your choices in the future.

BTW: DON'T EXPECT ANYTHING YOU BUY OR BUILD TO END UP LOOKING LIKE THAT FILM CLIP!! It's like taking a hand held camera and expecting your film clips to look like they were done in Hollywood by a major studio. IT PROBABLY WON'T HAPPEN THAT WAY. Though I do have to admit, at least in that clip they actually used the correct sound. Most ads & yes that is a professionally produced ad, use elevator music!