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I built my rig back in 2014..and with a few upgrades (last one being an RTG2060 Super and I'm up to 64 GB RAM), it has come to start looking for a new one.

I've been out of the market for 9 years, so I don't know what's recommended anymore hence. I built this rig with DCS in mind and now with MT and everything else DCS has become, especially graphically, I need to know what to get.

So any recommendations as to hardware specs? Also what to look for with an eye on expandability so I can go another 9 years. What kind of CPU, RAM? I had an i7 Haswell, what is the in thing now? ETc etc. I need guidance. I can spend at least $1500, but for more I'd have to so some serious thinking.

Thanks!

v6,
boNes

i think the issue is going to be your GPU at that price range, unless you are looking to keep the same GPU for a while. when i get a chance I can tell you what i built, you can look for something along those lines. I would say you really do not need more than 32GB ram, but leave room in the system to add more later. you definitely want an nvme drive, get 2TB there, and just one drive. makes things simpler.

32 GB of RAM is plenty for all games except for DCS. :-) I have 64 GB and I frequently am using 90% of it or more on the bigger DCS missions.

Right now I have an ASUS RTX2060 Super with 8GB VRAM. I plan on using it for a while longer (I only got it in 2019 and it works fine with DCS at the settings I'm at).

I take it RAM is different now than it was in 2014. What kind of RAM should I look for?

What kind of power supply?

Right now my main drive that has the OS and DCS on it is a 1 TB SSD. I also have a 100 GB SSD that I use for storage of DSC DLC etc. What's sweet about my rig is that I have external SATA port onnections so between the 100GB SSD and another 480 GB, I can swap them in and out without disassembling the case or taking up space. I would love to get that feature in my future case as well. For auxiliary use I have a 1 TB HDD. I was hoping to still use at least some of these drives but I think either I need a fresh SSD for OS/DCS with Win 11, or I need to completely reformat the existing main SSD for Win11 and reinstall DCS because over the years the OS has gotten corrupt (ignores my power settings, system clock, etc).

What kind of CPU should I look for? I have an i5 Haswell right now. 4690 CPU @ 3.50GHz 3.50 GHz. What is out there now?

I hear there are boards that have WiFi built in, but I still think Ethernet directly to the router is the best...or am I wrong in that?

I wish it wasn't time for a new rig--I really really love this one I built. 9 years I think is the longest I've kept a computer running!

v6,
boNes

The issue is what sort of CPU you get because some will take DDR4, some take DDR5, some take both, but the price differential is still pretty high.
32GB of DDR5 will cost more than DDR4, but 64GB of DDR4 might be more helpful than 32 of 5 in some scenarios. However, with higher bandwidth and performance, DDR5 will last you better than 4, and no boards support both even if the CPUs do. So if you get 4 and want to go to 5 you'd need to replace the mobo which is usually not an option in prebuilts.

My board has wifi but I don't use it, wired is still faster and lower latency if you can manage it.

As for CPU, a 4690?!?? Wow, I had a 2700k I replaced with a 6700k that I replaced with a 9700k that I replaced with a 12700k that I'm now using.
For Intel, the 13x00 are the current line. The 14x00 are supposed to come out end of year, but there are rumors they will only be for laptops and perhaps like the 11x00 will skip the desktop generation.

Don't bother with i9 as they are overbuilt for gaming, but if you want it to last many years you might look at the top end i7...I forget what it is now. Same thing with AMD, the top CPUs are more for other types of apps than games, they also use Ryzen 9 in their name I think, but something like the Ryzen 7 7850 I think the name is are great for games.

Oh and another thing...what kind of network capability should I have on my MoBo or card if I want to be able to take the full advantage of the 1000 Mbps speed I'm supposed to be getting.

Is 750 W power enough?

v6,
boNes

you want onboard ethernet, 1G or the newer 2.5G (not that you will really need it, but it will also work on 1G - mine has it). definitely use onboard, not wifi. if you can make sure it is intel, that is good but some mainboard manufacturers have good network chips. avoid realtek if you can, but it would not be the end of the world if you get realtek network becasue the rest of the mainboard is what you need.

750W is good. you should make sure it is gold or platinum certified for efficiency though. a modular power supply is better nowadays, then you only need to connect the cables for the devices you need to power.

you do not need a higher end priced CPU as Jedi has stated above. a mid or eve fast low range will be fine. i personally have an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X for price/performance. It is fast.

I would go for an older mainboard/CPU combo with DDR4. it will save you some money and you will not notice the performance difference between that and DDR5 in actual real life gaming (see what I did there?). In memory based benchmarks, sure you will see some difference. But DDR4 has quite some legs left to it. If you want to save money now, just get 2x 16GB dimms and plan to add more later. as i stated, make sure the mainboard has 4 total memory slots so you can actually do this. I have 32GB of RAM and have zero issues with DCS or anything else on my system.

your description of drive wrangling gives me a headache, which is why I suggested just getting a new 2TB nvme drive and be done with it. you can still use all your old ssd's for backup, file archive, etc. especially if you have them in or can put them in a USB 3 enclosure. I personally want my game machine to be as hands off as possible as I do not have the time to screw with it.

if you like your case, you should just be able to re-use it (unless you have plans for it as an entire system). you need to ensure your new case has good airflow, at least one fan in the front, one in the back and maybe one in the top. the fans must be super quiet, nothing is more annoying that fans that are too loud, except a fan that is failing.

Good stuff Hammer, thanks.

I'm also thinking of what I can port over. I have a 750 W corsair power supply right now. I love my case, but I can't fit anything larger than the RTX2060 Super I have in there now. It does have multiple fans: 2 in front, one on top one on the back, and one on the side for the CPU. That SATA dock on top is hard to beat but no one else makes a case like that anymore that I could see.

Can I use my existing RAM? 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM
Speed: DDR3 1866

v6,
boNes

I have no issues with my PC since I upgraded last year. Very happy. All good tips above:

My specs:
ASUS Prime Z690M-Plus D4 LGA 1700 (Intel 12th/13th gen) MicroATX
Intel Core i7 12700KF 3.7 Ghz LGA
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition CPU
32 GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200)
MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 LHR 10GB GDRR6X
I have a modular power supply. i think its 900W which I needed for the additional cables for my GPU. Modular is the way to go!

I have 35 in ultrawide monitor with a small 19" square one as a 2nd screen. I went for the fastest or 2nd fastest 32-bit performance CPU at the time since most of my games are 32-bit.

I'm like Hammer in that I want minimal fuss/effort put into having to deal with the interior of the case so I bought myself an Alienware system a little over a year ago. Yeah, I paid a pretty penny for it but damn it was worth it. :-)

no, you will not be able to use your existing ram. you might consider selling off the mainboard, cpu and ram together to recover some money. you may not get much, but you might get something.

your 750W power supply should be fine.

what size is the super 2090? what dimension are you concerned with? what makes you think all newer GPU's are larger?

another thing to consider with your case - how many of the ports are USB3? if none, that is a good reason to get a new case or look at something else to port your USB ports to the outside of the case.

Cr33p3r wrote: ↑

08 May 2023, 10:15

I went for the fastest or 2nd fastest 32-bit performance CPU at the time since most of my games are 32-bit.

Just want to point out that all Intel and AMD processors made in the last couple of decades are 64 bit, not 32 bit. If they were 32 bit, you would not be able to use more than 3 GB of ram because the processor wouldn't be able to address anything above that. ;)

I had to buy a new case after a decade because my RTX 3070 just wouldn't fit where the 2070 and earlier did (albeit in VERY tight quarters).

I have no trouble with juggling drives, though. I have a 1TB Samsung NVme (boot drive), a 2TB Samsung NVme, a 1TB WD SATA, and a 2TB WD SATA all going at once.

Hammer wrote: ↑

08 May 2023, 14:18

no, you will not be able to use your existing ram. you might consider selling off the mainboard, cpu and ram together to recover some money. you may not get much, but you might get something.

your 750W power supply should be fine.

what size is the super 2090? what dimension are you concerned with? what makes you think all newer GPU's are larger?

another thing to consider with your case - how many of the ports are USB3? if none, that is a good reason to get a new case or look at something else to port your USB ports to the outside of the case.

I don't think I can sell off the MoBo...I believe the MoBo is bad hence why I need a new rig.

The 2060 Super barely fit in the case. I think new GPUs are bigger because I really was going to get a more powerful video card but the dimensions exceeded the size of my case.

My current case has 2 USB 3.0 and 4 USB 2.0 on the top dock and some on the back too (can't look right now, they are all full of plugged in stuff). It is made by Rosewill. It acme with 5 fans and has space for up to 10 total
v6,
boNes

Yes Xpen. when I was searching for CPU's, even though 64-bit, since most of my games are 32-bit I was looking for single core, 32-bit speed rankings since that would give me the most bang for my buck.

Bones: just bite the bullet and get a beast of a machine! You can always take our a 2nd mortgage.

I follow a youtuber Q8 Pilot who reviews and flies lots of sims. Here are his specs:

Operating System: Windows 11 Pro 64bit
Processor: Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake Core i9-13900K CPU 5.5GHz
Liquid Cooler: CORSAIR iCUE H170i ELITE 140mm Fans -420mm Radiator
Motherboard: ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING WIFI
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB Series (Intel XMP) 64GB (2 x 32GB) SDRAM DDR5 6000
Storage: 4 x 2TB M.2 SSD
Graphics Card: ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 Trinity OC 24GB GDDR6X 384-bit 21 Gbps PCIE 4.0
Power Supply: Asus Rog Thor 1600W Titanium Power Supply Unit
Case: Corsair Obsidian Series 1000D Super-Tower
Monitor: ROG STRIX XG43UQ 4K Ultra 43 inch Ultra Wide display at 144Hz

Here is my current system and it will remain as my gaming rig for at least 3 more years. lol

AMD Ryzen X5900 CPU
Nvidia Geforce RTX 3090 24GB GDDR6X
64 GB DDR4 running at 3400 mhz
2 TB SSD drive + 1 TB SATA drive

the overclocking and liquid cooling is a bit too much. there is really no need for all the extra cost and complexity. cool if you want to take it on, but you never know when it will cause issues.

Cr33p3r wrote: ↑

10 May 2023, 11:38

Yes Xpen. when I was searching for CPU's, even though 64-bit, since most of my games are 32-bit I was looking for single core, 32-bit speed rankings since that would give me the most bang for my buck.

That doesn't really make any sense. All CPU's today are 64 bit, and whether a game is compiled as a 32 bit application or a 64 bit application does not matter to the processor and is kinda irrelevant. A game compiled as a 32 bit application can't make use of more than 3GB of ram no matter what. Even if you have 16GB or more of ram, that game can only address *3* GB of ram. That's a hard law of physics because a 32 bit memory address can't hold a value larger than 2^32, which is the last address of memory you'd get before the integer wraps around back to 0. Only an app compiled as a 64 bit app can access more than 3 GB of Ram. Most modern FPS games will be compiled as 64 bit apps anyway. Years ago some games had both 32 bit executables and 64 bit executables and you could launch either one on a 64 bit OS but could only launch the 32 bit ones on a 32 bit OS. Performance between the two could be different, depending on how the developers write the code and what things they were doing. But they provided both for backwards compatibility with 32 bit Windows. Usually the 64 bit version ran better but not always.

Small games might still be compiled as 32 bit if they don't need to leverage 64 bit memory addresses, but it's rare. Nobody needs backwards compatibility to a 32 bit Windows XP anymore. The default compiler options for most development software today targets 64 bit by default. You have go out of your way to change it to 32 bit.

Anyway, shopping for a processor based on 32 bit performance scores is funny because it's like saying you want to buy a car based on how fast the front wheels will go. But the back wheels (64 bit) go the same speed as the front wheels! You can't buy a processor that is only good at 32 bit but sucks at 64 bit. The extra bits in 64 bits go the same speed as the front 32 bits! And if you are only looking at 32 bit game comparssions, you are only looking at old cars! Almost every large modern game is 64 bit, end of story. They don't even provide 32 bit support anymore because... Who still has an old copy of 32 bit Windows anymore?

One final note... whether a game leverages more than one CPU core or not has nothing to do with 32 bit versus 64 bit, but has everything to do with how the software is written. Simple games are unlikely be coded to take advantage of multiple cores and perhaps wouldn't benefit from it if it could. But having more cores is still beneficial, because it means the operating system can dedicate more of the core to just that application, and use other cores for other tasks - resulting in an overall performance improvement. Here's a great use-case... Let's say you are using the old single thread version of DCS and you are on a 2 core CPU AND you want to live stream your gameplay. Well, the OS has to do all of that, and run the operating system itself and every other process that is running (even background processes and background tasks such as anti-virus, email notification, etc) on those 2 cores. You're likely going to have performance degradation with all that gong on (especially with the live streaming). But the performance degradation will be a LOT less on a 4 core CPU or greater, because the OS can better balance all those tasks on the available cores, and can better dedicate a single core to DCS. Of course, the multi-threaded version of DCS can leverage multiple cores to break up the different tasks that DCS must do, executing those tasks in parallel instead of single-threaded. The more cores you have the better DCS is able to do this. That's why most of us got significant performance boosts with the MT preview. That version of DCS divvies up some of the tasks to execute on different cores simultaneously so that the total result (such as rendering a single frame after all computations have been completed before starting the rendering process) can be completed quicker by calculating different parts at the same time in parallel across different cores. As opposed to calculating each thing one at a time, one after the other as in the single threaded version.

This is my system. It works like a charm on both Solidworks, and World of Warcraft and Mechwarrior Online. The video card is an older one, and I bought a T600 to replace it, but games running on the GTX look better, so I took out the T600 and put in the GTX980. No problems!
------------------
System Information from DXDIAG
------------------

Operating System: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 22621) (22621.ni_release.220506-1250)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
System Model: MS-7D25
BIOS: A.40 (type: UEFI)
Processor: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700K (20 CPUs), ~3.6GHz
Memory: 32768MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 32556MB RAM
Page File: 7830MB used, 26773MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 12
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: 192 DPI (200 percent)
System DPI Setting: 288 DPI (300 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Enabled
Miracast: Available, no HDCP
Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Supported
DirectX Database Version: 1.4.6
DxDiag Version: 10.00.22621.0001 64bit Unicode
---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Type: Full Device (POST)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13C0&SUBSYS_29803842&REV_A1
Device Status: 0180200A [DN_DRIVER_LOADED|DN_STARTED|DN_DISABLEABLE|DN_NT_ENUMERATOR|DN_NT_DRIVER]
Device Problem Code: No Problem
Driver Problem Code: Unknown
Display Memory: 20325 MB
Dedicated Memory: 4047 MB
Shared Memory: 16277 MB
------------------------------------------
Deleted unnecessary details

Oh, and the Ram is DDR5, since the MSI MB supports it, running 4800mhz.