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UPGRADE TIME


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I built my system about 3 years ago, recently got a new tower but over the course of this year I want to upgrade....I have an old Motherboard with an i5 3570, 16gb Corsair RAM DDR3, a MSI GTX970 4gb, 1 x SSD for windows very small 118gb, 2 x 1TB HDD for games/sims...Win 8.1, liquid cooling..... I have a 23 inch monitor but cant find the specs for it anywhere, quite keen on a curved one but dont want to go above a 27inch really as space is an issue, HDMI and DVI/DVD?.....

 

so changing the cpu means a new MOBO and that will mean DDR4 RAM and because of XP10/11 I will take that up to 32gb...

maybe 6600 or 6700 cpu....

Z170 PRO/Gaming.....

RAM I have always had Corsair and had no issues so may stick with that....

not sure which card yet, I think that will be the last thing on the list...

 

my system is running fine but with XP could do with a bit more and if any other sim comes out 64 bit then being upgraded will help...I like to keep them foe about 3 years or so..

 

so any input welcome, budget?....how long is a piece of string....I guess as these are main components it could be up at around £1k+........

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So having looked around I see this as a 2 or 3 phase attack.... 

. 1 Cpu... Mobo.. RAM

 

. 2 Monitor... That's what I need most direction on... 

 

. 3 gpu..  Didn't realise how expensive they are.. Maybe cheaper later in the year... 

 

Phase 1 is essential and has to be done together... 

 

i7 6700...z170 pro... 32gb not sure on make.. 

 

Cheers... 

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I go with Brett, Chillblast have some great spec but would cost loads to ship to the good 'ol US of A socheck out the latest specs and use as a base for your investigations.

 

EDIT: Belay that advice Wayne, you live in the UK, my bad! Go Chillblast!

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On 16/01/2017 at 19:10, mutley said:

Buy the best you can afford Wayne, that's my advice!

agree with that Joe, money not the issue but I do feel a bit guilty after buying something for my sim that is a bit pricey....

On 16/01/2017 at 19:18, brett said:

Check out Chillblast :thum: or if you build it yourself check out what they are pairing up.:whis:

checked out those bits and a few other sites, considered full purchase but would have so many spare parts here so rebuild / upgrade....

 

On 17/01/2017 at 00:44, J G said:

Don't be afraid to go with Windows 10 on a new PC, I find it marries up with FSX just as well as Windows 7.

yeah I will be going the win10 route, had a bad experiance previously but that was as upgrade from 8.1 , and the OS will be going on a new SSD....

 

been looking at some stuff today will get the MOBO then see what works with that...getting excited already and haven't done anything yet....

 

Thanks for your advice lads, sorry I am sloww to respond but heavy workload at the moment and deadlines to meet........

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So I have gathered together all my new pieces of hardware, MOBO, RAM, CPU, SSD &Win10....uninstalled all the relevent things from my old SSD/HDD and ready to fit...would you believe it last night trying to finish off some work and BANG....blue screen of death on old PC....apparently my perfectly good SSD was 'Locked'... couldnt get out of it then stumbled across someone just unplugging and replugging the SATA cable, and would you believe it all sorted....finished the work and ready to dismantle and rebuild...its like the old hardware new it was going to be redundant and just wanted to pi$$ me off one last time....I wont be beaten.....my be off the simming world for a whils as I am going down the FSXSE route and that will take ages to download......but hay theres always my Xplane which is installed on a seperate drive and doesnt need anything doing to it...whoaa...cross yer fingers and wish me luck.....

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26 minutes ago, wain said:

So I have gathered together all my new pieces of hardware,...its like the old hardware new it was going to be redundant and just wanted to pi$$ me off one last time....I wont be beaten........cross yer fingers and wish me luck.....

 

Ha, I keep joking about tan Emergent AI watching from the corners of the net and biding it's time till we build it autonomous systems to get around...I suspect it is a snarky little shit with a mean sense of humor, and VERY BORED. :D  Keep at it Wain. Fingers Crossed.

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On 1/26/2017 at 17:31, Captain Coffee said:

 

Ha, I keep joking about tan Emergent AI watching from the corners of the net and biding it's time till we build it autonomous systems to get around...I suspect it is a snarky little shit with a mean sense of humor, and VERY BORED. :D  Keep at it Wain. Fingers Crossed.

 

Two things:

1. This sounds nuts.

2. I am beginning to suspect it is true.

 

The Californian little shit has a London based cousin for sure.  The number of times I have rebuilt a system only to have a once stable part give up is too many to count.

Either that or something like the below is programmed into every CPU:-

 

Device = {Hardware_name}  

If

   Device == wiggled_slightly

then 

   BSD = 1

else

   BSD = 0

end if

 

 

Edit.  BSD - Blue Screen of Death

 

 

Edited by J G
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  • 2 weeks later...

did a bit of testing, my Mobo lets my OC the 6600k from 3.5 to 4.2 with just one click....seems to add fps but all running and stable, noticed that XP10 the CPU goes upto 44 degrees when CPU is clocked however fsx goes to 54 degrees, running not clocked both are between 36 & 40, my system is liquid cooled....I was just surprised at how much higher it went with fsx...

unclocked now back to 3.5 and all running smooooth...

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21 hours ago, brett said:

Is the difference in deg because of it being 64bit vs 36bit or because of XP is on a dedicated drive do you think? I like the one click OC.:thum:

not sure why, may just be that the sims use differnet resources and FSX is more CPU orientated....one click is great....

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On 07/02/2017 at 14:58, wain said:

did a bit of testing, my Mobo lets my OC the 6600k from 3.5 to 4.2 with just one click....seems to add fps but all running and stable, noticed that XP10 the CPU goes upto 44 degrees when CPU is clocked however fsx goes to 54 degrees, running not clocked both are between 36 & 40, my system is liquid cooled....I was just surprised at how much higher it went with fsx...

unclocked now back to 3.5 and all running smooooth...

 

 

What follows is probably more information that you're interested in but just in case it's useful for you or others...

 

 

Temperature: 54 degrees under load is actually very cool and not an issue at all. I recall TJ Max for the 6600K is actually 105 degrees. At TJ Max the CPU will reduce it's frequency and voltage to prevent damage. Thus, at 54 degrees you are well clear of throttling or indeed shutdown. 

 

Things have changed somewhat now that many of us [ not me, I don't sim anymore] are using add-on's that favour the GPU more, plus we are all using higher resolution's. However, FSX is still very CPU bound, therefore CPU temp will always be high when running FSX. 

 

Stress Testing: When stress testing an overclock all I use these days is Asus RealBench. I usually aim to not exceed 75 degrees during the stress test [measured with RealTemp]. Tests like Prime 95 are synthetic stress tests that bear no resemblance to how we use our CPU's in day to day use. RealBench on the other hand uses real open source applications to test your PC as it would perform in real life. If you can run the RealBench stress test for two hours you are usually stable. 

 

Steer clear of Prime 95 Small FFT's. It will run AVX [Advanced Vector Extensions] and your CPU temp will rocket. In particular AVX 2 is an issue. In fact Kaby Lake motherboards now include an AVX offset to compensate for this issue.

 

Overclocking: 4.2 GHz is barely an overclock. The range for most Skylake chips is from 4.6 to 4.8 GHz. Quite a few 6600K owners manage 5 GHz as the 6600K doesn't have hyper-threading and thus runs cooler. My 6700K runs at 4.6 GHz without any issue at all and if I push it achieves 4.7 GHz stable. Temps are well controlled with the  Noctua NH-D15S. With delliding, temps drop from 10 to 30 degrees. The range for the new Kaby Lake CPU's on the other hand is from 4.8 to 5.2 GHz. IPC [Instructions Per Clock] has barely changed though, just 2.5%.

 

Overclocking method: If you overclocked using the "one click" method, through the Ai Suite software or by flipping the TPU1/TPU2 switch on the board, it will have set a generic CPU voltage, a "one size fits all" voltage based on it's auto rules. Asus auto rules are very good, but as it's not based on a stress test, it's likely to be higher than required.

 

Five Way Optimisation: Your motherboard comes with Five Way Optimisation which is far superior to the one click method. 

 

5WO is actually very good and in my experience closely matches manual overclocking. It will run a series of stress tests and adjust all settings automatically for you. My 4.6 GHz overclock was initially achieved by overclocking manually. However, with the latest BIOS for my Z170 Deluxe, 5WO matched my manual overclock precisely. 

 

There are a few important settings that relate to overclocking with 5WO, if you decide to try it, let me know and I'll run through them. 

 

Finally, Intel CPU's and modern high end motherboards are designed for overclocking. If you decide to give it a bash you can always buy the very cheap Intel Performance Tuning Plan, and if you damage your CPU overclocking [very unlikely due to the built in thermal protection] Intel will send you a new one.

 

Edited by MartinW
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thanks Martin very helpful, I will seriously look into it but have been very busy lately .....this was my first move into the world of OC and it can be a very concerning thing to attempt, I had guessed that the one-click route was just a casual attempt but probably one with very little risk to hardware...

 

54 seemed very warm to be but I bow to your greater experiance...not really sure how I would benefit from OC in regards to my performance which is mostly now with Xplnae, both 10 & 11....

 

I will have to read up more on the process and weight up the benefits...

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