Looking for a new rig

[Todd Meek]

Hey Guys. I'm looking to purchase a new rig probably the beginning of February. I was looking into building my own system, but after all the parts I'm not really saving that much plus I would rather have a onestop warranty instead of all the individual component companies. There is only a couple of things that I really want which is the new I7 processor and prebuilt probably either Dell or HP. Here is the system I'm currently looking at.

General Features (HP Pavilion Elite e9290f Desktop PC)

Operating system Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Processor Intel Core i7-920 Processor

Memory 9GB

Memory speed PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM memory (3x2048MB and 3x1024 for ultimate performance)

Total memory slots 6 DIMM (240-pin, DDR3) (occupied)

Maximum memory expansion Expandable to 24GB

Graphics card Nvidia Geforce GTX 260 graphics card with 1.8 GB dedicated graphics memory, 2 DVI ports and support for Microsoft DirectX 10.1

TV & entertainment experience N/A

PCI expansion 1 PCI Express x4 (one available) 1 PCI Express x1 (occupied) 2 PCI Express x16 (one available)

Hard drive 1 Terabyte 7200RPM Serial ATA hard drive

Primary CD/DVD drive SuperMulti DVD Burner with LightScribe Technology, Write: 16x max. DVD±R, 12x max. DVD±R DL, 8x max. DVD+RW, 6x max. DVD-RW, 12x max. DVD-RAM, 40x max. CD-R, 32x max. CD-RW. Read: 16x max. DVD-ROM, 40x CD-ROM

Secondary CD/DVD drive N/A

Networking 10/100/1000Base-T network interface Wireless LAN 802.11a/b/g/n

Sound card High Definition Audio

Speakers 8 speaker configurable

Front-side bus (processor dependent) N/A

Power supply N/A

I/O ports Front panel 15-in-1 memory card reader: supports SmartMedia, xD, MultiMedia Card, Secure Digital (SD), Mini Secure Digital, Compact Flash I, Compact Flash II, IBM Microdrive, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick Pro Duo, RSMMC, MMC Mobile, MMC+ 4 USB 2.0 ports (Back) 3 USB 2.0 ports (Front) 1 FireWire (IEEE 1394) port (Back) Headphone; Microphone Optical Audio Out; LAN; Microphone/Line-in/Line-out; Rear speaker-out; Side speaker out; Center (subwoofer) 2 eSATA ports (Back) DVI, HDMI and VGA available on the graphics card

Software, full versions HP MediaSmart Software Suite: Your one-stop multimedia & entertainment center to create photo slideshows, share personal videos, listen to your favorite music playlists & watch DVD movies Cyberlink DVD Suite Deluxe: Automatically fix and edit videos and create CDs and DVDs. Edit, burn and archive data to discs. Microsoft Works 9: Includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database and calendar. HP Total Care Advisor 3.2: HP Advisor makes your PC easier to use -view your status at a glance, access support, discover more ways to use your PC, and navigate easily to your favorite software and services. HP Easy Backup - backs up your personal files, including photos, music, video, emails, bookmarks and documents

Software, introductory versions Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007 Trial: 60-day trial version

Trial Internet service Easy sign-up to major dial-up and broadband Internet Service Providers: MSN dial-up (offer included) NetZero Dial-Up (offer included) NetZero Accelerated Dial-Up (offer included) Juno Turbo Dial-Up (offer included) High Speed Internet Services Comparison Shopping

Dimensions Unpackaged: 7.05"(W) x 16.85" (L/D) x 15.79" (H) approx. Packaged: 11.42" (W) X 19.69" (L/D) x 20.32" (H) approx.

Basic warranty 1 year limited hardware warranty and 1 year software support

Ok go ahead and rip it apart. I can customize this system if I need to, but it's priced at $1229.99 as above. I would like to hear your guys suggestions. Thanks

[Todd Meek]

No Suggestions, nobody??

[Michael Blakely]

Todd,

You can look at some of our systems here. Your proposed system is very close to mine except for the processor (scroll down to my 2nd entry in the thread). I've happy with FS9 and FSX performance so far, but I've not had time to add a lot of extras to FSX yet.

[Tom Pletzke]

I can't offer too much for suggestions. I am running fsx, with 2 gb memory, 8800gtx video card, e4300 processor. Not the best system but I have fsx running pretty good with fscommander, fspassengers, ultimate traffic (50 percent), and plane addon's like levelD, super 80 pro, captain sim 757. At busy airports I have to turn off ultimate traffic while landing and taking off. But that is only about 3 or 4 of the major airports like klax, kord, sometimes dfw. So far I have not seen a rig that can really handle fsx with all options on ultra high. I wonder if a rig exists yet? My guess would be no at this time.

I would say this rig you have would be a nice setup. I especially, like the 9gb ram and 1 tb harddrive at 7200. The big component for flightsim is the video card so research your video card to compare it to others in the industry for frame rates. Also, consider a solid state drive as your boot device and the main drive for your flightsim. put the other games on the tb disk.

[Harold Henderson]

FSX is more cpu intensive than graphics, so, the more powerful cpu (2 or 4 core) the better your FSX performance.

[Todd Meek]

ok thanks guys. So it sounds like this is a pretty good system then set aside adding a solid state drive for the operating system. I'll see if that is an option to add through their website. Thanks guys.