2019 build for p3d v4.5- here I. go again!!

[pkofman]

I am working on a new build
I'm going to start assembling the parts over the coming weeks.

Now I don't want to spend a ton of $$ but I want to create a great build for 4.5 with lots of headroom for coming releases.
My last build was a few years ago

Currently running, Basically, 4700k @4.5 and a few good video cards 1080ti. and 980ti ( 3 monitors)( btw my graphics are never really great even with these cards )

Its time to build and I wonder what the recommendation would be for today's x64. sim.

Just provide the wishlist in order to get the best sim experience possible

4 ground rules for me ( these are the components I'm most familiar with from my current build)

Intel, NVidia, Asus motherboard -ROG, corsair water cooling

Thank you in advance
Peter

[Ridgeandgable]

What's your budget?

[JorgenSA]

Mixing video cards is asking for trouble, IMHO....

Jorgen

[CplDaniel]

Today?

Because this is a WishList:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Intel 9900k [$479]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Asus WS Z390 Motherboard/Workstation [$349 on sale, $399 MSRP]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2x Nvidia 2080ti [$1,019] x2
(Because AMD refuses to compete against Nvidia @ the High End]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1,200w Gold+ rated PSU [$130 iirc]
(But haven't checked recently)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EKWB Dual D5 Pumps for fully-redundant backup in case of failure [~$300]
(because EK price-gouges the safety-minded buyer)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
RAM --TBD-- (Would need to check with ASUS first)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Will check back with cases later. My case isn't available any more.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Water-Block Radiators TBD || Case-Dependent ||but, OverKill Goal of the WHY NOT WISHLIST = THREE, Copper 420mm radiator blocks [140mm x3], 3inches thick each. Call it the "Tri-Cubed Tri-Fecta" -- [About ~$100 each]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: I DON'T THINK THERE IS ANY BENEFIT FROM THE 3RD 420mm RADIATOR, BUT I MEAN, COME ON!! What are you gonna do with that $100? Open a Zero-Percent Savings Account? Buy Medicine? Somebody could break into your home and you could klobber the invader over the head with this three-inch thick copper radiator
[Thermaltake's 420mm Copper RAD is secured within a steal & nickel outer-housing that makes it better than EKWB's 420mm copper radiator for Home-Defense application!!]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUXILIARY PERIPHERALS, off the Top of my Head:
Virpil, or VKB flight sticks [~$350] --
Owners loves them, and either YOU or USB will probably DIE as a computer standard before your VKB or Virpil flight stick]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Virpil's Throttle assembly [~$379] (Price may vary with taxes and exchange rate)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A great furniture assembly built around the Flight control interface:
[$$ Don't Ask]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
VR Headset = XTAL by VRgineers [$$$ <--If you even think about it, then you can't afford it]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Ridgeandgable]

Daniel

You could downgrade the Nvidia and go for the RX 5700xt which I have (they are essentially the same as the Nvidia 2070ti) but a lot cheaper. This is what I did, and you won't be disappointed on frames.

I built the I9 9900k on a budget of £1500, 16gb at 3200mhz+ is good, 32gb if you can afford it, I personally just dropped in 16gb to start with, and PC runs great at max settings. I'm running 7 monitors in total.

[CplDaniel]

+ RidgeandGable
I'm glad to hear it's performing well. I was disappointed when AMD's Vega64 & RadeonVII failed to catch on and shine with P3D, where I had once predicted that their raw compute power that AMD had put into the systems would have shined for all the long chain of butterfly-effect like processes which I presume have to be calculated for flight simulation applications.

[The Butterfly effect: A butterfly in Bahia, Brazil flaps it's wings beginning a chain-reaction of events which inevitably and unavoidably culminates in your 747's wing falling off over Heathrow]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But alas, saving money is not the goal of the wishlist. [Note how my list had a THIRD 420mm radiator block for $100 which was included just in case a burglar breaks in and you needed to whack somebody over the head with it!]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you have the resources available to test and document performance & settings (Bonus Pts for uploading to youtube) and effects with the 5700xt, I know myself and many other P3d system-builders would surely appreciate it as a resource to check with in the Hardware Forum.

[JorgenSA]

I guess we'll always have the Intel vs. AMD debate on the CPU side, and the AMD vs. nVidia debate on the GPU side.

But I believe we should debate this, as it brings out things that one needs to consider in buying a new rig or updating our current rigs.

I certainly have picked up one thing from the debate in these threads, as I am going to upgrade my current 16 GB of 2133 MHz DDR4 RAM: I need to look for RAM compatible with my Z170-A motherboard with the latest BIOS upgrade, and in that compatible RAM I want to look for the speed AND low CAS latency - and oh yes, the price....

Jorgen

[CplDaniel]

The Z-170 series of boards are soon approaching 5yrs of age. Consumer thermal pastes on the CPU can dry-out and set over time. As paste crystallize, the constant throttle up to high-heat then back down to room-temp nature of the CPU will cause some crystals to crack. So it's often recommended around the 5-year mark that owners clean off & reapply thermal paste as a cheap preventive measure to protect every core's performance ability.

As long as you are going to have the case already opened with parts moving in-and-out, you might as well grab a little alcohol and thermal paste to get your CPU cooler taken care of for the next 5-years cycle.

[pkofman]

Thanks for all of this..... one thing that has always been a mystery to me is how to best decide on ram.... I have always had trouble selecting this stuff. I've had an even bigger problem overclocking memory. I somehow can get the cpu to overclock and find stable settings, but memory has always been a challenge. Maybe I should just forget about that and buy really excellent memory that I can run at stock.... btw this is a fall project so I'm about to start to gather parts over the coming months..... thanks

[JorgenSA]

For the RAM, there should be a Qualified Vendor List, or something like that, on your motherboard manufacturer's website - at least Asus has such a list for the Z170-A. But before you mess around with RAM, make sure the BIOS on your motherboard is updated to the latest and greatest.

Jorgen

[CplDaniel]

Best memory advice is simple: Remember, Check in BIOS to CONFIRM that XMP is TURNED ON/ENABLED.
[Recently, I was helping another in troubleshooting a system which had appeared to be under-performing with P3D. One of the things I advised was confirming XMP timing profiles were enabled in BIOS, which is so low-level as to be border-line insulting to offer as advice. But it is good advice, so I made it with a preface reading along the lines of: "Look, I'm sure you already have done this, please don't take it as an insult, but it's such an easy factor to check and confirm in mere seconds compared to ANYTHING else in hardware troubleshooting short of: "Is the computer plugged in?"
So, to end the story: some time later, I was at home checking on a personal machine, I was going through BIOS and I found XMP settings disabled on the system! If that had been in public, I would have felt humiliated!!]

TLDR/Long Story, Short: check in BIOS to confirm XMP is enabled or else your high-end memory timing will run at whatever the old default stock is for INTEL (which I think is DDR4-2466 or somewhere thereabouts) WAY LOWER THAN YOUR HIGH-END RAM's ADVERTISED SPEED ABILITY!

[CplDaniel]

Also, relatively poor memory timing can be masked under some expected flight-sim situations. Every graphics card on the market is made to handle 1080p graphics, and you are likely to see processor improvements drive the frame count higher with better RAM. However, if you are planning to run Triple 4k Monitor displays @Ultra-High graphics, you increase the odds of creating conditions where you are more often expected to be GPU constrained, rather than CPU bound which is the most common condition in flight-simulation.

That's the reason optimal memory testing benchmarks are often run at 720p or 1080p even on an RTX-2080Ti. A lot of demanding programs will run practically the same on DDR4-4000 as DDR4-3000 IF the graphics card is causing the bottleneck by having to render more pixels on the screen faster than the CPU can calculate what kind of object should be going in those pixels.