Hardware Looking for a new computer

[Aeadar]

Well, I've been looking (drooling) at Rising Fury's new machine. And realizing that if I want MY next machine to have Windows 7 in it, I'd better get started figuring out what I want.

I currently have an "off the shelf" HP Pavilion 'Slimline' from Office Depot. It's an ok machine but it's not made for gaming.

As an example, my BEST framerates never exceed 35-40. This would be, say, halfway between Earth & Moon, looking at neither. Rotating around so that Earth comes into view will drop this FR by between 5 and 7 FPS. Sitting in an XR5 parked at Wideawake gives me around 15-18 FPS.

In the past, most of my computers have been "off the shelf" models, but it's starting to become quite noticeable so I'm looking for more of a 'gaming' machine. The problem I have is that I don't have air conditioning, and even my current computers fans go into high gear if I start Orbiter or, to a greater degree, FS9 or FSX when the outside temps get into the upper 90s F.

To add to that, it's a somewhat dusty environment and a small enough environment that the fan noise CAN be the loudest thing in the room.
Space is at a premium too.

Given all that, and my financial limit of around $1000, I've been looking at this:


http://us.shuttle.com/ConfigurePackage.aspx?package=74GSZ77R5-001-SCG-001



So what do you think? Any suggestions?



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I seem to remember several people having some kind of problems with GEForce cards, but I don't remember if those were problems with the inline graphics or with an external client.

 

[Screamer7]

I should look at two options here.
The graphic card option and the hard drive option.
The Shuttle comes out with Intel on board chip graphics.....good for day to day uses like Internet browsing etc.
But for games and simulators it is not really an option.
Second, if you can afford it later, and the warranty allows it, is the hard drive.
I opt for the 1 TB drive.

 

[RisingFury]

Well, I've been looking (drooling) at Rising Fury's new machine.

Well, that makes me all warm and fizzy inside

I'd recommend you get your parts from NewEgg.
Here are my recommendations:
I5 CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115232
Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131835
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104173
Graphics card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130787
Power supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139025

This brings the total cost to about 850$, but you're still missing a case, a hard drive and a DVD RW. You can get a decent case for about 50$.

With 100$, you should be able to pick up a good hard drive. I'd go for something like 1 TB, 7200 RPM and 64 MB cache. They should be around 100$.

A DVD unit is about 20$.

Now comes the negotiation:
For an extra 100$, you can pick up an I7 instead of an I5. But don't go for the 22 nm technology. If you do, you'll also need a powerful heat sink.

For another extra 100$, you can pick up a SSD. I'd recommend you get a fast one - something with 400-500 MB / s read and write speeds. Even if you have to get the smaller one 60 GB, it'll be worth it. If you install Windows, games and vital programs on that hard drive, there will be enough space and those things will run very fast.

 

[Capt_hensley]

I know folks reccomend overclocking I5's, I don't, Just get the I7 920, and fit it to any x58 MB. I have never had a problem with ours, and I have 4 different models to brag about. Pour as much RAM and Graphis card into it as you can afford, the rest comes out in the wash.

A Solid State HDD helps with cache, but in the end Orbiter responds to the graphics card memory better than a great R/W on the HDD swap file.

Good luck, I'm trying to keep my next purchase under $5,000 US, It'll be a custom XPS build.

 

[Aeadar]

Thanks for the replies!

Rising Fury: Thanks for the links! I hadn't really thought to build it myself, but I will consider it. I've done it in the past but I'm feeling lazier than I used to.

The main reason I thought of the ShuttleXPC is the heatpipe cooling. With no AC, the room can get quite warm in the summer. It's 87 degrees F in here at the moment. And I keep thinking that if my 'off the shelf', integrated graphics machine has trouble with the heat in here, what chance does a 'performance' machine have?

I'm probably putting too much faith on heatpipe tech but I'll keep reading and I'll check out those links too. Got a couple of months before Windows 8 comes out.

 

[jthill]

For $850 you can get yourself a very nice machine at newegg. "83-229-316 DT CYBERPOWERPC GAMER XTREME 1332 R 1 $779.99", I just got it a week ago. Ivy Bridge I5 3570K, Radeon 6670, 8GB/2TB, no crapware. It's actually much more graphics card than I even really want, or so I thought, but then I saw what it'll do with Shogun 2...

If I really try I can get the Orbiter frame-rate down to 30, but it needs a script running. Fire up the Cape Canaveral DG scenario I get 150ish on the pad at 1680x1050 with all the eye candy on. (p.p.s.: with the d3d9 client which I figured I'd try, I haven't been able to drive the fps below 200 no matter what I do).

 

[Aeadar]

For $850 you can get yourself a very nice machine at newegg. "83-229-316 DT CYBERPOWERPC GAMER XTREME 1332 R 1 $779.99", I just got it a week ago. Ivy Bridge I5 3570K, Radeon 6670, 8GB/2TB, no crapware. It's actually much more graphics card than I even really want, or so I thought, but then I saw what it'll do with Shogun 2...

If I really try I can get the Orbiter frame-rate down to 30, but it needs a script running. Fire up the Cape Canaveral DG scenario I get 150ish on the pad at 1680x1050 with all the eye candy on.

That sounds like a good deal!

Actually, that seems like a great deal.

Hmmmm. From what you've seen from it so far, does it seem like it would have problems being in a warm environment (85-90 degrees)?
Do the fans speed up significantly when you're giving the GPU a workout?

I suppose that's a fairly subjective question, but I'm trying to be cautious in this since my last gaming machine:
Intel P3 3.0g
ASUS MB
and I don't remember exactly which AMD Radeon graphics card I had, but in the summer I ended up having to open the case and cool it with a desk fan.

It worked well, but it seems kind of crude.

 

[jthill]

I keep my place at 79F in summer, it's inside my comfort zone so I'm happy. I can't hear the fans unless I'm really listening for them or there's silence in the room, don't recall ever noticing them while doing anything. Your place is only about 5C hotter, can't see how that'd make much difference. If you run linux you might have some trouble with the nic, an Atheros ar8151 with mainline kernel support a recent thing, debian squeeze doesn't recognize it.