Build Advice: Budget Build for Air Sims

Sand

1. Budget: 400 Euro or less - preferably less (Excl Win 7 & available parts below)
2. Purpose: Modern air sims (Microsoft Flight or IL2-Cliffs of Dover) playable at 1680*1050 resolutions for the least amount of cash.
3. Need Windows OS: Yes, but exclude from budget.

4. Available parts: Yes -
Case: Antec 900 case - Used
HDD: Seagate 1 TB Sata HDD - Never used. Model number not listed as having the firmware issue.
5. Need Monitor?: No - Flatscreen 1680*1050 (1920/2560 performance not relevant)
6. Need peripherals? Nope.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Not for this build.
8. Pmt Method: CC/Transfer
9. Purchase Time: From here to 3 weeks out.

Essentially I am planning a budget build for a friend whose expressed significant interest in air sims but has no PC up to playing them and has a birthday coming up.

The only objective is a build which can play titles like Microsoft Flight and IL2 Cliffs of Dover at playable FPS on 1680*1050 (which is the monitor I will be throwing in) for the least possible amount of money spent, using the parts I have lying around. BF3 performance at 2560, video editing etc is irrelevant.

Current plan is to order from hardwareverdesand:

CPU: Intel Core i3-2120 Box, LGA1155
MB: ASRock P67 Pro3 SE (B3), Sockel 1155, ATX
GPU: Sapphire HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 PCI-Express
PSU: Cooler Master GX Series PSU, 80Plus Bronze - 450 Watt
Memory: 4GB Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800U CL9
DVD Drive:Samsung SH-222AB bare schwarz SATA

Total (Excl Win 7): 375.04 Euro, plus:

Case: Antec 900
HD: Seagate 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA



Thoughts, suggestions, spotted errors are all welcome

uncle_sam_ie

For cliffs of Dover I'd go for an Intel i5. That game is CPU heavy.

Markd250

Yep, you could drop the mobo to a h61, and maybe the i5 2400? Prob cost a few quid extra in total though.

Sand

Thanks for the ideas - if I change the CPU to an i5 2400, change the MB to the ASRock H61M-HVS (B3), Sockel 1155, mATX and downgrade the GPU to a Sapphire HD6770 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E then I stay under budget (drops to 372 Euro outlay actually) and the upgrade in CPU will probably offset the drop in GPU. There's a performance patch due out on IL2 - CoD so hopefully that will assist too.

Dyr

I went with the below last year for my current rig, I only play cliffs of dover fairly casually but i do notice performance hits if I have a lot of dogfighting going on, usually over built up areas. Oddly enough the performance monitors on my keyboard don't indicate that the processor or memory are maxing out when I get lag

No.: HV20CO45DE 4GB-Kit Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600 CL7
No.: HV20I5K5DE Intel Core i5-2500K Box, LGA1155
No.: HV1133MDDE MSI P67A-GD55 (B3), Intel P67, ATX, DDR3
No.: HV1023XWDE Palit GeForce 8400GS Super heatsink version, 512MB, PCI-Express

Tea_Bag

does flight sim still favor nvidia cards, or was that fixed in a patch? sorry I don't play either games but could be of note.