Splitting out my race and flight sim PC

[Lesthegringo]

Hi all, sorry but yet another PC build recommendation thread. My DCS World installation currently shares the same PC as my racing sim games. As I now have two separate rigs it means that if I want to swap between the two, I have to physically move the PC, and as the flight sim rig has six monitors connected to it, plus a load of USB connected units, every time I do I then have to spend the best part of a morning re-doing all the extended desktop display settings, monitorsetup.lua file and redoing the comm port batch file for DCS Bios. A right pain

Going the other way is not as intensive, but the thought of having to do all that work to return it stops me doing it as often as I would like.

So the Racing rig needs a standalone PC; my DCS World installation thankfully is not a Steam based one so that simplifies it, but I want to get a reasonable PC just for Racing.

My titles are AC, ACC, Dirt 2.0, rFactor2, AMS and AMS2. I will be getting AC2 when it comes out. At the moment I have no intention of getting any of the other titles, being pretty happy with what I have.

I use a G2 VR headset, and a V3 seat mover. That's about it from the point of view of requirements. I rarely race on-line, being happy enough to do local races with ten or so AI opponents, and from the point of view of trackside animations, I don't care about them, I am just worried about smooth gameplay and visuals, with the quality of the visuals being limited to the fidelity of the track and in car realism. The flag waving fans can stay at home.

So understanding that my long suffering wife is not willing to let me spend yet another big dollop of cash for this, I have limited myself to about $1500 for the PC, and am looking at the following

CPU i7 11700
Asus TUF H570-Pro Mobo
Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200 (2x16Gb)
Gigabyte RTX4070 Windforce
Corsair RM750R PSU
Western Digital WD_Black 2Tb SN770

I also will need a windows installation, and for the first time am considering the Win 11 home OS. I am also assuming that installing the games on the same drive as the OS is the best way to go

I am not into overclocking, water-cooling, tuning, LED flashy lights or any other peripheral items; the PC will be installed on a bespoke shelf attached to the rig where it will be amply cooled but more to the point out of sight and protected and with all the cables being secured and managed, so it is a PC I want to install and forget. Reliable, boring, low maintenance

So I believe that the spec above (or similar equivalents) should be good enough to do this, but let me know if there is a mismatch in the components or any weak points.

One last thing to point out, which is the real reason for asking in advance - I am in Qatar, all these parts will have to be shipped in from the US via a friend, and there will be no way to return, so I need to be sure I'm not getting something that will cause issues. For instance I saw that there were multiple cases of people buying Ryzen CPU's only to find the box was empty, for me that would be a total show stopper, which is why I have not entertained a Ryzen based PC. I can't take that risk.

Thanks in advance for the help

Les

 

[pattikins]

...

One last thing to point out, which is the real reason for asking in advance - I am in Qatar, all these parts will have to be shipped in from the US via a friend, and there will be no way to return, so I need to be sure I'm not getting something that will cause issues. For instance I saw that there were multiple cases of people buying Ryzen CPU's only to find the box was empty, for me that would be a total show stopper, which is why I have not entertained a Ryzen based PC. I can't take that risk.
...

Intel are truly in trouble when thieves turn their nose up @ their cpu's.

I'm not sure why you're not looking @ Raptor Lake cpus... better IPC, boost frequencies, etc., over the Rocket Lake (11700).

Same goes for DDR4 vs DDR5. - If you're going to stick with DDR4, then 16gb should be ample.

I'd also pick a 4070 Super as a minimum, especially when there isn't much difference in terms of price.

I think you can save some money on the PSU - the 4070/Super is very power efficient and as you're not likely to be overclocking the cpu, the 650w version should be ample. I'm running a 4070 ti & 5800X3D with a 12 year old 620w psu (touch wood - with zero issues).

Lastly, Win 11 could be a bad choice if you plan on keeping your Reverb headset.

 

[Lesthegringo]

Thanks for the reply

The cheapest Raptor Lake i7 CPU's are 25% more, which obviously pushes the budget a bit, plus the mobo and DDR5 also will just stretch it out a bit more. Obviously I would prefer to have more performance, as having it in hand would future proof, but I suppose i have to ask whether for the application I am proposing it would actually show any benefit

As for Win 11 vs Win 10, the problem is getting it these days; there are a couple of hooky looking Win 10 DVD's on Amazon but are they trustworthy? I would prefer Win 10 but only if it was not going to cause issues due to illegitimate copies

Les

 

[pattikins]

i5 14600K vs i7 11700K.

You can download an iso image from MS, but I can't guide you where to buy the key. I could be wrong, I thought Win 10 is functional without a legitimate key - just a nag screen?

 

[blekenbleu]

I then have to spend the best part of a morning re-doing all the extended desktop display settings, monitorsetup.lua file and redoing the comm port batch file for DCS Bios.

Have you considered dual boot, saving cost of a second PC?

 

[Lesthegringo]

there are some issues that the lack of a legit key can bring, like inability to hide the taskbar, apparently there is a permanent message in the corner of the screen. I'm not against paying for a legit key, it's just that it seems to be MS want you to get Win 11, and if you say that it will mess up my G2, then it's a no go

Les

 

[Lesthegringo]

Have you considered dual boot, saving cost of a second PC?

Never even knew it existed, to be honest! I presume that I would still have all the physical hassle of disconnecting and reconnecting?

Cheers

Les

 

[blekenbleu]

A single powered USB hub with USB-C host cable might suffice for each sim.
I hope to use a VR headset for both computing and sims with screen overlays,
cannot imagine how you drive 6 monitors for flight sim, so cannot help there...

 

[Neilski]

Intel are truly in trouble when thieves turn their nose up @ their cpu's.

ROFL!

CPU i7 11700

Mmmm, I think there was a reason why the 11th gen i7 was labelled a "waste of sand" by GN (though I think that was the K variant)
Taking a quick look at the pricing on them today, firstly the K variant seems barely more expensive than the non-K (thus better perf/price ratio), but secondly they aren't as cheap as I feel that they should be. A 12700K (board-compatible with 14th gen...) is only a tiny bit more expensive and has a good bit more grunt (so much better price/perf), though the P+E cores may need Win11 to work to their best.
If I were planning to buy Intel, I'd be getting the 13600K or 14600K, both of which beat the 12700K.
Sample pricing, right now on overclockers.co.uk: 11700 £260, 11700K £270, 12700K £300, 14600K £300. You may have based your choices on different relative prices of course.

The cheapest Raptor Lake i7 CPU's are 25% more, which obviously pushes the budget a bit, plus the mobo and DDR5 also will just stretch it out a bit more.

I haven't looked at DDR4/5 price diffs lately, having settled on the 7800X3D as my next CPU (forcing me to DDR5), but you can still stay with DDR4 on the Intel side if you really want to. The performance advantage does now seem to be with DDR5 though.

Also, if you get similar pricing to what I'm seeing (above), then the 14600K would simply wipe the deck with the 11700 (or 11700K), for only £40 more. (Not sure how much extra the mobo would be.)

For good or bad, my personal upgrade policy seems to have evolved into "upgrade very infrequently but don't skimp when you do". ("Don't skimp" for me means not quite bleeding edge, but not too far behind.)

 

[Lesthegringo]

Thanks

Looking online (prices in the US, which is where I would have to get the stuff delivered from because of my situation) the i7 14600K is double the price of the 11700; not a slight increase. An i5 14600 (which I believe is your suggestion above) is still 50% more. Factor in another 50 odd dollars for the mobo, and 30 for the DDR5 ram, and the budget has risen to over $1700

Again, I have to come back to the question of whether, for the purposes of the use the PC will get, those improvements in performance will materially translate into perceptible differences in the actual experience. The PC is going to be a dedicated one for the racing sim, not dual use, with about the only other regular use being to play music via Media Monkey.

I suppose a question I haven't asked but should is whether, if I was going to put an extra $200 down, that would be better spent on the GPU and not the CPU; I have no idea what part of the PC would be the limiter for race sim specific games using VR

***edit*** by the way, I was trying to use the TomsHardware CPU hierarchy chart to help me, but looking at it I am more confused than before....

Cheers
Les

 

[Neilski]

14600K is double the price of the 11700

Ouch. That changes the picture, indeed. (I guess it's probably that you're getting deep discounts on the 11700 relative to the UK, rather than the UK getting a relative discount on the 14th gen! )

I suppose a question I haven't asked but should is whether, if I was going to put an extra $200 down, that would be better spent on the GPU and not the CPU; I have no idea what part of the PC would be the limiter for race sim specific games using VR

For sure that's the right question - how to optimise the build given your budget.
I rarely use VR myself (am slowly prepping to dip more toes in) but the bottleneck is invariably heavily biased towards the GPU, and on that basis your proposed build isn't remotely crazy. (I would follow the advice above though, and get the 4070 Super.)

You didn't mention the spec of your existing PC, but I guess you've considered replacing the DCS PC rather than the simracing PC, depending on how well the existing PC handles the two loads. (Btw I totally agree that having a second PC makes sense in your case.)

I have to come back to the question of whether, for the purposes of the use the PC will get, those improvements in performance will materially translate into perceptible differences in the actual experience. The PC is going to be a dedicated one

Yup. If your proposed build is similar to your existing build, then you could check the relative loads on your CPU and GPU, e.g. lots of recent info about the use of Intel's "PresentMon" (many other ways to get similar info).

***edit*** by the way, I was trying to use the TomsHardware CPU hierarchy chart to help me, but looking at it I am more confused than before....

Well, it's really hard to predict performance on a given game using just synthetic benchmark data or even game-averaged rankings. Game-specific benchmarks are very valuable. Different CPUs can have quite different relative performance on games, because they hit the CPU in different ways. (Some games can take advantage of many cores, while others really only hit one or two cores and favour the absolute max clock speed; others hit L3 cache or main memory really hard and others not so much...) It's fair to say though that a game-averaged benchmark is still likely to be better than any synthetic or app-based scoring.
Which aspect of the chart data caused your confusion?

 

[blekenbleu]

I have no idea what part of the PC would be the limiter for race sim specific games using VR

Even relatively low resolution headsets such as Quest 3 are being supersampled,
stressing the most powerful available GPU (RTX-4090).

 

[Lesthegringo]

Which aspect of the chart data caused your confusion?

All of it! I remember where is was one long list with the best one at the top going down to the worst (normally oldest) so there was one overall list - now it's broken out into many sub-listings that cover just a selection of CPU's, and I have no idea which one is relevant to me!

My current rig is an i9, 9900K running in a Z390 chipset Gigabyte Mobo, 32Gb Corsair 2666 ram, GeForce RTX 3070 from EVGA Corp with 8Gb onboard RAM. No overclocking on any of it. I also have a Geforce 1060, that gives me the ability to connect all those extra monitors. It's not at all bad, even using VR, but I do know when I borrowed my son's PC which has a 'standard' 4070 even though it was an i7 (not sure which, but pretty old) on a Gigabyte Z370p mobo with 32Gb DDR4 ram, all the racing games ran great even with VR, subjectively better than my PC.

Les

 

[RasmusP]

How much more than the 11700 would be the 12400f (or maybe 12600)?
Intel basically kept their CPUs the same from the 7th gen to 10th gen, then finally made a big change with the 11th gen but basically screwed it up.
The 12th gen is the first of the "new" era of Intel CPUs.

For a lot of CPUs getting tested in multiple games, have a look here:
(site works perfect with Google translate to English)

https://www.purepc.pl/test-procesorow-intel-core-i5-13600k-vs-amd-ryzen-5-7600x-wiecej-rdzeni-i-swietna-wydajnosc-porownanie-w-grach-i-programach?page=0,28

 

[Neilski]

My current rig is an i9, 9900K running in a Z390 chipset Gigabyte Mobo, 32Gb Corsair 2666 ram, GeForce RTX 3070 from EVGA Corp with 8Gb onboard RAM. No overclocking on any of it. I also have a Geforce 1060, that gives me the ability to connect all those extra monitors. It's not at all bad, even using VR, but I do know when I borrowed my son's PC which has a 'standard' 4070 even though it was an i7 (not sure which, but pretty old) on a Gigabyte Z370p mobo with 32Gb DDR4 ram, all the racing games ran great even with VR, subjectively better than my PC.

That's cool, because it means that you will get a step up in performance (both CPU and GPU) with your current proposed build, so if things are at least OK already then they should only be better.
The only lingering question would be future-proofing yourself - going to a 12th gen CPU is still worth a good look, since (even if you stick with DDR4) you would have the option to drop in much quicker CPUs in the future, without writing off mobo+RAM.
On that note:

How much more than the 11700 would be the 12400f (or maybe 12600)?

Excellent question!
UK pricing has the 12400F way cheaper than the 11700, which is nice cos it's also faster than the 11700 and uses less power (It's £155 on overclockers.co.uk and £130-140 on other UK sites.) The mobo will cost more, admittedly.

 

[Lesthegringo]

UK pricing has the 12400F way cheaper than the 11700,

Are you referring to the i5 12400F? If so then that price reduction is also reflected in the US pricing, in which case I would be foolish not to consider it. That's where my lack of understanding of the CPU hierarchy hampers me

There is a Core i5 12600k available for the same price as the i7 11700 I was looking at, based on the logic above would that be better? Obviously that would invoke DDR5 Ram, but that's partially offset by the price of the CPU

Les

 

[RasmusP]

Are you referring to the i5 12400F? If so then that price reduction is also reflected in the US pricing, in which case I would be foolish not to consider it. That's where my lack of understanding of the CPU hierarchy hampers me

There is a Core i5 12600k available for the same price as the i7 11700 I was looking at, based on the logic above would that be better? Obviously that would invoke DDR5 Ram, but that's partially offset by the price of the CPU

Les

12600k is way better than the 11700!
Look at the purepc.pl benchmarks.

And you can buy a ddr4 board to save some money. The 12/13/14 gen work with both, you just need to make sure to get the right mobo+ram combination, since the mobos have either ddr4 or ddr5 slots.

The mobo name should have ddr4 or ddr5 in its name.

 

[Neilski]

Are you referring to the i5 12400F?

Sorry, I normally drop the (redundant) i5/i7/i9 labels, since they have become somewhat meaningless, with Intel mucking around with which one to apply on a given CPU.
The only 12400F in existence has an i5 label (i.e. there is no i3 or i7 variant of it).

I'm delighted to hear that the pricing in the US is making that CPU an option for you. (I should have just looked up the US pricing I guess )

12600k is way better than the 11700!

^^ this, in spades.

 

[Neilski]

Oh, and one extra note on the 12th (and later) gen CPUs: you might have concerns about say the 12600K due to the fact that the trick process scheduler in Win11 is nominally required in order to get the best from it (P cores vs E cores).
If you want to stick with Win10 and just not stress about that whole issue, you could easily disable the E cores entirely and sidestep the problem. This would still leave the 12600K utterly wiping the deck with the 11700.

 

[RasmusP]

Oh, and one extra note on the 12th (and later) gen CPUs: you might have concerns about say the 12600K due to the fact that the trick process scheduler in Win11 is nominally required in order to get the best from it (P cores vs E cores).
If you want to stick with Win10 and just not stress about that whole issue, you could easily disable the E cores entirely and sidestep the problem. This would still leave the 12600K utterly wiping the deck with the 11700.

It would even enhance the performance for simracing, since the P cores would be able to use the cache that would normally be reserved for the E cores.
Doesn't make much difference in reality, but it definitely doesn't make the simracing performance worse to disable the E cores.

Afaik Win 10 got an update for the big/little Intels, so it shouldn't be an issue.
The Ryzen 7950X3D needs Win 11 though, from my knowledge, since one half has the 3D cache and the other half boosts a lot higher.
So depending on the task, the better half needs to be chosen.