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So, as often happens, I had two different (ok 3) things come up at once and so I decided to treat myself and splurge on all of them.

Video card upgrades are just ridiculous right now--I'm not going to pay 3080 prices for a 3070, if I could even find one--so I decided to go with a CPU/mobo upgrade as I've heard really good stuff about new-gen Intel chips. Getting an i7-12700k to replace my 9700k along with the associated mobo which tacks another $300 on.

Unlike previous Intel ships going back to the Core 2 Duo, all the cores are no longer the same in new gen. You have P(erformance) cores and E(fficient) cores, there are 8+4 in the 12700k. The single thread performance is up over my 9700k which has 8 identical cores, so I should see improvements all the way around. I am sticking with my 32GB of DDR4 for now. DDR5 is supported if I get a different mobo but it's far more expensive and hard to get and I don't find it worth it. I can always swap mobo/RAM in the future if I find the supply/price improves.

In addition, my sticks from Winwing have new grips that came out this week. I've already got the Hornet throttle and stick grips for my Orion base, and now I've ordered the F-16 throttle and grip. It's a little more involved than plug-and-play, so I won't be swapping them back and forth in one DCS session, but I can do it say once a week I think.

At the same time, I finally got the damper for my MFG Crosswind pedals for $50, I've heard they make them move so much smoother and if you take the spring out you can easily use them in helos where you leave them off-center for long periods. So that's two different controller upgrades, for the HOTAS and pedals.

All this together comes out to almost $1000, or the cost of an RTX 3070 IF I could find one.

if you do really want a GPU I might be able to help find one.

Let's just say I spent a bit more than Jedi did for my next hardware upgrade....

Alienware Aurora Ryzen™ Edition R10 Gaming Desktop

AMD Ryzen™ 9 5950X
Windows 11 Home
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3090 24GB GDDR6X
32GB, 2x16GB, DDR4, 3200MHz, XMP
1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)

wow, be prepared for some heat out of that gpu Panzer.

Hammer wrote: ↑

24 Jan 2022, 10:33

wow, be prepared for some heat out of that gpu Panzer.

Alienware rigs come with excellent cooling and I usually keep my house at around 71 degrees so I should be good to go.

Hammer,
Thanks for the offer. I've heard you can usually find one now if you're willing to go way over MSRP, but I'm not into spending $700+ for a 3070 right now.
Now if you have a line on a 3070 for under $550, I'm interested, but otherwise I will wait for the 4000 series and hope I can get one for near MSRP at that time.

I've got my new Coolermaster 212 Evo fan, CPU, and mobo, but I need to wait for an LGA1700 adapter bracket from CM
The HOTAS and rudder pedal parts still pending.

You guys are Friggin Nuts LOL - I was just shopping around to upgrade my GT1030 for a newer GPU and came across the ASUS GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB - BUT then thought it's a bit too much for me right now.. So then I drop in here and see some of This??! Whoa! You guys go man! - That's absolutely hilarious

I recently upgraded for something other than gaming. That is the first time that's ever happened! Usually gaming drives my upgrades, but this time it was to run some engineering software on the cloud. The MCI MB CPU combo seemed reasonably priced. It is 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700K 3.60 GHz. I put 32G DDR5 4800MT ram in it. But I had to go to a T600 video card, which runs the few games I still play, but it's not a gaming card like the GTX980 I had to replace because it didn't pass the system test for Solidworks. This new rig is rock solid, and very quiet, except for at times when rendering a really huge assembly the fans wake up pretty hard.
Also, if you are interested in Solidworks, it's now available to makers for $99 a year. Look for 3DExperience from Dassault. Not a bad deal for something that you can design nearly anything with.
Cheers! Bron
Oh, and the 4 items at the time came to $1200.