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MooseCheese

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Everything posted by MooseCheese

  1. Sorry, should have been clearer, I meant that I built systems optimised for FSX or X-Plane back when I was still at school. At the time there was quite a lot you could do to tailor a PC for flight sims specifically, particularly FSX. In terms of specs, the sims were very CPU bound, but didn't play nicely with hyperthreading so you'd essentially be gunning for the highest overclock you could get on four cores. So you'd ideally want a binned i5, or i7 with HT disabled (the 4770K tended to overclock better than the 4570K for example, so the premium was still worth it for some), paired with a 1 DIMM per channel board (this usually meant ITX) and a good cooler. Otherwise it was just the usual thing of pairing the best (single, SLI degraded performance) graphics card you could afford (usually nVidia as AMD had some driver incompatibilities with various texture mods). After that, installation also had to be done very carefully as FSX was more than just a little unstable. There was an enormous laundry list of things to do, but some of the ones I remember off the top of my head were changing the install directory to the C drive root (outside of programme files), modifying the game's CFG file as there were some options incorporated into a service pack which were never included in the settings UI, and performing restarts and game loads at tactical times between add-on installations. For people with a second PC, I'd configure popular utilities like weather engines and online clients to run on a network to offload them from the sim PC. The final stage was to clone the entire Windows installation with the sim and add-ons installed from a known good point, because FSX was a big octopus with tentacles in every facet of your system, from registry, to appdata, to programdata. Invariably it would corrupt itself at some point down the line and this would save having to spend the ten hours or so it took to configure all of this again. I was part of the MSFS Alpha from the get go, back in October 2019 and so far as I can tell it doesn't really have any of these peculiarities. I don't think you can optimise for it, so much as you can just throw resources at it. Haha, that sounds like Flight Simulator! Even with all of the things listed above, on what were quite literally the best systems available at the time (five plus years after FSX was released!), the most sophisticated add-ons combined with high settings could easily drag you under 20FPS. With the exception of DCS, which has run beautifully for 6 or 7 years now, it's really only in the last year that circa 60FPS has become viable in a good Flight Simulator, since X-Plane 11 moved its rendering engine from OpenGL to Vulkan. Lockheed Martin's Prepar3D v5 has also just added Direct X 12 support, but it's still pretty slow even on strong hardware. Fortunately the new Microsoft Flight Simulator, whilst very taxing has enough settings to make it enjoyable on a good variety of hardware. As Linus mentioned in the WAN show, you can crush a 2080Ti with it, but I've been able to achieve 50-ish FPS on my 9900k/GTX1080 system at 4K by using slightly lower than high settings and 70% resolution scaling. Everything looks a little bit soft, but it's still an astonishingly beautiful game and I think RTX 3000 has the potential to really bring it to life. You could also use Mircosoft Game Pass to try it for a month for just £1, so if it doesn't work for your config you won't have wasted much money. Cheers man, very kind. Even when I have to leave the house pre-5am, I really do always have a grin on my face. There's something to be said for seeing the sun rise into a clear blue sky, even when I woke up to a dismal storm in Scotland. With that said, I'm a bit apprehensive at the moment as there's a non-negligible chance I'll be made redundant next month owing to COVID. Fingers crossed Thanks dude. Best of luck to your cousin!
  2. Hello all As I do on many free Saturday mornings, I’ve just been enjoying the WAN show vod with a cup of coffee. I’m not often one to comment, but so many of Linus’ remarks about Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator resonated with me so deeply I felt I had to (over)-share! The reason I started watching LTT (well, NCIX tech tips #19) about 11 years ago was because even 3 years after release, Flight Simulator X was itself a complete performance hog. Then 13-year-old me wanted to learn how to overclock as I’d heard this would help quite a bit and crucially didn’t cost anything. The part of the WAN show discussion which specifically made me want to write this, was about the educational value of flight simulators and how they might facilitate entry into a career in aviation. When I first flew on an aeroplane aged 5, I immediately decided I wanted to be a pilot, but I’m pretty sure it was my dad’s decision to buy me a copy of Flight Simulator 98 (old, even at the time) when we got home which cemented my obsession with flying. Growing up, flight sims were all I wanted to do with my free time. I found the rabbit hole of things to learn to be almost bottomless, from fundamentals like principles of flight, all the way to hunting for questionable English translations of operating procedures for the airliners of the Soviet Union. Once I got to be a teenager though, the reality of the expense of getting a pilot’s licence started to seem very daunting. I was able to do a fair bit of flying and gliding for free with the Air Cadets, but even a Private Pilot Licence seemed a long way away. Amazingly flight sim ended up being of great help with this too, as after appearing as a guest on the then popular FSBreak podcast, I netted a job offer from a co-host. I should explain here that for flight simulators, third party content plays a far more prominent role than it does for just about any other game. It’s extremely common for users to spend hundreds of pounds on additional aircraft, scenery and utilities modifying everything down to how the game keeps time. In my case, I was writing scripts for a company called Angle of Attack, who provided video training for some of the more complex aircraft DLCs of the day. This had me poring through real world 737 documentation to turn it into something watchable and hopefully enjoyable for the average user. Crucially for me, it earned me enough money to start taking flying lessons. Since money was the limiting factor on how much I could fly, I was usually pretty determined to find ways of making more, and having learned to build PCs from watching LTT proved to be a way. I’d met many people through the flight sim community who wanted something optimised for the game, and it was easy to considerably undercut established builders who made PCs marketed to simmers and still turn a profit. I thought it might tickle anyone from LMG reading this to know, you essentially paid for one of my most memorable training flights – my first solo cross-country flight from Blackbushe, Surrey to Goodwood, West Sussex back in 2014. After working on my private licence at the local flying club, I was accepted onto an airline’s cadet programme to earn my commercial licence. I’ve been flying the Airbus A320 family since late 2017 and earned my Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence at the beginning of this year (for North Americans reading this, you can fly performance class A (equivalent to part 121) aircraft in Europe on a CPL). The short version of this then, and what I’m really trying to say is that whilst flight simulators can simply be fun in the same way as any other PC game, they can also be a fair bit more than that. As is so often the case, I think you absolutely nailed it with your hot-take on the WAN show. As a closing note, I’d just like to say thank you. I remember in your vlog on your thoughts about retiring, you mentioned that you sometimes question how meaningful your work is. For what it’s worth, in my case I think it was instrumental in getting to where I’ve always wanted to be in life.
  3. I bought the case second hand off a bloke in East London. It came with a bunch of accessories including the 360mm flex bay radiator mount. Whilst all things CaseLabs are out of production now, bestcases.eu still have that particular mount in stock (https://www.bestcases.eu/flex-bay-120-3-360-fan-radiator-mount). I'm sure shipping across the pond will be both expensive and slow, but it might be your best bet. Alternatively you could try the 'Caselabs Modders and Builders' FB group, which is quite active and has plenty of people swapping and selling various Caselabs parts. You might be more likely to find something already in the USA there too. Finally, the Hardware Swap subreddit might be worth a try. Hope this helps.
  4. I had my concerns about this too, but tested several configurations, both series and parallel using soft tubing. The memory block was added only for aesthetics, so to maximise flow through the CPU, I’ve inserted a silicone ball through which I’ve drilled a 1.5mm hole into the 90 degree single rotary exiting the memory block. After doing this, I found no meaningful difference in CPU temps regardless of configuration and this way looked the best to my eyes.
  5. Looks good man, it's nice to see an NF-A20 out in the wild. Hopefully 200mm fans and radiators will become more ubiquitous over the next few years; I can see it being a real leap forward for silent PCs. I'd love it if Noctua were to release an Industrial PPC SKU in black...
  6. Thanks Seoz, it’s kind of you to say. I think the key to the cable management is building the cables to length, with a specific run in mind. Then, so long as you lay them in a sensible order, they pretty much manage themselves. The loop layout was a sort of lazy alternative to a distro plate. The only complication was running the high resistance CPU block and low resistance RAM block in parallel. To ensure enough flow through the CPU block, there’s a silicon ball bearing with a 1.5mm hole drilled into it inserted into the 90 degree fitting coming out of the memory. This restricts flow through the memory and increases it through the CPU. Nice to see another forum member in Scotland too :)
  7. Hi all It's been a while since my last build, but I'm excited to have just completed a (sort of) new one. I'd been in my trusty Corsair Obsidian 350D since 2014 and it certainly served me well. Having started out accommodating just an open CPU watercooling loop with a single 240mm radiator and bay pump reservoir combo, I progressively shoehorned in a second radiator, GPU block, tube reservoir and a Laing D5. For an mATX case of its era to hold all of this without modding, I think is rather good. Nevertheless, my Haswell CPU is getting rather long in the tooth and with Ryzen 3000 on the way, I'm looking forward to a performance upgrade. Unfortunately it seems mATX options are to be almost entirely absent from the lineup of X570 motherboards however. Though since seeing the 14+2 phase VRM on the X570 Aorus Extreme, I'm not sure I'd want one anyway. The other catalyst for this upgrade was the sad demise of Caselabs last year. I've loved their cases since their inception, but within just a few months of me having the money to actually pull the trigger and buy one, the option to do so disappeared. To this end, I've been keeping a keen eye on eBay and was finally able to get my hands on a Merlin SM8 in my desired spec last month. Suffice to say, the build quality and versatility is unlike any case I've seen before. For this build, the core components remained the same therefore, as I'm waiting for the launch of the Ryzen R9 3950X. With that said, it's still by far my most ambitious project owing to the complexity of the watercooling loop and small amount of modding involved in bringing it to fruition. Below are the specs and some pictures of the finished project. Specs CPU Intel i5 4670k @ 4.4GHz / 1.37 volts Motherboard Asus Z87 Gryphon RAM 16GB G.Skill Trident X DDR3 2400MHz 10-12-12-31 Graphics Card MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X @ 2115MHz core / 5525MHz memory / 107% power target PSU Corsair RM750 (with custom cables built from the ground up by myself with MDPC-X supplies) SSDs Intel 730 series x2 in RAID 0 HDD Seagate Barracuda 4TB Watercooling components Top radiator HardwareLabs Black Ice SR1 480 Front radiator HardwareLabs Black Ice Nemesis GTR 360 Pump Alphacool VPP655 vario Pump/Reservoir combo Bitspower D5 mod kit and mod top with 200mm upgrade kit and triple opening top Reservoir mount Singularity Computers Core single (silver) CPU block EK Supremacy EVO full nickel GPU block/backplate EK FC1080 GTX TF6 nickel/plexi RAM block/heatsinks EK Monarch X4 nickel with Monarch Modules nickel Fans Noctua NF-F12 PPC PWM 2000RPM Fittings Bitspower Black Sparkle Photos
  8. Interesting video, I really enjoyed this one. Though after getting Acer's XB321HK, I wouldn't trade the extra five inches for either HDR or high refresh rate. Granted I play mostly X Plane and P3D, neither of which can realistically be driven much above 60FPS with good add-ons and reasonable graphics settings, but I really feel 32 inches and up is where 4K becomes worthwhile. I use it quite comfortably without scaling, which I couldn't say of 27" 4K displays.
  9. One of my favourite videos you've done in a while, absolutely fascinating! Very well presented and entertaining to watch, even by your own high standards.
  10. Outstanding video, even by your super high standards! I love it when you re-purpose practical, professional grade technologies like Mosaic for your own unique brand of shenanigans.
  11. So does that mean when Kaby Lake E comes along, 4K Netflix won't be supported since it lacks onboard graphics?
  12. I never knew how awful the DRM was for 4K content. I was surprised when you mentioned 4K Netflix was only going to work with 7th Gen Intel CPUs on the WAN Show a while back and even thought I may have misunderstood. Has this been the case since 4K Netflix was introduced? And does anyone know whether Ryzen is compatible? As for needing an approved monitor for 4K Blu-Rays, that really is ridiculous! Great video as ever though
  13. This is going to be spectacular. I love the paint finish you've achieved, far superior to brushed aluminium if you ask me.
  14. What a stunning build, it's really nice to see something like this in an InWin case. I feel this sort of project, with a 'better-than-factory' quality finish is what they're designed for.
  15. I really loved this one, great job LTT! I suppose it's obvious really, but it still interests me that these super-computers are comprised of processors not too distantly related to what we're all using, just in unbelievable numbers.
  16. Loved the latest video on your frustrations with X299. Great to have all of the changes and quirks laid out and be quite justifiably criticised by someone so prominent in the industry. I've been quite disappointed by most other YouTube tech reporters being so unquestioning in their reporting on the platform.
  17. Superd video guys, I really enjoyed this one. Now I just need to find time for the new Scrapyard Wars. Very excited for that one.
  18. Thanks for the review. I appreciate the Dell 7559 is much better, and I've wanted it since Linus reviewed it, but I really can't afford to spend an extra £150.
  19. Yeah, thanks guys, that's very much what I thought. Usually I'd try the eBay option, but given the seller has no feedback and I really don't have time for eBay's refund policy (it took three months before my money made its way back to me last time), I think I'll just go for the HP.
  20. A combination of gaming (FSX, DCS, BF4 and ETS2 at slightly gimped resolutions) and photo editing in LightRoom. Also, as a means of transferring things to my iPad.
  21. Hi everyone I'm currently in the market for a new laptop and need to buy very soon (by Monday at the latest). John Lewis have the HP Pavilion 15-ak002na for £699 and since I currently work there, I'll pay £616 with the partner's discount. Does anybody know of a GTX 950M (or better) laptop from a reputable UK retailer for less? Kind regards Charlie P.s. £616 is more than I really want to spend, £550 would be better; I'll be without income for the next year as I'll be living in New Zealand, training as a pilot. I would however like something that'll be passable for a little light gaming.
  22. Is there any sort of delay on the confirmation email? It has been a few minutes, and I still haven't recieved mine... Regards, Charlie
  23. I love that Cherry MX Board 6.0, I've been waiting for it since CES. Looks like I'm going to have to wait a while longer to see one with blue switches though .
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