"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
my suggestion:
- motherboard with either raid on board or a extra raid controller
(fasttrack has cheap and good ones)

What is your opinion of this system set-up? Would a system like this
make FSX fly? If not, what would you change? [snip]

lol...

Yes, a system like that would "make FSX fly". As NCJim says, it's
overkill. But hey...it's not terrible to overkill. Gives you some
breathing room for the future.

That said, the component prices for some of the stuff in that list sure look
steep to me. For example, you can get a Lite-On dual-layer DVD burner for
under $40. Paying $60 for a "combo" drive (ie, no DVD burning capability)
isn't reasonable, especially for that brand. And the video card, being a
mid-range for today's selection, should cost some $100 less than the price
you listed.

I did a quick check on the CPU, and that is also listed on your sheet $100
higher than the current street price.

I don't have a specific reference for the exact motherboard you've got
speced, but $150 is a pretty nice motherboard. It should have on it a
perfectly fine audio interface, obviating any need for an add-on card.

Other things wrong with the configuration, IMHO...

The hard drive is WAY too small. For that price, you ought to be able to
get something in the 200-250GB range, which is IMHO about as small a hard
drive as anyone ought to consider these days. If you can justify the
expense, even better is to go with some 2- or 3-drive RAID configuration.
Depending on how you set it up, you can get data protection (as Martin
suggested), a significant performance boost, or both.

And why bother with the floppy drive? Martin's wrong, you don't need a
floppy anymore. When XP first came out, motherboards didn't have built-in
support for the SATA controllers, and the XP install didn't include RAID
controller drivers. But motherboards today include a lot of new
functionality, including making a SATA drive look just like any other IDE
drive as far as Windows is concerned. No need to install drivers from a
floppy. Besides, unless you're building the PC yourself, OS install and
configuration is someone else's problem. If they need to install drivers
from a floppy drive, they can stick one in temporarily, just to get things
going.

Pete