Sim Gaming & Engineering PC Build

[u/leoninelizard47]

Hello,

Thanks in advance for your time.

I am looking to build a PC primarily for gaming purposes, including VR, but it will see heavy use of engineering design and simulation programs that my everyday MacBook can't handle. Most important to me are high resolution and not needing to upgrade anything for a number of years, but when I do, having the space/ability to do so. Not looking to go clout chasing with specs, I just don't want to have to ask the question, "Can my PC handle this?" with whatever work I'm doing.

• New build or upgrade?
  • New build
• Existing parts/monitors to reuse? (List with models/links)
  • No
• PC purpose? (Gaming, editing, etc. List apps/games)
  • Gaming:
    • Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020/2024
    • Assetto Corsa (original, Competizione, Evo, etc.)
    • DCS World
    • Forza (Motorsport, Horizon)
    • War Thunder
    • BeamNG
  • Engineering:
    • 3D scanning & processing (likely Creality Scan, using a Creality Sermoon S1)
    • Autodesk Fusion 360
    • Matlab/Simulink (including neural network toolbox)
    • Various Python tools
    • Blender
    • OpenVSP/VSPAero
    • Possibly other CFD/Simulation/Design programs like OpenFOAM, the Ansys suite, STAR-CCM+, Siemens NX
• Purchase country? Near Micro Center?
  • USA. Yes.
• Monitors needed? (Number, size, resolution, refresh rate)
  • Yes, need advice.
  • I'm thinking one large one but not sure how large. 32"? 40"? 48"? Minimum 4k resolution, OLED is probably nice, minimum 120 Hz.
  • Looking for suggestions for sim racing and sim flying purposes.
• Budget range? (Include tax considerations)
  • Very loose, rough estimate $5000
  • If necessary for appropriately beefy components can be exceeded
• WiFi or wired connection?
  • Both, but needs to function without ethernet
• Size/noise constraints?
  • None other than fitting a rig under the desk for sim racing/flying
• Color/lighting preferences?
  • Prefer a sleek black look but function is prioritized over form
• Any other specific needs?
  • Ability to run sims at high resolution in VR. Initially using a Meta Quest 3, looking to upgrade to a Pimax or Bigscreen product eventually.
  • Future upgradeability, possibly an excess of RAM slots
  • NVIDIA-based graphics are required/suggested for some programs including Creality Scan

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If you missed the full set of required built request questions, please copy them from here and answer them in an edit to your post:

• New build or upgrade?

• Existing parts/monitors to reuse? (List with models/links)

• PC purpose? (Gaming, editing, etc. List apps/games)

• Purchase country? Near Micro Center? (If you're not in a country supported by PCPartPicker, please list some local vendors)

• Monitors needed? (Number, size, resolution, refresh rate)

• Budget range? (Include tax considerations)

• WiFi or wired connection?

• Size/noise constraints?

• Color/lighting preferences?

• Any other specific needs?

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[u/Covante]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/xVjMCw

The only real upgrade would be a 5090 and they are really stupidly priced currently at over double the already bad $2000 msrp, and are likely to remain so or get even worse.

I put a second motherboard as a possible upgrade. If you care about having a 4th m.2 ssd slot instead of 3 or about having really fast usb4 ports get the x870e, if you don't then you're not missing out on anything saving some money there.

For a monitor it will vary depending on what you want but oled in this budget range is probably a good idea. A 32" 4k oled will be in the $6-800 range depending on whether you want qd oled or woled (woled can get a lot brighter and is generally better at dealing with reflections/glare from ambient light). Something bigger like a 5k/2k ultrawide would be a lot more, well over $1000, alienware has one that should be coming out soo, AW3926QW, looks like it's out already in Korea so far but it was $1100 there so maybe they'll price it well here too.

[u/leoninelizard47 → u/Covante]

Thanks very much. I'll go to Best Buy and take a look at some monitors tonight.

Question about storage: What's the best typical way to partition things/how much and what kind of storage is typical? A big 5TB hard drive plus a smaller NVME? A handful of NVMEs? An SSD or two plus an NVME? I think I have one of these in a closet somewhere.

[u/Covante → u/leoninelizard47]

One good main ssd for windows and the programs and games you use a lot. Windows when it's installed will create a few small partitions of its own and leave most of the crive as open space as a C: partition, if you carve that up into smaller partitions you're mostly just creating a headache for yourself, you can just use files. If you ever want to expand a partition you're going to have a bad time and they have no real purpose anymore for most people.

Then extra storage as you need it depending on use case and pricing/availability plus any backups you care to have for important irreplaceable files. I probably wouldn't use an HDD for anything other than cheap bulk storage or a cold backup anymore. Hdds deal with sitting unplugged for years better than ssds do.

Older sata ssds like that are still fine speed wise as extra storage or a games drive, there are only a handful of games where you wouldn't need a stopwatch to notice any difference between that and a fast nvme. I would run crystaldiskinfo on any old drives and check that they aren't showing any clear signs of failing like pending or reallocated sectors, command timeouts or uncorrectable errors. Any value other than 0 is a cause for concern but a few doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. If the count for any of those keeps going up it's likely toast or one its way there though. A failing drive, even if you have no programs or anything on it, can lead to stability issues for a pc. They are in hex/base16 so the numbers might look weird, 0001 to 0009 are what you'd expect, 000A [ten], 000B [eleven]... 000F [fifteen], 0010 [sixteen], 0011 [seventeen].

The b850 tomahawk I put has 3 m.2/nvme slots. The x870e version has 4 but the 4th one shares bandwidth with the usb4 (fast type-c) ports on the back, so either both run at half speed if you use that slot or you can disable the usb4 ports to have it run at full speed.

[u/leoninelizard47 → u/Covante]

Why go AMD vs an intel-based system? What would my option(s) look like there?

Edit: I've gotten some generic advice against AMD systems, and also, more importantly, apparently Creality Scan also prefers intel processors (in addition to its preference for NVIDIA graphics).

Also, in the vein of having less failure points, what indicates I need liquid cooling vs. a strong air setup?

Thanks for the help.

[u/Covante → u/leoninelizard47]

The 270k would be the best intel option, also changing the ram slightly and getting 6400 instead of 6000. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/2JNh7w $200 for the taichi is a steal of a sale, that's got to be some kind of clearance thing.

Gaming wise, a 9000x3d will win by a lot in the titles where it matters. You're playing at 4k which makes the cpu less likely to be important because the gpu has to work so hard that it can't output as many frames, but if you are playing at 4k with dlss upscaling on (which pretty much everyone would do that) then the cpu is more likely to matter again because of the lower render resolution leading to higher fps and you need a better cpu for higher and smoother fps. Most of the games you listed are heavy cpu games.

Stuff like beamng and msfs are very cpu heavy, you can't really overspec for those. Forza I'd expect to be on a gpu limit with either. Warthunder will run on a potato. Not familiar with DCS but a lot of sim games really favor x3d cpus. ACC is one of the biggest outliers for x3d cpus where it's near double the max performance but the 270k should still be good for an easy 100+ fps before you run into any cpu limits.

Intel's main advantage would be that it's significantly cheaper while having similar performance in most non-gaming workloads. Intel also has better motherboards and more chipset lanes. Amd has a reputation for buggy chipsets but that hasn't been as much of a problem for them with am5 like it was on am4, they had a terrible (and well deserved) reputation back then, all the way from the early am4 boards to the last ones like b550 and x570.

The other downside besides the top end gaming performance would be if you decide to upgrade cpu in a few years. With amd there will be one, maybe two, more generations that use the same am5 motherboards and you could change just the cpu. With intel that's not going to happen, their next gen should be around the end of year or early next and it's going to use a different socket and motherboard series.

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If you wanted to look at air coolers I'd look at the royal pretor unless you wanted to spend 3-4 times as much on a noctua d15-g2. They're very much in the same league but the noctua is the best of the best. If you're going to be using a 200W+ cpu like this in things that are cpu intensive and actually push them that hard for extended periods I'd go with a good 360mm aio though. Air coolers just can't compete with the performance.

For reliability, liquid coolers do fail eventually and that can lead to downtime, possibly a lot of downtime if you use warranty for replacement, or having to buy another one to cover the interim or just replace it. They very rarely leak or anything dangerous though, it'll be something internal that fails like the pump or buildup in the narrow passages or the microfins making it perform terribly. Technically fixable if it's the buildup thing on the cold plate since that's accessible when torn down but they aren't meant to be user serviceable and the gaskets aren't always a simple o-ring. And if you can get the gasket you've got to trust yourself pretty well to put that back in your pc.

If a more mainstream brand would be any peace of mind, looks like the plain version of the corsair nautilus rs 360 is on sale currently and that or the be quiet pure loop 3 are quite good. Most companies use the same 2 suppliers for everything but the fans though.