I spent the day upgrading the computer I play games on. I put an RTX 5080 16 gb in today. Now this is a serious gaming system.
- Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 ghz CPU
- 64 gb ddr5 RAM
- 1tb NvMe SSD
- 2 tb NvMe SSD
- ASUS GeForce RTX 5080 OC GP
- TrackIR system
- Winwing Orion2 Warthog HOTAS
yeah, my wife was surprised that Im a gaming nerd, too. That may be the last upgrade for awhile. Chips are getting pricey.
15 Comments
MSG Grumpy · December 28, 2025 at 11:03 pm
I am building out my dream system for Christmas to my self. Mine doesn’t quite easure up to yours (except I went all out on the processor as I want to do some astrophotography image enhancement and I might see f AI can help).
My build looks like this:
AMD 9950X3D
32GB DDR5
1TB 9100 cat 5 Samsung M2
2TB M2 (cat4 data drive)
2x 1TB hard drives
1TB Optain drive as a dual boot (I am going to experiment with learning Linux to try to get away from Windows op sys)
Gforce 5070Ti
Win 11 Pro (yuck, I Hate win11, but since 10 was deadlined this fall I had to for the new build).
The place I bought most of the hard ware gave me a free 360 AIO Cooler, and a 240 AO as well, so now I might use the 240 and my old computer parts to build out a media center PC.
MSG Grumpy
New large tower case
MSG Grumpy · December 28, 2025 at 11:06 pm
The price on ram has gotten ridiculous, I originally wanted/planned on 64GB, but I should have bought it last year for half of what I just paid for 16GB this month….Grrrr
MSG Grumpy
MSG Grumpy · December 28, 2025 at 11:10 pm
Do you mind if I ask, what is a trackIR system?
And a Winwing Orion2?
Thanks, MSG Grumpy
Divemedic · December 29, 2025 at 6:48 am
TrackIR is a head tracker for gaming: turn you head, and the view on your monitor changes. Fir example, look down in a driving game amd the view on the monitor pans down so you can look at your dashboard.
The Winwing is a hands on throttle and stick for flying aircraft.
Dan D. · December 29, 2025 at 12:15 pm
Just FYI, this is where we started with head tracking. These guys sponsored my first battle robot in 1996. The headset sent out Euler angles (yaw, pitch, roll) on a serial port at what I believe was 38.4K.
https://retrovolve.com/the-playstations-virtual-reality-headset-that-nearly-was/
Stefan v. · December 29, 2025 at 1:35 am
Here is a youtube channel of a professional pilot and car tuner, and serious flight sim gamer. Very instructive:
https://m.youtube.com/@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles
Boneman · December 29, 2025 at 7:17 am
Not a gamer nor a bigtime ‘Puter Nerd. I recently upgraded and procured a new (refurb) machine off Ebay and I’m very happy with it.
Mind… LOL, my previous Internet machine was a refurb I procured for the whopping price of $79 from Tiger Direct back when they actually had a Brick and Mortar here in Fort Myers. It came with Windows 7 installed and groaned heartily when at the very last minute, I updated it to Windows 10.
The new machine is very nice indeed.
NOTE: I still have an ancient Dell running XP. Why? Because AutoDESK no longer supports Software Migration and I have a fully licensed copy of AutoCAD LT 2007 running on it that I can no longer migrate to a new machine. I need it for the bit of consulting I still do and absolutely REFUSE to “Subscribe” to ANY software.
The new internet machine will in all liklihood be the last I will ever procure. It serves it’s purpose. Internet browsing, managing all my images, MP3’s, etc. and is not vulnerable to whatever holes the now unsupported Windows 10 may or may not devewlop in the forsee-able future.
Sounds like you have quite the amazing system there. I for one, kind of fell off the “Gaming” sphere when Nintendo introduced the Wii. I’m a Gamecube guy and probably have not fired THAT up in over five years either.
FWIW… LOL, my frame of reference is that I started out as an “On The Board” Draftsman and was absolutely THRILLED when they dropped the very FIRST CAD system on my desk back in 1984 or so. Working at Hewlett Packard then, it was HP Draft. That was written in…. wait for it… BASIC. Shortly after, that was replaced by HP ME10 which was PASCAL based.
Yeah… FossilCAD is what I refer to it as now.
Good luck with the new platform!
ghostsniper · January 1, 2026 at 3:33 pm
Fort Myers? Florida? Lived there 40 years, graduated FM High in 1972. I too am a “board certified” draftsman and have been a licensed AutoCAD user since 1992 with AutoCAD R12. I too am using a refurbed Dell machine with XP and my 2004 version of LT. I have 2 more machines for back up. Do we know each other?
Possum X · December 29, 2025 at 9:38 am
No new hardware this season. Just switched to a different Linux distribution after getting tired of the politics and bugs of the old one.
Leigh · December 29, 2025 at 9:50 am
Yeah, the prices on parts has killed any hope of me doing an upgrade any time soon.
That 5080 is between $1200 – 1600
The RAM alone is sickening – most 32GB kits are between $500 – 700. More than 4x the cost a year ago . You can thank Micron for only dealing with AI centers on that one.
The 7800 X3D is $400 – 450. Still cheaper than the 9800 X3D by a fair amount.
Of course that needs to be paired with a good MoBo, so I’ll assume you are an Asus guy by your GPU choice….. An X870 ROG board is about $250
NVME drives are roughly $125 – $150 a GB
The HOTAS is rather pricey, but not as much as the Orion2 HOTAS16 I was thinking of.
Track IR is actually quite reasonable.
I imagine it would run DCS rather comfortably.
I congratulate you on your upgrade.
Overall, your rig would stomp the guts out of my gaming PC.
Gigabyte X690 MoBo with a i7-12700KF with a Silent Assassin 120 HSF. I gave up on AIO coolers.
64GB of Corsair Dominator DDR4 – 3600
1TB Crucial P4 NVME OS drive / 2TB Crucial P3 NVME Game Drive. Been running games separate from the OS for a few systems now and the results are worth it.
Gigabyte RTX 3070 Ti
Corsair RX850 Semi Mod PSU
Gigabyte 32″ Curved 1440p 165Hz monitor. I have a pair of these on arms so I can switch out between the Gaming PC and my previous one.
9 Schythe USB foot pedals ( was 11, but my newest pair stopped taking programming)
It runs Battlefield like a beast and does a decent job of running Tarkov.
My old Devil’s Canyon i7-4790k rig has been regulated to my media machine and light Adobe CS5 work.
Windows 7 Pro, 32GB RAM, GTX970 SSC, 1TB Boot/2TB Game SSD’s, 3TB and 2x 4TB HDD bulk storage
Still a competent machine, just the OS isn’t supported due to M$’s coercion.
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
Divemedic · December 29, 2025 at 5:05 pm
My goal is, once I get better at flying, to switch to VR.
Leigh · December 29, 2025 at 9:01 pm
I always wanted to be the guy in the air to fear in Battlefield, but just didn’t have enough time to dedicate to getting to that level of proficiency.
Operator Drewski uses a VR headset on DCS and VTOL VR. He may not be the best pilot out there, and freely admits it, but he is fun to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa17ccq5CH8ziXWH821fMCxvGX_qMp_IB
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
Rick T · December 29, 2025 at 6:37 pm
What monitor(s) are you running and do you have a dedicated flight chair for the HOTAS rig? I’m trying to work out a multi-monitor rig for my next desktop but I can’t see how people run 3 or 4 big screens without needing multiple graphics cards.
Divemedic · December 29, 2025 at 8:30 pm
I have a 60hz monitor. Your eye can’t see more than that anyhow.
Instead of running 3 monitors, I am looking at the possibility of VR
Leigh · December 29, 2025 at 9:37 pm
Actually, there was a study done as to the advantages of higher refresh rates in gaming. Same people, running the same machines, all scored higher at 144Hz vs 60Hz. For the life of me, I can’t remember what publication did the study.
Higher refresh rates and low latency have less ghosting, image blurring, and tearing. Especially in fast paced FPS games. In productivity uses, higher refresh rates are supposed to be easier on the eyes.
I went from a 32″ 60Hz /1080p / 5-7mSec latency Samsung LED TV to a 32″ Curved Gigabyte 165Hz / 1440p / 1mSec latency monitor. Everything seems smoother and I can pick out details that I couldn’t before. The curved monitor helps a lot with eye strain.
I found that going from a 40″ Sony Bravia to the 32″ Samsung increased my FPS proficiency. There was just too much real estate to visually process without having to move my head. I got smoked a lot from the sides. The smaller screen allowed me to process threats faster because they were in my frame of view. In a flight game I can see where having three curved monitors would be useful. You would be able to track a hostile that isn’t dead on the nose – free looking like you were actually in an aircraft. VR would be exponentially better yet.
Current GPUs can run multiple monitors, you just need to have enough graphics and processing power to generate the frames to drive those monitors efficiently. All that takes is money. Unfortunately, in today’s market, that is a LOT of money.
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
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