Nice list of parts, however, you didn't say which i5. I can see that since you list a Z87 socket 1150 motherboard, that it's a Haswell processor. Is it the i5 4670K? Hopefully you're planning to overclock, so you'll need a decent inexpensive cooler like the Hyper 212 EVO.
Unlike most "gaming" titles, "Flight Simulator X" and "X-Plane" are "simulations" which are very heavily CPU bound, but very lightly GPU bound. As such, neither FSX nor X-Plane benefit from SLI / CF configurations, high-end single card horsepower or GPU overclocking. Moreover, as multiple GPU's require more CPU interrupts, frame rate can actually decrease slightly.
As I've explained in many threads, frame rate scales with the number of CPU cores, and nearly 1:1 with clock rate, so a highly overclocked Intel Core i7 produces the best frame rates, as the i7's Hyper-Threading feature can keep
minimum frame rates from dropping below 30. Further, since FSX as well as X-Plane perform better with nVidia drivers, a mid-range nVidia based graphics card works well, which is why X-Plane recommends a single GTX 760.
The following link is to X-Plane's website - http://www.x-plane.com/store/hardware/ - and to their partner's website, XForce PC, who builds their PC's - http://xforcepc.com/store/index.php/computers.html?mode...
This is their description of their recommended hardware configuration:
"XForcePC Computer Specifically Designed for X-Plane ... Intel Core i7-4770K Processor Overclocked at 4.2GHz ... 16 Gigabytes of DDR-3 1600MHz RAM ... Nvidia GTX 760 Video Card with 2GB ... Requires no special adapters to run X-Plane on 3 screens."
An i7 4770K is a good choice over an i5 4670K, but if your budget is tight, then go with less expensive Ivy Bridge parts such as an equivalent socket 1155 motherboard and an i5 3570K. That would allow you to spend a little more for an nVidia based EVGA GTX 650 Ti Boost, which would be adequate for either an FSX or an X-Plane PC.
Keep in mind that as old a title as FSX is, there
still is not enough CPU horspower available to run FSX or X-Plane max'd out, so I can't over-emphasize enough that CPU overclocking is absolutely essential! Once a high overclock has been achieved, then the best combinations of frame rate and graphics detail remains a delicate balance between which simulation settings to tweak, as well as knowledge of the FSX.cfg file, so Google up the Flight Simulator websites and be prepared to do some research.
Hope this helps,
CT
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