Gaming PC for Flight Sim 2020

Claremorrisdub

Hi There,

i have a question. I am a PC gamer, but I have to confess, when it comes to building PC's, differences between graphic cards, frame rates, and all the other jargon, I'm a bit behind I'm afraid.

basically what I want to do is get a really good gaming PC, but don't want to spend an arm and a leg on it by buying it through the likes of any shop that would over price like Harvey Norman etc. I want it to be able to run Flight Simulator 2020 on ultra and look epic. any ideas on where to start? what kind of hardware do I need? Bear in mind I'm a noob :-) i had a look online about building PC's, and I think I would be ok doing it, but its more so where to go to get all the equipment, is there a one stop place where you could get it all etc. or alternatively, what's the best independent PC builder that would put one together for you? what has everyone's experience been going down this avenue? Any advise appreciated, Thanks !

Dcully

Hi there, head on over to the pc building board, the experts over there will help you if you want to self build.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=842

I run MSFS2020 myself, i got my machine built by scan uk, i normally build my own in the past but decided to get scan to build last time and it was actually €40 cheaper than if i bought the parts myself, id highly recommend them.

There are many more equally as good professional builders.

Claremorrisdub

thanks a million, will do!

Overheal

Claremorrisdub wrote: »

Hi There,

i have a question. I am a PC gamer, but I have to confess, when it comes to building PC's, differences between graphic cards, frame rates, and all the other jargon, I'm a bit behind I'm afraid.

basically what I want to do is get a really good gaming PC, but don't want to spend an arm and a leg on it by buying it through the likes of any shop that would over price like Harvey Norman etc. I want it to be able to run Flight Simulator 2020 on ultra and look epic. any ideas on where to start? what kind of hardware do I need? Bear in mind I'm a noob :-) i had a look online about building PC's, and I think I would be ok doing it, but its more so where to go to get all the equipment, is there a one stop place where you could get it all etc. or alternatively, what's the best independent PC builder that would put one together for you? what has everyone's experience been going down this avenue? Any advise appreciated, Thanks !

Depending on what you price and arm and a leg and what type of screen you have these are incompatible criteria lol

But we can optimize!

If you want brand spanking new components this is the year of the gaming PC. AMD has taken the crown with its latest launch: More Cores than Intel, AND Faster. AMD Has gained the lead. First Blood. Etc. It also is launching its new GPUs which perform as well if not better than some of Nvidias new lineup and at lower prices.

So a lot of this advice is the same as would be in the forum, but I would tell you to look for the following as best value to get FS running good even in 4K video:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
GPU: AMD RX 6800 (Launches November 18)
RAM: Varies, 2x8GB is typical still. AMD suggest the "sweet spot" for it's latest components is 4000 Mhz RAM, but you'll game happy with anything north of 3200 Mhz. If you need the best 4 Ghz RAM I suggest G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-4000, it has tight timings to match.
SDD: The best value this season has been Sabrent who has been doing strong discounts. The Rocket 1 TB NVME PCIe 4.0 is a prime pick.
Motherboard: Any X570 chipset board, you can be more picky if you want to overclock.
PSU: Any decent brand >= 550 Watts will run that setup just fine, maybe give yourself more headroom if you plan to overclock (and pair it with a board that has more VRMs for Overclocking stability)

And that's it, the case, CPU cooler etc. is down to taste really. FS 2020 Is heavily CPU bound so even on top end systems we're barely seeing 60 fps in 4K in the review sites but you won't get better gaming performance without going for say, AMD's 6900 XT Card (Which is NOT in your budget)

I built the above recommendation this week myself for about $1300 with windows etc. (AND BEFORE THE GPU COST!) - For most people that IS an arm and a leg; I could suggest if you're not overclocking, or caring about squeezing every drop of memory performance, to choose a cheaper DDR4-3200 or 3600 Mhz pair of DIMMs, and whatever the best deal on an X570 board is: You can do a B550 but I'm thinking future tense, when you want to add more SSD space later you're using up more PCIe lanes, and X570 has more of them, 4th gen. Eg. The board I got was $300 but there are cheaper x570 boards, some below $200, and there is RAM to be had for more than half off what I paid to hit that "sweet spot." I also payed almost $100 more for an aftermarket CPU cooler for better overclocking but the Free cooler that comes with the CPU runs fantastic at stock speeds and milder overclocks, anyway. You can likely do a similar build without overclocking headroom for under $1500 easy

traco

Hi - I'm not a gamer but getting a new laptop for work. Its a high spec Dell XPS 15. I used to travel a bit (pre covid) so was thinking I was thinking about this game for exploring airports and surrounds a bit.

Would this machine handle it or woudl I be wasting money on it. From what I read it probably won't handle 4k but might be OK in 1080?? As I'm not a gamer I don't know what to expect, last stuff I played was an original PS One way back.

Also as I am a complete noob, do people download to the local drive or run on an external drive??

Thanks and spec below:
XPS 15 (9500)
10th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H (12MB Cache, up to 5.0 GHz, 6 cores)
15.6" UHD+ (3840 x 2400) InfinityEdge Touch Anti-Reflective 500-Nit Display
32GB DDR4-2933MHz, 2x16G
1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1650 Ti 4GB GDDR6

Overheal

traco wrote: »

Hi - I'm not a gamer but getting a new laptop for work. Its a high spec Dell XPS 15. I used to travel a bit (pre covid) so was thinking I was thinking about this game for exploring airports and surrounds a bit.

Would this machine handle it or woudl I be wasting money on it. From what I read it probably won't handle 4k but might be OK in 1080?? As I'm not a gamer I don't know what to expect, last stuff I played was an original PS One way back.

Also as I am a complete noob, do people download to the local drive or run on an external drive??

Thanks and spec below:
XPS 15 (9500)
10th Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H (12MB Cache, up to 5.0 GHz, 6 cores)
15.6" UHD+ (3840 x 2400) InfinityEdge Touch Anti-Reflective 500-Nit Display
32GB DDR4-2933MHz, 2x16G
1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GTX 1650 Ti 4GB GDDR6

VRAM is a bit lower than desktop cards these days but at 1080p on a 60 Hz laptop monitor that will game handily.

traco

Overheal wrote: »

VRAM is a bit lower than desktop cards these days but at 1080p on a 60 Hz laptop monitor that will game handily.

Thanks for that. It arrived in the office today so I guess I will spend the weekend getting it sorted with the work stuff and go from there.

Skerries

check here for the type of fps you will get in gaming on that laptop

https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1650-Ti-Mobile-GPU-Benchmarks-and-Specs.452628.0.html