Advice needed on purchasing a new gaming PC

Budget?

Xbox series x would give you a great out of the box no messing ms flight sim experience for 500 quid. 4k 30fps. Maybe for about 1/3 cost of the equivalent gaming pc and none of the heartache.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3588173/how-the-xbox-series-x-and-xcloud-saved-me-from-buying-a-gaming-pc.html

I'm sorry, but that spec PC is the absolute minimum for what you would need to run Flight Simulator (or any modern game), so assume terrible framerate/resolution and graphics options. Do you have a particular target resolution/framerate in mind. Haven't played flight simulator yet, but assume beauty is important so, for me, 4K would be a must.

in terms of recommending a build, it's impossible unless you say what your preferences and, most importantly, your budget is (even ballpark figure). If the only thing you are going to be using this computer for is flight simulator, then I would second the advice above and just settle for an xbox. You would spend a lot more on a pc to get the equivalent of an xbox. Said PC would offer a lot more, but if you don't need that, then going down the pc route seems a waste.

Finally, in case you aren't aware, there is a massive global crisis with regards microchips at the moment. This is affecting everything from cars to games consoles to graphics cards etc (so even getting your hands on an xbox is difficult). But when you add in the crypto mania and the attack from touts, the PC graphics cars market is particularly out of whack price-wise at the moment.

On that budget, I would recommend staying with HD for now or maybe stretch to QHD (the graphics cards need to power 4K would destroy your budget 😉).

Basically, the higher the resolution, the better the game will look and feel and refers to the number of pixels (or dots) that make up the image on the screen. HD (or 1920 x 1080) has been around for a long time and you are probably already familiar with it with regards HDTV/Blurays etc. QHD (2560 x 1440) has been popular for a while now and looks even better. 4K (3840 x 2160) is absolutely amazing, but requires a very high end-graphics card to play many games. It has also become the standard for TVs these days. Besides the monitor, the other main factor is the graphics card (or GPU). This is what does all the calculations necessary to determine what appears on the screen in reaction to your movements. The performance is typically measured in FPS (or Frames per Second). The higher the resolution, the more demanding the game is and the higher you have set the individual settings within the game, the more powerful a GPU you will need to get adequate FPS. Typically, you are looking at wanting to get 30-60 FPS for the game to run smoothly. You can always play at a resolution lower than your monitor supports, but not higher. Finally, as I already mentioned, the bad news is there is a global shortage of microchips, combined with Crypto mania (most crypto coins are mined with GPUs) means GPU prices have skyrocketed over the last 2 years (more than double in many cases)

For Flight Simulator, I haven't played it yet, but from what I have heard, 30FPS should be fine as it is not a fast moving game (say like Call of Duty etc). However, it does appear to be very demanding game, not just on the GPU, but also on the CPU and RAM. At that rate, you might be wanting to look at an i7 CPU and at least 16GB of RAM (32GB would be nice), which will also will eat up a lot of your budget.

As per above, I would recommend posting in the PC_Building forum. There's always plenty of people will to help make recommendations. One thing, when posting, include all the info you have given above while also trying to answer the following questions (with this layout to make it easy for people to see the answers) (I have also pre-answered questions 1, 7 and 10 for you - feel free to change it!):

1. What is your budget? ~1,500

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer?

3. Do you need a copy of Windows?

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer?

5. Do you need a monitor?

6. Do you need any of these peripherals (wireless card, monitor keyboard, mouse, microphone, webcam)?

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? No

8. How can you pay?

9. When are you purchasing?

10. If you need help building it, where are you based ? I will want it prebuilt, as I am not sure what I am doing any want to make sure it works.

Your friend's PC is of no use. It has a weakish processor and also only a 200w power supply which is useless for powering anything other than a very low-level graphics card.

At this point your best bet is to just buy a pre-built from the likes of Dell, PC Specialist or Currys.

I'm not saying buy this one but to give you an idea - https://www.currys.ie/ieen/gaming/pc-gaming/gaming-pcs/pcspecialist-vortex-sf-gaming-pc-intel-core-i5-rtx-3060-2-tb-hdd-512-gb-ssd-10222253-pdt.html

It would run FS perfectly at ultra settings.

Or this is a bit cheaper with a slightly weaker graphics card, but still fine for ultra. https://www.pcspecialist.ie/computers-for-next-day-delivery/1244/

As stated, there is zero value for money right now with the long-running insane shortages and everything is far more expensive than it should be.

I'd keep your existing pc for office, non graphics work, trade in the windows flight sim copy for the Xbox version or GamePass and get a Series S or X. It's literally plug and play and no heartache. And you'll save a load of money and time.

Ok. Sell the PC. 😊