Firstly thanks TenPatrol and ResetXPDR for your suggestions and reassurances.
I’ve done as you suggested and updated the bios and chipset drivers which was much more straight forward than I thought.
Yes it didn’t immediately occur to me that temperature of course is going to be very dependent on the amount of effort the CPU is having to put in.
I run at 4K on high with clouds on ultra with fauna etc disabled. Can’t see any point in rabbits on the runway, if it were birds then that would be.
I also run:
Fenix
Active Sky
Beyond ATC
FSFO
So there’s quite a bit on the CPU’s to do list.
I’ve ordered two additional slimline fans for the front and I’ll reposition the existing front one.
I’ll also lock the frame rate at 40 fps as it’s silky smooth at that and after all that is as you quite rightly said is what’s important.
Once again thank you for you help it is very much appreciated.
Maybe do a Cinebench r23 benchmark and advise temps, that way use 9800x3d owners can repeat, I know cooling solutions may affect but it will give you an understanding
As others have said, your temps are perfectly ok, the only thing I would recommend is undervolting to -30 by using the Curve Optimizer. This will drop your temps immediately and will only help in the long run. If I remember correctly when I applied the undervolt it dropped my temps by about 10C. You can do this either in the BIOS or in Ryzen Master, I have done both. From my experience doing it in the BIOS is easier, when I did it in Ryzen Master after I save the settings it takes forever for it to post during the re-start, I thought I had screwed things up but it did finally post.
Thank you. I’ll take a look at your suggestion. Unfortunately this is all new to me overclocking undervolting etc. It is my first PC build and I’m learning as I go albeit quite slowly.
i got 9800x3d running a set voltage of 1.1v in bios (haven’t touched anything else) with a thermalright phantom spirit evo, 32" ultrawide and everything set to ultra and the temps rarely gets over 70c.
Went through your bios settings and made appropriate changes and I seem to have made a little progress. These are my latest results from a snapshot at cruise in the Fenix. A definite improvement on yesterday. Thanks again…
The minimum temperature may appear a little high but this was started after I’d loaded into the Fenix and sat C&D at the gate.
My temperatures.
MOBO: MSI X670E Tomahawk
AIO: be quiet! Silent Loop 2 360mm
Stress test 9800x3d @5.5Ghz (CPUID CPU-Z MSI)
Test 9800x3d @5.5Ghz Fenix a320 takingoff (TLOD200)
In this topic, I mentioned that when it comes to temperature, we check the temperature of the sensor named CPU, which can be found under the motherboard model.
I can see that the temperature of my 9800X3D is 40°C, with Microsoft Edge running and 10 tabs open.
Edit
If someone suspects that CPU temperature is too high, they also should check temperature in the BIOS and monitor CPU
temperature for a minute or two.
Very helpful 
Looking at the MSI forum it looks like there has been more than one occurence of the latest A23 BIOS (MSI Carbon x870e MB) ‘looping’ and not posting to Windows.
Obviously, it didn’t happen to you so maybe it depends on system specs or something else ???
I thought I would mention this anyway FWIW. I will probably wait a while before updating to see if this is an isolated or a common problem.
Yep, I don’t have any issues after installing and configuring new BIOS version - I’m running Windows 10 Pro.
Wow, what a thread…almost 500 pages!
I started reading through the first 130 pages but then realized I have a long way to go so, for those of you who’ve been in here since start, what is the final verdict for the 9800X3D in VR?
I’ve already seen and understood how the 9800X3D performs really well in 2D compared to the 13900K/14900K but the improvement in VR seems to be much less.
I already bought the 9800X3D with a kit of 64 GB 6000 MHz CL30 RAM and an MSI B650 Tomahawk motherboard which I’m planning to put together today, replacing my current 13900K.
However, after reading some of the initial posts in here from VR users specifically, that left me thinking maybe it won’t be worth it. When some of the VR users in here said they barely noticed any difference going to the 9800X3D when coming from a 13900K or 14900K setup.
Would be interesting to know if that is still the case.
My tests 4090 + 9800x3d vs 14900. These wasn’t any difference in performance in MSFS 2024, however in MSFS 2020 the 9800x3d has good performance improvements. It was an easy decision for me as I was upgrading from a 12900 so decided to go the AMD route as it offered motherboard longevity over the dead 1700 Intel socket
Many thanks for sharing your experience and I’m happy to hear what you say about the uplift in MSFS2020. Since that is where I’ll likely stay for quite some time.
One question though. You started comparing the 9800X3D to a 14900K, saying the difference wasn’t that much in MSFS2024 but then you said you went from a 12900 to the 9800X3D.
Did you ever try the 14900K vs the 9800X3D?
I guess what I’ll be doing is give it a try to see for myself. Only way to know for sure even when it’s a hassle if it turns out being for nothing but that’s the price you have to pay I suppose. At least I can return the stuff I bought if I’m not happy with the result.
Ditto that I noticed a big performance boost going from 5800X3D to 9800X3D in MSFS 2020 as that sim was mostly CPU limited for me and now it is not, easily achieving the 40 FPS I need for motion reprojection anywhere I fly.
Not so much of a noticeable boost in MSFS 2024 because that sim loves to be GPU limited, even while delivering relatively rubbish performance compared to MSFS 2020 at similar visual quality settings.
I pretty much ignore MSFS 2024 performance as IMO the whole product is still well undercooked and I won’t use it much until it is a lot better than it currently is. I am pleased that MSFS 2020 finally has its full potential unleashed by a powerful CPU like the 9800X3D.
My original setup was 12900+4090, never tried the 12900 in MSFS 2024 as a benchmark. I bought a 9800x3d & 14900 from Amazon and test each setup with the respective new MB’s.
Ah, got it!
And looking at MSFS2020, the 9800X3D performed noticeable better than the 14900K in VR?
I went from 7800x3D to 9800x3d in high res VR on FS2020. Big jump in performance (cut CPU frametimes by 25%+) but most importantly, huge improvements in the lows.
It’s so smooth now locked at 45fps. I was already locked at 45fps before, but now it’s a lot smoother with no microstutters at all.
Very noticeable improvement and absolutely worth it for me, especially since it only cost me about 100 euro on top after selling the older chip.
That’s great
Have most installed, only the CPU, waterblock and RAM left and I’m (hopefully) good to go starting to install Windows followed by MSFS2020.
Will be most interesting to see the result vs my 13900K and even more interesting with this being the first AMD build in my life 
Saw the 9800X3D was available on Amazon Canada yesterday morning for a bit.
Nearly grabbed one, but ultimately decided against it and will wait for the 9950X3D as originally planned. It was tempting tho!