I play on an Asus laptop with i5 9300 512Gb SSD 16gb RAM and GTX1650 4Gb, it is playable though with minimal settings.
I was planning to upgrade and have a few questions:
Thank you!
Tower,… and postpone for now.
Tower for sure. My current system is older than yours (4790K, 107) so I waited until Zen 3 and the 30 series of cards were out. I went with the 5900X and the 3080. Waiting is always better as there is something new coming all the time. But, if I didn’t get something eventually, I’d still have my old Commodore!
Wait.
GPU’s are simply not available unless you want to pay 3 or 4 x the retail price.
Tower as everyone mentioned, but the GPU prices are just bananas.
Get a 256GB SSD or NVMe for Windows and regular software and a 500GB+ SSD or NVMe for MSFS (plus an HDD for files, MP3 and stuff). I do have the Deluxe edition in a 500GB SSD and I’m currently using 215GB (rolling chache and all). And I don’t have a single add-on.
RTX 2060 would sufice for 1080p (good bump coming from a 1650 laptop), but I would get a 3060 or 2060 Super depending on the price. Or wait for the 4000 series and try to get a msrp at the launch. I saw the 3060 at msrp in Brazil for a day (pre-sales), but I wasn’t following the cripto thing and I thought: “I’ll wait for the release to see other brands”. The very next day they were triple the price. Who knows when I’m gonna by a GPU? It might take a wile.
And don’t go ballistic with CPUs. A good 5600X or an i5-11600K (the latter is a good cost benefit according to reviews) is enough if you don’t stream or edit videos. I would get 3600Mhz CL14/16 RAM. Cheap, and they have a pretty decent performance.
If you wait for the 4000 series, we might get the Ryzen 6000 series.
If you do not move around much get a tower. If its the desktop 2060 its still a solid card capable of 1080p ultra 1440p high. My biggest advice do not cheap out on the CPU. Ideal specs suggest 8c 16t cpu but 6c/12t will suffice for now.
Information can go as far but there is nothing better than doing your own research.
That thing is so borked. How can they suggest an 8 core / 16 threads CPU as the ideal for a DX11 title? You see no difference from an i5-9600K all the way up to the i9-9900K when the game was released. The specs might have been made by an intern.
The gaming king at the moment is the 5600X, even for DX12 titles. You can get an 8 core if you render, stream. Other than that, the sweet spot are the 6 core / 12 threads.
This as a base. If you do have money, then you can start upping your specs. I would get the i9-10900K for example and disable Hyper Threading to game and work with a 10 core rocket. But that would not provide me with more FPS. Perhaps a slightly advantage.
Its not about fps my friend its about smoothness. An 8core cpu is going to give a smoother experience over a 6 core cpu.Its not borked when the devs themselves posted. It could also be for DX12.
Having own both a 6 core and 8 core machine the 8core cpu definitely has an advantage in this sim!
That’s not what all simulator riggers were saying back then and now. That specs page is hilarious from a technical standpoint.
Everyone with 8 core 16 threads is running the game basically at idle. Even my i7-9700K (eight cores) is not having a sweat. I came from the i5-9600K and got zero frames and zero smoothness with the i7-9700K. they both run exactly the same. I updated because I render some videos, but for MSFS? I would be more than fine with my i5-9600K running at stock.
Note that some experts like Hardware Unboxed said that after the 2060 Super you start to see the GPU FPS curve flattens, since the main thread is halting the game.
We do really need to hope that DX12 will bring more optimization to the game. At the moment I would be happy with my i5-9600k.
Thanks for all the replies. I am considering a brand tower pc like a Lenovo/Omen/MSI. May be wait for the 3060ti to become more available… Given the pain it was to install FS2020 I will postpone…I also refuse to fall into that trap of because there is a new game you have to upgrade your hardware. I remember reading in an article that the market value of all hardware, software that would go along with the release of FS2020 is expected to amount 3billion dollars …I am not 100% sure of the amount but it was really significant. I already purchased the Airbus quadrant pack with the joystick (160€) and upgraded my memory with an extra 8gb ram (40€)…plus the game itself that I downloaded from the Xbox Game pass (9,99€ per month). At that price I may consider investing in a real life pilot license!
the difference between a 6 core and a 8 core processer in this game, is the 8 core has 2 more cores at idle.
if you found a difference it was likely the speed difference. 
or architecture.
Hello, I wanted your opinion on this laptop LENOVO PC portable gamer Legion 5 15ARH05H AMD Ryzen 7 4800H (82B100BVMB)
The GPU is not the best but the processor is good, no? Also 8 cores.
Thank you
dont, if the gpu is not good enough, you cannot change it later, you may get sorry you bough it.
a tower has much more bang for the buck, and easy to exchange components.
only if you really need portable gaming a laptop is better.
Hi Taabo,
If you don’t need the portability of a laptop, then a tower pc gives you more flexibility for FS, whereby you can choose a good balance of cpu, ram and gpu, and you will also likely have better cooling than a laptop.
I have not tried an RTX 2060 as per your OP, but I have an RTX 3060 in my pc and it works very well at 1080p. It is paired with an i7 11700k cpu, an M2 SSD for Windows & MSFS and 32GB of 3600 ram.
You don’t necessarily need a very large SSD, but Windows and FS will benefit from being on the fastest drives you have available.
As to the best time to upgrade, that depends on priorities and budget. You could hang on for the next gen of CPU’s and GDDR5 ram and motherboards, but none of those will be cheap at first. There have been recent signs that the market for GPU’s is slowing down from the crazy heights of the last couple of years, so you may find the 3060 ti or similar that you mentioned are slowly becoming more available at better prices. One of those paired with a CPU and mobo that can take advantage of PCIE4 would be a nice upgrade from your laptop.