Gaming Laptop questions.. Alot of them

Well, any suggestions on a good device are helpful at this point… in or out of my budget.

In short….if you are starting by „I am on a budget“ I suggest you forget the idea of a gaming laptop to run MSFS. It is not going to happen.
Feel free to sink your limited budget into what ever you think might work, and you will very likely find that it is frustrating to infuriating. And then the thing is going to heat up….and it will get worse.

alright then… would it be possible to get a regular pc which would run it on my “budget”?

I have a ASUS laptop, it has an RTX2060 and I recently upgraded the RAM and SSD. The reason I use a laptop is because I’m a sailor and away from home for a couple months.

When I’m on board space isn’t a problem anymore, it’s on a cooling pad and connected to a TV via hdmi.

I think my 3 year old laptop would be your minimum nowadays, I’m thinking about upgrading again.

I’ll share a video I made with the results after upgrading the ram memory so you get an idea, full specs are in the video description together with the exact ASUS laptop model.

Hope it helps, any questions feel free to ask.

Cooling is a thing indeed haha :joy:

-Bram
SkyLane

Just remember that laptop parts like a RTX3070 etc are about a level down on the desktop version. As a rule of thumb a mobile 3070 is more like a desktop 3060 etc etc.

That’s correct indeed.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the VRAM tend to be quite low. That’s a problem on my 2060.

-Bram

Also - here is another NR200 small form factor gaming build, air cooled so can be taken on a plane as carry on luggage.

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My main PC’s GPU failed three weeks ago so I have been using my gaming laptop as a backup until it is fixed. It is an i5 11500h, 32GB RAM, 2 x 500GB M.2 SSDs, 1 x 2TB external SSD, 3060 and is hooked up to my 4K TV.

At a mix of medium and high settings at 1440p, it is generally pulling at least 30 FPS in MSFS and with the magic of my TV’s motion smoothing function, gets bumped up to a relatively smooth 60 FPS like a poor man’s frame generation. It’s quite a good experience but I am looking forward to my main PC coming back on line soon.

When it comes to low budget specs, the only question is how much performance can you withstand. When I am traveling for work, I sometimes launch MSFS on my i5-1235u tablet. The sim has no problem on the lowest graphics but it is not very pleasant overall. So at least I had no CTDs with 16G of ram :joy:

My MSFS 2020 desktop is a Microcenter Power Spec 434 (middle range performance) and still does great 3 years later on ultra settings and 4K (with tweaking) … I do have a 2011 Alienware M17XR3 thats my super-durable-portable desktop and has some upgrades, however it barely handles my old FSX with many discs of after-market MegaScenery - I have multiple generations Honk Kong …