I turned the boost off on mine (max processor state 99) which keeps it in the 70s celcius while playing FS2020. With boost it goes up to 98c and gets throttled, causing bad stutters. Gaming laptops are fine, just stick to the base clock. Boost is what cooks it and FS2020 loves to max out one core pushing the CPU to go to max frequency.
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Actually, Iām really enjoying MSFS with a 2 1/2 year old āgaming laptopā and an XBox controller.
Perhaps itās just me but I donāt want to be restricted to one chair, one room, alone, and not have the flexibility to be outside on our deck, etc. The many creative desktop-driven cockpits I see in that other thread are impressive and perfect for those flight enthusiasts. I just like the flexibility of portability for my needs.
When this laptop dies or cannot handle new demands, I plan on purchasing another latest and greatest version. I will then look forward to a better GPU so I can add VR to the fun.
My old laptop takes a couple minutes to load MSFS. Oddly, the time seems to vary a bit and I donāt know why. I have only a couple things in my community folder.
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Well since Iām knocking on 50 and still forming new prejudices every day I donāt like the chances of that. Iāll tell ya what though, Iāll keep an open mind and when they bring out a laptop with 2x32" screens and 7.1 surround sound that doesnāt require headphones Iāll consider it. Until then, desktop all the way baby.
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I have multiple clock settings via Throttle Stop. No boost @2.6ghz that stays below 70 with fans off, mild boost @3.4 to just barely hear fans at around 75, and max 6 cores / 12 thread clock @4.3ghz (this one hurts with MSFS lol)
For OP, core clocks plays a role too. I tested a while ago that 2.6ghz vs 4.3ghz add about 4-5min of load time (with 40+ gb of addons in Community Folder)
Thatās exactly what I do with my CPU - 99%. NEVER goes over 69 degrees or so. I get about 40-50 FPS on my laptop on Ultra at 1080P. Very happy here. My MSFS loads in about 3-4 mins with 150 Gb in Community folder and I donāt even know how many add-ons in Official (201 Gigs is the size of that folder)ā¦
Out of curiosity I timed starting the game again with boost enabled
No boost (max 2.2 GHZ) 4:05
Boost (max 4.0 GHZ) 2:30
Starts much faster, but CPU temp went from 40c to 75c in those 2 minutes and is still climbing in the menu. The welcome screen is pushing my CPU to 3.8 GHZ.
Playing with boost on makes the fans spin up to full and slow down again, go to max again, like listening to a storm outside. Without boost they stay at a constant speed, not quiet but easily ignored.
The difference
Setting the max processor state back to 99 calms everything down. Those big drops in GPU usage are from throttling. I keep it GPU limited for a more stable ride (150 render scale)
That cpu usage% means little, itās mostly one core that does all the work.
In the old days you had a boost button on the case, would be useful for starting the game!
Why is that SvenZ? Iāve read that before on here but have not seen it explained. My processor (IntelĀ® Coreā¢ i7-8750H (2.2 GHz, up to 4.1 GHz, 9 MB cache, 6 cores) seems to calmly cruise along at 25-30% usage while the GPU (1060) is 95+%.
Note that my overheating/throttling of a couple months ago went away once I took apart the fans and heat sink and cleaned out the hidden ratās nest of crud.
The i7-8750H is a hyperthreading CPU so the CPU usage is calculated across 12 threads.
MSFS tends to be limited by the main thread that runs on a single core but also can make use of 5 or so other cores for some other processes. If there are more than 5 cores/threads spare the game will distribute those āotherā processes among whatever threads are available but the limiting factor will STILL be that one main thread hammering that single core.
Now if you have 12 cores with one close enough to 100% and the others having 20% load on average your CPU usage will be more like 25% on average and that is what task manager will show. However in terms of the thread that is running the main thread - it is maxed out and hence limiting performance.
Typically the main thread being hammered will be up around 95% or more usage, even if the average CPU usage is only 25%.
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Bad coding? I donāt know, but for now an i5 at higher clock rates is much better than an i7 at lower clock rate for FS2020. My i7-8750H cruises along at about 19% CPU usage, I have the 1060 maxed out, always sits at 100%, rendering at 1620p high settings. (couple ultra but mostly high)
Iām not in it for high fps, clean visuals is a bigger priority for me, hence the down sampling. (1080p screen)
I wonder if temps will go up with DX12 improvements, which should/might make more use of the other cores. Or is the temp mostly related to clock speed and not actual work done.
Anyway I donāt mind, Iāve never had an issue with cold hands during the winter 
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i7-10 1660 gpu 16 gigs of ram 1tb nvme laptop. Game runs just fine on that machine. Doesnt overheat and I never hear the fans. I dont know what you all are going on about gamming laptops not being good. This machine is just fine running MSFS.
Its actually better then my desktop with the exception of not having enough usb ports to support mouse keyboard and 2 plugs for my X56. But thats what hubs are forā¦
āNot trueāā¦ really?, too much arroganceā¦ if you follow the āmarked as gaming laptopsā to determine laptop capacity, instead of check the specs, thats your problem. You are giving an āopinionā, and your opinion omits the facts, you are not well informed, or donĀ“t understand what a gaming laptop is. By the way you talk, it is clear that you have never ever used a real āgamingā laptop. People who knows about flight sims system requirements, knows perfectly what specs to look when choosing a laptop. Obviously a gaming laptop donĀ“t have a mega wide screenā¦ laptops with Nvidia RTX 20 or 30 series are perfectly machines to run MSFS on high and ultra settings with very good frame rates, on 1080p.
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I work in IT. I repair laptops.
let us be clear - there are OK gaming laptops out there - MSI make some, so do ASUS, a few other brands.
Products made by specialist manufacturers like metagaming here in Australia are often exceptionally good:
What we are talking about here is something like a Lenovo or HP with a graphics card crammed into their standard model. These are not usually labelled a āgaming laptopā by the manufacturer but are sold that way in many stores. The cooling is inadequate and either the CPUs and GPUs throttle or the keyboards on some get too hot too touch forcing people to use external keyboards. They cope with games, but only barely and under perform and often do not last as long as they should.
This is compounded by people doing stupid things like gaming in bed completely blocking the vents underneath by blankets and cooking them. On the plus side the advent of SSDs has at least reduced the rate of hard disk failure.
You can help these things a bit by stripping them down and replacing the thermal pads/paste with something like NH2 or Thermalgrizzly and using a cooling pad, but in the end they are what they are.
Yep. So people buy āgamingā laptops and then an external keyboardā¦and then an external monitor cos the screen is too smallā¦and then a proper mouse cos touchpads are sillyā¦and then put the thing under the desk cos the fans are too noisyā¦and then have to put a cage around it to stop the cat from sitting on itā¦and then either face a huge repair bill or buying a new one when it finally goes pop cos you canāt just change components yourself.
Just give up and buy a proper PC.
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I was going to say - just take out your phone and use the time to check your email, post something dumb on FB or twitter, text your mom, wife or GF so sheāll stop calling you when youāre flight simming, or post a complaint about loading time on the forumā¦but I like the hammer and nail approach too.
Lappies are not suitable for flight sims. Maybe as an interim while youāre away from home and just need to, gotta, gonna seizure unless you have a flight - just a quickie..uuuuhhhhā¦
But not as your regular, everyday way of maintaining full on flight simming duty.
or just care about your own business
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How am I supposed to know about my laptop not being good for simming? BTW my laptop works fine as it isā¦
I will be continuing my MSFS world tour in a few minutes on my laptop. If I upgraded my desktop upstairs to be able to run the game/simulator I would have to sit alone tethered to it. I am happy many people enjoy a desktop equipped to fully enjoy the maximum immersion into the simulation.
Personally, when I boot up MSFS on my laptop I can still be with and interact with family while I enjoy the nice weather out on my deck or sit in my recliner in the family room. I desire and enjoy the portability of a laptop and will sacrifice some of the advantages of a desktop for that capability. When this laptop finally goes belly up or cannot run the demands of future upgrades, I will be replacing it with the latest, most powerful and greatest laptop available.
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Iāve had significant improvements in loading time by moving both the game and OS on to a fast M.2 PCI-E 3 SSD, combined with the -FastLaunch switch I can get to the menu in 1 minute 20 seconds and loading in game only takes about 30-40 seconds, this is with 16GB of community mods, 32GB of DDR4 1600MHz RAM and a Ryzen 7 5800X CPU which peaks at about 30% when loading.
Storage is probably the biggest factor in loading speed, regular hard drives and SATA SSDs donāt really cut it.
There are some excellent gaming laptops out there. Some are very impressive.
Just be aware that not everything you see at an electronics chain store or Walmart with the āgamingā tag in the blurb is actually suitable for high end gaming. The fact that it has a gaming GPU does not always make it suitable for extended periods of high end gaming. Caveat Emptor.
Understood. Hopefully my usual decision-making personality, āparalysis by analysisā avoids such issue. I believe my current gaming laptop, an HP Omen, was pretty much the high end back when I got it, almost three years ago now. With Best Buy gone by me, I shop at the manufacturer sites.
Gaming aside, my philosophy has always been to get a very robust computer so the time to obsolescence is maximum. I pay more up front but donāt have to go through the pain of personalizing a new on as often.