I have a good experience on this PC and at ten years old and although it has been upgraded, I, no doubt like you, can see the need for a new machine on the horizon. At present, it copes really surprisingly well but as the sim is developed it is going to increasingly feel its age. Current highlights are:
16gb DDR whatever.
Twin SSD
GTX1660 super at 1440p into a 27 inch 1440 monitor
Corsair 750 PSU.
Question is, what best to look at at present and when to look for it. GPUs are a disaster right now and although an Intel man, I am not averse to AMD. The new PC would have to have a similar life expectancy and so speccing ahead isnt too much of a no no. I need a solid, fast, balanced and reliable performer with hopefully enough elbow room for a mid life update as and when. There isnt much point in getting something that simply struggles a bit less that this one will by the end of the summer.
Any thoughts, observation or tips gratefully received and I thank you now, for your thoughts and time .
Cheers all!
Right now, go with a Ryzen 5 5600X, pair it with a basic B550 motherboard, 32GB of 3600MHz RAM, and you should be solid for a long time.
If you want to futureproof a bit, you can pick the Ryzen 7 5800X (2 more cores). Don’t go higher up in the core count (Ryzen 9 5900X / 5950X), CPU’s like that are more aimed at productivity workloads. Don’t expect any game or sim to utilize all those extra cores.
Intel’s 11th gen. is right around the corner. From what I’ve seen it’s fairly disappointing, but we should be seeing more independent benchmarks on those in less than two weeks.
1 Like
Cheers Mort. I reckon that later this summer might be a good time to press the trigger. I am still getting around 35FPS as a ballpark and seem to be having a lot fewer problems that many people out here, as I speak… let’s face it, the 2700k was designed to make FSX run fairly well, so I have got good value from it. In fact, I only upgraded to the current state las May, to prove to myself that I needed another PC and right at this moment, I have failed 
Yeh, if you’re not in a hurry, you’re probably better off waiting, and hope for chip production to ramp back up, and crypto currency to crash hard (we can hope can’t we).
That said, the 5600X is really pretty much the sweet spot. If you end up purchasing it, you won’t be disappointed.
1 Like
If you can hang on just one (or half) a generation more you will get DDR5
(and if you go with AMD you will be on their next socket)
It doesn’t seem to make much sense buying into the last generation before a significant leap in technology takes place.
I like the sound of that. I am fed up with getting the bums rush on sockets when it comes to upgrades. The upgrade path is a lot sweeter when you don’t have to upgrade the whole guts of the machine.
I can’t remember what socket the Sandy was on. Same as Ivy bridge?
Big GPU upgrade which you can carry over sort of makes sense.
Possibly see if you can find somebody giving away an Ivybridge 3570k or 3770k if socket and bios allow.*
Wait out this last generation to support DDR4 and get into DDR5 when it launches.
*Optional. Sandy was a good overclocker & the Ivy/Haswell and beyond were the period when Intel were really sitting on their hands and basically re-releasing the same CPU over and over with tiny performance enhancements.
I can only speak for AMD stuff at the moment but if you are planning for a mid cycle refresh a little after going with AMD this year then you may be dissapointed.
This is the last generation of the AM4 socket which means a new MB when the next set of chips come out. Plus as someone previously mentioned DDR5.
You can see what intel is up to but they have been struggling a bit lately. But back to AMD
This gen is the last hurrah (and what a great hurrah it is) for this socket so no mid cycle refresh is on the cards because its very late in the game for socket AM4. Unless of course AMD pulls a surprise at the last minute.
1 Like
I reckon there is a bit more life in the old girl yet and I suppose you could appropriately in this instance describe this as “Blue sky thinking” (or live weather) I wasn’t aware of the DDR5 thing, so that is already a plus, so thanks to you all for that. I reckon a budget of up to £3,000 is a possibility, but less than that takes me into more mischievous areas of fun such as the Brunner yoke. God, this will end up expensive, I suspect.
I just updated graphics to a 2080s and my old oc 2500k.
I would happily take that 2700k when you are done 
Yeh, if you’re not in a hurry it does make sense to wait for the next gen of AMD CPU’s.
AMD has supported the AM4 socket for VERY long (4 generations), while intel generally only supports a socket for 2 generations.
I would expect AMD to stay on this path with the AM5 socket, but of course, you can never be sure.
And if you’re waiting anyways; maybe intel’s 12th gen will mark a significant improvement for them (finally getting away from the 14nm node). We need competition in this market.
“God, this will end up expensive, I suspect.”
Yup…once you fall down the rabbit hole you discover a whole new world of “bottomless money pit”
1 Like
@Magic6420 Don’t listen to the AMD boys.I am upgrading my rig by the end of this month and possibly going with the 10700kf over the 5600x and its cheaper too and likely more future proof. The AMD 5000series gains are only noticeable with sam enabled on an AMD 6000 GPU.
Thanks to all for their responses. It must have frightened the old girl, because I have just landed after a cracking 2.5 hr flight in the Arrow. Although ancient, the PC continues to surprise and delight. It has been a cracking machine and to be honest, still is. I shall watch carefully and see what happens over the summer, because today is never a good day to buy a new PC. Something better is always, always, just around the corner. With all of your help, I am better informed.
1 Like
Still reading and researching, but now seems NOT the time to do anything. Looking at the price hikes being applied to CPU and GPU alone makes me want to eke things out a bit longer. I reckon that in a few months, you could shave around 500 off the price of a typical build, if the current shortage eases. Besides, my Honeycomb Bravo might even arrive before then. Or death…
While this is mostly true there are times when a large enough leap takes place that are worth waiting for.
This is about to occur with DDR5 which will see next gen memory married to next gen pcie. Regardless of which team you root for this is happening to both in the next release cycle or so. For Intel thats slated within 2021 and AMD in 2022 as far as I recall and memory manufacturers are already teasing with incredible looking DDR5.
Unless you have so much money burning holes in your pocket that you would upgrade motherboard, CPU and memory again within the next 6 to 12 months buying either Intel or AMD right now makes zero sense.
Thanks for that. I was worrying that I was a nogood, cheapskate, penny pinching, scrooge like character, but I then remembered that that was my boss at work.
As long as the sim doesn’t accelerate away from me too quickly in terms of requirement, I shall keep my hand in my pocket and play with my loose change.
Cheers for that!
And here we are again! Still running the old girl and it is doing well, but we are now on the cusp of promised increased performance levels, Win 11 and maybe DX 12 at some point before we die. This makes me wonder what this means for lower level PCs such as my current one although we will start to find out soon.
If I go for a new machine, present reading has led me to start to narrow things down a bit. I am looking at a 5900/3080 based water cooled rig with 32GB of Ram and a good PSU. This will be slight overkill in the short term, but longevity is the name of the game and those other cores will come in handy for LNM, Spad/A and Os, my standalone GTN750/650 etc.
For now, it is still hands in pockets time, but I will see what happens post update.
I have been thinking about an upgrade but which path to follow?
I don’t want to start an Xbox PC war but it looks inviting.
New Xbox runs MSFS @ 4K with GDD6 memory at 30-60fps Cost ÂŁ500 without monitor ( but have the 4K TV) and you can use a keyboard and mouse with the Xbox.
My current machine only runs MSFS @ High settings (1 or 2 on Ultra) cost ÂŁ2000 with a 3440 x 1440 monitor.
P.S. Forgot to ask the question, can you use PC controllers on an Xbox?
Window 10 pro 64
Thrustmaster Airbus SideStick & 2 Lever Quadrant
Ryzen 7 3700X
GIGABYTE RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB GAMING OC Pro
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (DDR4-3200)
Gigabyte 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe
Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE
MSI Optix 3440 x 1440
I would suggest waiting for SU5.