$1,200 is doable IF it is worth that extra $200, which is different to everybody. I don’t know anything about computer parts so I need to take your word, if that makes sense. In total I will be spending a lot so I’m looking for places to save.
Any tips to understand what I’m looking at?
if you’re not planning to run the sim at 4K, you really don’t need the 3000 series cards.
What about multiple monitors? Probably not going to spend a ton on top of the line but maybe two 23” monitors. Or maybe a third down the road.
depends, 3 1440P monitors would probably justify the faster card, 2 1080P monitors not at all.
You might hang out at that site - pcpartpicker - for a few weeks. Browse the forums. You’ll pick up a lot of info fairly quickly.
Thanks! I looked at a few completed builds. I searched for flight simulator and found a couple people who built their pc with fs in mind, which is great but I still don’t really know how it all comes together.
The $200 gives you a graphics card one generation newer that compares to a last generation $1200 card.
Well worth it in my opinion
that goes for all the parts though. For a small price difference you can go for a 5600X instead of the 3600 as well. It’s soo easy to break a budget 
That is true, but for gaming I’d put the GPU above CPU if you need to try to stay as close to a budget as possible
Which is why I brought it up here, since MSFS benefits a lot from single core performance (the main thread), and depending on the targeted resolution it might not be the same for MSFS as for other games (at 1440P you might get more out of the 5600X than you might get from the upgrade to a 3000 series GPU). For general gaming I would totally agree though.
So the 5600x would save me some money and its sounds like I wont have a performance hit since I’m not going 4k, is that right? Can I just swap that gpu and everything is still compatible?
Depends on what you’re comparing the 5600X against (it’s a CPU btw). If it’s against the 5800X or 5900X, then yes, I would suggest going with the 5600X for sure. The extra cores you get on the 5800X or 5900X will not be leveraged by MSFS at all. Those will only bring you extra performance in productivity workloads like rendering or video editing. The 5600X is the update to the 3600 CPU that’s currently listed in that pcpartpicker list posted above.
Don’t confuse the 5000 series CPU’s (Ryzen) with the 5000 series GPU’s (Radeon). AMD should really have made bigger differences between GPU and CPU naming schemes. It can get rather confusing if you only look at the numbers
GPU wise; the 3000 series from NVidia are mostly beneficial at 4K resolutions. Just check availability though. They are pretty hard to get your hands on. Some older 2000 series cards are still pretty expensive. So it might be worth wile to wait for availability on the newer cards: Don’t spend almost as much or even more on a 2000 series GPU as you would spend on a 3000 series card if they were available.
iJ0HNwall, dumb question here: Is your budget meant to include the yoke, pedals, and G1000 you mentioned? What about the flight sim itself? You said that “peripherals” were covered but that seemed to refer to the monitor/tv you already had.
Redeye
Budget is just for pc. I have a mouse, keyboard, monitor. I will need to get a windows license.
Thanks, this is very helpful. Whats the thought for getting a gpu right now? Just wait until more 3070 are available?
All depends on timing I guess. Budget permitting, grab whatever you can get yours hand on if you need a new system now. RTX3070, RTX3080, Radeon RX6800, Radeon RX6800XT. (stay away from the RTX3090 though, way too expensive for what you get). They’re all in pretty short supply right now.
If you’re not in a hurry (and we’re talking about a couple of months here), you can dive deeper and watch more review/benchmarkt to see what fits your needs most. And whatever you do, don’t pay scalper prices.
If you need something right now, you can also look into a 2000 series NVidia card, or maybe a Radeon 5700XT. Just compare their prices to the newer offerings, and don’t get carried away.
I’m running a Ryzen 5 3600 CPU with a Radeon RX5700XT right now. It’s not amazing compared to the new releases, but I can run the game quite well on 1440P (mix of high and ultra settings), so there’s really no need to break the bank right now. Might grab an upgrade myself in the future though, mostly for VR (more around the 4K realm), but in reality, my current system runs the sim just fine, so don’t overspend if your budget is limited.
I would get the Ryzen 5 5600X. If you can’t wait (I would wait a couple months if necessary), get the i5-10600K. Just don’t get any Ryzen 3000 series (R5 3600X / R7 3700X). The Ryzen 3000 series is clearly behind Intel in MSFS (and now Ryzen 5000 series) by a good margin, especially on the resolution you are playing.
Both the Ryzen 5 5600X and i5-10600K are within 30$ bucks difference. I’m not sure about motherboards, but for Intel you need the Z490 to overclock the i5 down the line (it is worthy). Ryzen 5 5600X gets the priority because it is way ahead Intel now and don’t require expensive cooling solutions, even when overclocked.
Regarding GPUs, prices are all over the place, so check around the RTX 2060 (Super) and the new 3060 Ti. I think the 3060 will come just in 2021, perhaps even the 3060 Ti.
Regarding AMD cards… I would not put money on it. Driver support does not come near Nvidia last time I checked. I did have a Radeon in the past. Would never buy it again unless we go through a few generations of very stable driver support.
The ideal is 32GB of RAM. In your case, 3200Mhz CL16 is a good cost benefit. But you could get 16GB now and 16 later. Just don’t skimp on clock and latency. Get good RAM, especially for Ryzen.
Hardware Unboxed was stating that 4 RAM sticks gives a bunch more frames in games over two sticks. It might compromise some of the overclocking on the Intel part, by I don’t think it would affect Ryzen, which does not overclock well anyways last time I checked.
And I would get a 1TB NVMe for Windows, the most important software you use and MSFS, and a 2TB HDD for your personal files and other stuff.
Don’t go ballistic on the PSU. Get a good Seasonic 550W / 600W and call it a day.
Since the R5 5600X is on the price bracket of the i5 and is the best gaming CPU at the moment, I would do whatever necessary to get one. As I said, to get a R5 3600X at this point would be suicide. The Ryzen 3000 series has latency problems and such. In 1080p and 1440p, it trails Intel and Ryzen 5000 series by a lot. If you can’t wait, get the i5-10600K.
A top notch CPU (albeit somewhat cheap), good RAM and a solid PSU is a good base to stick a GPU to game.
There is a lot of useful advice on this thread too:
Do your research and you will be OK.
Good luck.
For me (I bought my Radeon RX5700XT around 4 months after it launched), I’ve had 0 issues with the drivers. The first 2 months were apparently dodgy, but after that the drivers have been rock solid. We’ll soon get an idea of how it fares with the RX6000 series since they have been released now.
Perhaps in MSFS, but I know people who play Il-2 and driver issues are a constant. It might happen to less known games as well. Back then I worked with some video editing freeware and it was a pain to set all the hardware. Once I migrated to Nvidia, I never had to do any workaround to use my software.
Then I would never buy a Radeon card. Perhaps who works with dedicated software or mainstream games have no issue. I did, a lot. And at least with the Il-2 branch people advise to only buy Nvidia.