I would really like to play MSFS 2020 and I would like to get a PC setup ( I don’t currently have one)
My options are
Get a premade system, just not sure which one
Or
Buy parts individually and put it together
Which do you think is more cost-effective/better quality? I would like to stay under/around the $1000 mark
Any insight would be great
You will struggle with that budget.
You can spend the $1000 on a GPU alone and even the it will not be ideal.
Have a look at Gaming PC’s and see what spec they have
The MSFS minimum specs should be avoided, but use them as a guide to price up a PC and you will see the $1000 is soon spent
I am in the UK so these are in £ for a upgrade to my old yet fast PC (3.3MHz 6Core i7) which is not up to MSFS 2020, it will run it but stutters
CPU $410
MOBO £250
RAM £175
M2 SSD £175
M2 SSD £175
GPU £800
+
power supply, cooler, case etc
Total cost c£2000
Do you have a monitor, keyboard and mouse or need those too?
with a budget that small, I agree with @Biggles1950, it’s going to be a real struggle. The only thing I could recommend is the Xbox although that will lack heavily compared to the realism that comes with PC simulation.
I would need to buy those too but wouldn’t include it in the $1000.
I no nothing of this company so do compare with others and compare their spec to the ideal spec for the sim
No sense in spending $1000.00 to buy a system that still won’t run the sim at any reasonable level of detail and frame rate. You need to wait and save another 2 thousand or your PC will be near obsolete the day you buy it… I’m afraid there’s more bad news. That $3000.00 only buys you the PC. To fly the sim without constantly crashing or just being very frustrated you need some decent controls such as a yoke or joystick with throttle and rudder pedals. If you don’t want your screen cluttered with ATC and other such windows you’ll need a second monitor. You will also want a TrackIR or equivalent so you can look around without fiddling with the mouse. This is not your grandfathers 640X480 flight sim and requires some HEAVY resources to do any of the advanced flying you’ll want to be doing. Time to get a job or two or just find a different game that requires less resources to run. Best of luck.
This site is a good resource if you haven’t found it yet.
https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/
I would consider pairing one of their gaming/streaming builds with an entry-level graphics card like a 1650/60 Super to match your budget. They’ll show an RTX 3070 as a minimum but that’s overkill for this game at 1080p, as well as being hard to find at decent prices.
FS is much more CPU intensive than a typical game, so you really don’t need a high-end GPU to play it, especially at 1080p. I can say this with confidence because I’m currently running a 1650 Super and it handles High-End settings (not Ultra) really well.
This is a really bad time to buy a high-end GPU.
One other important aspect of the Build vs Buy decision is support. With a Buy decision, the company you bought your pc from is responsible for support, no matter which component included in their build is mis-behaving. If you build-your-own, each “part” will have support but you will be the one who has to figure which part is mis-behaving. Many of the part vendors will tell you "oh, it’s obiiously this other part that’s messing up; you will need a replacement for it. Be careful about all this unless you are familiar enough with the innards of a pc so that you can confidently tell which compnent is failing. Good luck.