Best Hardware setup

MSFS 2020 has been out for nearly a year now…. I assume since I am just joining that there is some knowledge now of the computing needs for MSFS.

 

I’m going to purchase a standalone computer dedicated to my flight simulator, so I’m asking what the specifications are that everyone would recommend.

 

I saw a couple YouTube videos, they seemed to conflict each other. One guy says don’t worry about how many cores to your CPU, and to get a lower grade one that you can clock up. The other guys says get whatever is fastest and as updates to MSFS come, it will use the CPU more efficiently.

 

So, what CPU do you recommend?

 

i5, i7? Clock speed?

Memory? 32G?

Video card?

Etc.

 

probably a thread talks all of this, but I didn’t see it right off.

There is some very important information missing from your question. What monitor and screen resolution do you plan to use? My recommendations would be very different if you have a 1080p monitor than for a 4K monitor. What settings are you wanting to use? For example, you will notice very little difference in many settings on high vs ultra,

I don't think the advice to overclock is necessarily appropriate. I DON"T overclock, and I have had very few problems so far. Unlike many games, the computing demand remains very high constantly and for a very long time. Having a well ventilated case and good coolers is very important. keep in mind, you will probably experience little difference in flying MSFS at 30 fps and 60 fps. More than 60 fps is really of no benefit, I have my fps limited to 30 fps. I would rather have an enjoyable flight than extra frames at the cost of CTDs and problems.

At 1080p, you can probably run everything on ultra with an I5 8600K and a RTX 2080 super or RX6700xt. If you plan to run 4K, I would suggest an I9 or Ryzenâ„¢ 9 5900X paired with a RTX 3090 or a RX6900xt.

Fast memory helps, but avoid memory over 3200 speed. 32 gb of memory is plenty. Low latency is also helpful.

Get a really good large M.2 storage device! This is important.

Unfortunately, now is not a good time to be buying a new setup due to the shortage of graphics cards etc & the ridiculously high prices.

Like Plainsman.. I also do not overclock & don’t often have problems. You want at least one M.2 drives though. I personally keep one for Windows & the other for flight sim.

 

Regards

Steve

Steve, PhatAV8r is in Shanghai so maybe he can get hold of components which we can't...

I didn’t realise that. Maybe he can get hold of an RTX3090 for me 😀

 

Regards

Steve

I did a few simple math problems to illustrate why monitor resolution is so important to this discussion and why the MicroSoft chart above isn't necessarily very helpful.

I took 5 screen resolutions and computed the pixels each must write 60 times or more each second.

 

1440x900 1296000 pixels

1920x1080 2073600 pixels

1920x1200 2304000 pixels

2560x1440 3686400 pixels

3840x2160 8294400 pixels

 

So you can easily see, it takes vastly less computing power to draw 2,073,600 pixels 60 times a second verses 8,294,400 pixels 60 or more times every second. I am running 1920x1200, an odd size. The MS chart ignores this important consideration.

Edited June 4, 2021 by plainsman

MSFS 2020 has been out for nearly a year now…. I assume since I am just joining that there is some knowledge now of the computing needs for MSFS.

 

I’m going to purchase a standalone computer dedicated to my flight simulator, so I’m asking what the specifications are that everyone would recommend.

 

I saw a couple YouTube videos, they seemed to conflict each other. One guy says don’t worry about how many cores to your CPU, and to get a lower grade one that you can clock up. The other guys says get whatever is fastest and as updates to MSFS come, it will use the CPU more efficiently.

 

So, what CPU do you recommend?

 

i5, i7? Clock speed?

Memory? 32G?

Video card?

Etc.

 

probably a thread talks all of this, but I didn’t see it right off.

 

Check out the specs in my signature. My setup is working excellently, at high settings. (I’ve never tested it with ultra settings.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't think the advice to overclock is necessarily appropriate. I DON"T overclock, and I have had very few problems so far.

 

I don't disagree at all; overclocking adds another variable that complicates matters when trying to optimise your simming experience. However, I overclocked my CPU and GPU, and haven't had any major problems with the sim: very few CTDs, and performance is quite reasonable for what I'm working with. Long winded way to say: it's beneficial if approached carefully and methodically.

 

At 1080p, you can probably run everything on ultra with an I5 8600K and a RTX 2080 super or RX6700xt. If you plan to run 4K, I would suggest an I9 or Ryzenâ„¢ 9 5900X paired with a RTX 3090 or a RX6900xt.

 

Regarding the CPU aspect in your comparison: it's something I've been thinking about recently. I was always under the impression that if you merely want a higher resolution, with all else being the same, only the GPU needs to be upgraded and not the CPU. The reason I thought this was that there are more pixels to perform processing on (like anti-aliasing, for example) and higher resolutions also require more VRAM to store the frames in the frame buffer. I think that both of those aspects (processing power and VRAM) are associated with a higher-end GPU, but not really CPU.

 

However, I might be wrong on this and am geniunly curious to find out what others think: Does increasing resolution alone require a more poweful CPU?

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/videos-with-11900k-msfs-benchmarks/392849

Note this video is using a strong GPU.

I saw some testing of MSFS with an older mid grade AMD CPU and it seemed to become a bottleneck at high resolutions with a high end GPU.

For FS2020, if buying right now, I'd recommend a Ryzen 5600X or better if you want go with AMD or an i5-11600k or better if you want to go with Intel. An i5-10600k is also fine for FS2020 but the 11600k is only $20 more than the 10600k at Microcenter. 6 cores with Hyperthreading/SMT is enough for FS2020 and single-threaded performance is a more important factor for FS2020 when it comes to frame rates and going past 6 cores with HT/SMT won't really do anything for FS2020 for frame rates, maybe load times would be shorter but I'm not even sure about that and FS2020 has super long load times even on my Ryzen 5800x with a 970 EVO Plus NVMe SSD. For RAM, I recommend 32GB DDR4-3200 with CL-16 or lower latency. You can go higher than DDR4-3200 RAM but it may or may not run stable since those CPU's don't officially support faster than DDR4-3200. For a video card, if you are going to do 4k, I recommend at least an RTX 3080 if you can get one at MSRP which is impossible right now. The RTX 3080 Ti was released yesterday but now they are sold out everywhere I checked, ebay does not count in my opinion. The RTX 3070 Ti will be released in 2 days, but I have doubts that 8GB of VRAM is enough for 4k in FS2020, especially if you want to maximize graphics settings at 4k. If you are only going to be playing FS2020 at 1080p, then I think a RTX 3060 Ti would be fine. I'd recommend that you install FS2020 to a fast SATA SSD or a NVMe SSD (I didn't notice any difference for load times in FS2020 between my Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD and my Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe SSD, maybe there was a few seconds difference but I didn't time it.) SATA SSD's are a little cheaper than NVMe SSD's currently. However, I did notice that my NVMe SSD does load Windows 10 faster than my SATA SSD even though loading Windows 10 on my SATA SSD was still quick, it's just that my NVMe SSD loads Wnidows 10 quicker.

There is some very important information missing from your question. What monitor and screen resolution do you plan to use? My recommendations would be very different if you have a 1080p monitor than for a 4K monitor. What settings are you wanting to use? For example, you will notice very little difference in many settings on high vs ultra,

I don't think the advice to overclock is necessarily appropriate. I DON"T overclock, and I have had very few problems so far. Unlike many games, the computing demand remains very high constantly and for a very long time. Having a well ventilated case and good coolers is very important. keep in mind, you will probably experience little difference in flying MSFS at 30 fps and 60 fps. More than 60 fps is really of no benefit, I have my fps limited to 30 fps. I would rather have an enjoyable flight than extra frames at the cost of CTDs and problems.

At 1080p, you can probably run everything on ultra with an I5 8600K and a RTX 2080 super or RX6700xt. If you plan to run 4K, I would suggest an I9 or Ryzenâ„¢ 9 5900X paired with a RTX 3090 or a RX6900xt.

Fast memory helps, but avoid memory over 3200 speed. 32 gb of memory is plenty. Low latency is also helpful.

Get a really good large M.2 storage device! This is important.

 

Check out the specs in my signature, I'm running the sim with everything on ultra at 1440p and I have no stutters at all.

While I'm late to the party I would like to add one thought, don't bother with a 3090 GPU.

If you can get any of the 3 series go for a 3080 at best.

I'm running a 3090 and it's excellent for my photography it really is overkill for MSFS.

Same goes for RAM, while I use 128GB and it makes my other graphics better there's not that much (if any) boost for simming.

:pilot:

 

Another thought: I must add that I'm operating at 4K on a 43" screen so the 3090 helps.

Edited June 6, 2021 by wombat666

I didn’t realise that. Maybe he can get hold of an RTX3090 for me 😀

 

Regards

Steve

 

There's one for sale in the CeX (Complete Entertainment Exchange) store in Gloucester UK for only £2600!

There's one for sale in the CeX (Complete Entertainment Exchange) store in Gloucester UK for only £2600!

 

Thanks for the info. It’s a bit too much for me though. Several keep popping up but they are so much overpriced aren’t they?

CCL sent me an email a week ago, saying they had some in stock at £2200 (still too expensive) and they were sold out by the time I saw the email anyway (30 minutes later)

 

Regards

Steve