SSDs are basically faster than HDDs. M.2 drives are similar tech to SSDs but faster still and connect to the motherboard using a different connection (m.2). I am inclined to think that your PC would be stutter free with a faster m.2 drive. I think that your stutters are more than likely a mixture of an un-optimized OS system and the slow speeds that a HDD will produce trying to supply textures to P3D (specifcally ORBX products).
I think you have a good system. I think the HDD sucks and the monitor is great as a secondary monitor but isn't going to cut it if you upgrade the GPU mainly because it is not going to support resolutions above what I call 2K but is also called 1440p. definitely not 4K.

HDMI is better but better still is display port.

Edited December 27, 20187 yr by jpf

That is a big leap of faith... stutter-free with an SSD and keeping the 1060 video card..

I am inclined to think that might not do the job.. 

happy to defer to you on this 🙂

Just saying...

There are so many factors that can produce stutters in P3D... predicting is a dangerous job..

As Bert alludes...I'm not sure you will entirely dial out the occasional long frame/stutter with any option presented here.  But you can do pretty well with what everyone has said.

As an example, I have an 8700K overclocked to 5, a 1080ti, a pair of M.2 SSD's, and I run a 4K res. @ 30 mhz.  If I plop my PMDG 777 or similar down at Aerosoft Heathrow with UTL at 50% and heavy weather, I'm going to have to make compromises to keep framerate above 30.  And as you know, if you drop below your refresh...it can get stuttery.

When I say compromise, I mean drop autogen down a notch on both sliders, reduce autogen draw distance a notch, drop road traffic from 10 to 7, etc.  -- basically run back cpu-intensive sliders just a bit.

Now, I am not one to say a 9900K + RTX2080 or whatever the latest is, would not be able to peg 30 fps in the above scenario, but I haven't heard anyone say it can...

...predicting stutters is indeed a "dangerous job"