Hi,

I am thinking about buying a PC for Flight Sim, video editing, and some home office use.  Haven't built a PC in ages, so very overwhelmed by all the choices.

I've seen the recommended specs for MSFS2020, but want to go beyond that a bit to be future proof.  May want support for 3 monitors and/or VR.  Any recommendations for case, motherboard, video card, memories, hard drives, etc?  Will want a quiet system, and prefer well-secured air-cooling instead of liquid-cooled AIO for peace of mind.

I currently have 24GB of RAM (helps me run Outlook and Premiere better), and my two 3TB hard drives + 200 GB for operating system & software (new Windows doesn't seem to reward separate drives for software + data) are already quite full....

Have looked at some Digital Storm and NZXT offerings; open to all possibilities, including DIY, custom, or pre-build.  Would love to fly around NYC smoothly.  Budget is $1,500 to $2,000.

The $1500 will get you the 2080ti. Whats the budget for the rest of the system? 😁

It's not that expensive anymore...and don't think I will need to go TI - Do I?

Well I was kidding a bit but given the history of Fight Sim the more raw hardware power you throw at it the better your experience will be. Where did you see the recommended specs for MSFS 2020?

It's probably too early to build now... Maybe wait 6 months, probably newer (and/or cheaper) hardware available then?

3 hours ago, Avidean said:

Where did you see the recommended specs for MSFS 2020?

Would like to know as well. Have Microsoft/Asobo released specs requirements for MSFS yet?

7 hours ago, Anders Bermann said:

Would like to know as well. Have Microsoft/Asobo released specs requirements for MSFS yet?

Nope. And considering that only the data is streamed and will need to be processed on your local PC, I would wait to see how it performs in real life production. Don't forget that MS is notorious for setting unrealistic minimum specifications (such as in the various flavors of Windows).

Basically you just want the fastest system you can for $2000. There should be nothing special about MFS versus other modern games, so shove in a fast i5 overclocked or an i7, 32+ GB RAM, a RTX2070 or better, and you should be good to go.

But don't expect to use full sliders with triple monitors or VR on that budget, MFS will have been built to accommodate future hardware.

38 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

Basically you just want the fastest system you can for $2000. There should be nothing special about MFS versus other modern games, so shove in a fast i5 overclocked or an i7, 32+ GB RAM, a RTX2070 or better, and you should be good to go.

I don't know if that's the best plan.  We don't know how the new engine will leverage parallel processing, which might well drive system requirements in a different direction than before.  It could (hopefully will) be the case that SimZilla will be capable of maintaining good frame rates by taking much better advantage of parallel processors (and maybe even hyperthreading) with no need for an overclocked CPU, in which case your money would likely be better spent on beefing up the GPU.  Or...not.

My recommendation--wait.  We don't know what we don't know at this point.

Most games still seem to prefer fewer faster cores than many slower cores. MFS2020 could always be the exception of course. Of course you are absolutely right, no one can possibly answer the OP's question properly but we don't have enough information/experience of MFS, it's like trying to design a case for a phone where the dimensions are not yet known!

On 11/10/2019 at 10:26 PM, Anders Bermann said:

Would like to know as well. Have Microsoft/Asobo released specs requirements for MSFS yet?

I thought I had seen the recommended specs on the official site (flightsimulator.com), but I can't find them anymore.  If guys here don't think they've been published, maybe I misremembered and just found them randomly online. The specs I recorded are below.  If you google "Microsoft flight simulator 2020 recommended system requirements" you will find the same listed on many sites.

• OS: Win 7 64
• Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K 4-Core 4.0GHz / AMD Ryzen R5 1600
• Graphics: AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
• System Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Storage: 50 GB Hard drive space

8 hours ago, aviator1213 said:

I thought I had seen the recommended specs on the official site (flightsimulator.com), but I can't find them anymore.  If guys here don't think they've been published, maybe I misremembered and just found them randomly online. The specs I recorded are below.  If you google "Microsoft flight simulator 2020 recommended system requirements" you will find the same listed on many sites.

• OS: Win 7 64
• Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K 4-Core 4.0GHz / AMD Ryzen R5 1600
• Graphics: AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
• System Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Storage: 50 GB Hard drive space

 

I don't recall seeing or hearing about Microsoft issue any system requirements.  Maybe what you see are people speculating and putting it on their website.  What you list, above, has to be hot air, since Microsoft is ending Win7 support in about 2 months. 

I agree that it is too early in the game to recommend anything.

It's way too early to talk about system specs. There will be some good indications of the real requirements 2-3 months after the release but there is just no reliable information available now on which to base a decision (or at least none that I've seen).

On 11 November 2019 at 2:05 PM, pgde said:

Don't forget that MS is notorious for setting unrealistic minimum specifications (such as in the various flavors of Windows).

Many people don't seem to understand what "minimum requirements" means for a game (or OS). It's the absolute minimum needed to get it to run at all, usually with all settings on their lowest and without any bells or whistles. It doesn't mean it will run well, it just means it should run in a basic way. For games, I've lost count of the number of posts I've read (not just in these forums) where people say "my system meets the minimum specs but I still only get (insert very low number) FPS with almost all the sliders off. This game is rubbish!".

On 12 November 2019 at 6:58 AM, aviator1213 said:

If you google "Microsoft flight simulator 2020 recommended system requirements" you will find the same listed on many sites.

• OS: Win 7 64
• Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K 4-Core 4.0GHz / AMD Ryzen R5 1600
• Graphics: AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
• System Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Storage: 50 GB Hard drive space

Firstly, MS have already said that Windows 10 will be a requirement. Secondly, "recommended" requirements are usually those needed to get good performance with most features active. As much as I rate my 6700k, I think it will be in the low to mid range bracket, at best, for the new sim. I'd probably put the GTX 1070 more towards the minimum requirements as well. Apart from the OS, I think that you'd be able to run the new sim on the system quoted above but not with the best features active. That said, we're all just guessing at the moment.

Edited November 13, 20196 yr by vortex681

20 minutes ago, vortex681 said:

As much as I rate my 6700k, I think it will be in the low to mid range bracket, at best, for the new sim. I'd probably put the GTX 1070 more towards the minimum requirements as well.

Yikes, I'm on a 2500K (albeit overclocked to 4.5 GHz from 3.3) and GTX980, am I screwed? 🤣