Hi I’m new to gaming and would like to purchase a pc or laptop. I’m finding it very confusing and hard to find what I’m looking for and was wondering if anyone could give me some advice. I was looking at a desktop with the gtx 1080 graphics card but noticed they are very expensive. Does anyone know of any laptops or desktops with a good graphics card for someone starting out on a budget. Or any good equivalents, That would be able to play flight sim 2020 or xplane 11. Thanks in advance. 

If you are on a tight budget, there are a couple of things I'd recommend you try.

The cheapest and easiest option...

Would be to buy an XBox and then to get hold of the new Microsoft Flight Simulator for it. All told that would probably cost you somewhere around 400 quid. Of course the XBox is not a PC in the sense of looking like one,  or being suitable for running other PC software on it, but in gaming terms an XBox is basically a PC which is geared for playing the latest games, this means it will run them really well and that is not a problem if you did not also want a PC for other tasks. Or

The more expensive route...

I would recommend you look at the minimum specification for the flight sim you are interested in, and use this as a guide to which PCs to look for, but with a view to acquiring something which could possibly be upgraded at a later date. You can find that minimum hardware requirements on the Microsoft Flight Simulator website or on the XPlane website, but basically they are fairly similar for both flight sims, with a minimum of 8Gb (gigabytes) of RAM (random access memory), and a GPU (graphics processor unit, aka a 'video card') with at least 2Gb of VRAM (video random access memory) and which is capable or utilising DX11 (Direct X 11 effects), plus a recent operating system, such as Windows 10.

These are however, the minimum specifications, which means to run XPlane 11 or the new MS Flight Simulator, you would almost certainly have to turn down the graphics options a lot in order to run the thing at an acceptable frame rate on a PC with those minimum specs.

So, regard that minimum spec stuff as the 'ground floor', then regard the absolute money no object products out there as the 'top floor', then aim for as high an intermediate floor as your wallet can stand. But in doing so, pay careful attention to two things in particular, these are, the motherboard (that's the big circuit board which all the other components of a PC plug into), and the type of CPU (central processor unit) socket on that motherboard. What you want, is a socket type on your motherboard which is similar to that of the fanciest PCs; this way if you decide to upgrade your PC when processors come down in price a bit, you will know that these can fit on your motherboard, but also, if your motherboard can fit the fanciest CPUs, this is a good guide as to how capable they are of being upgraded in other ways, such as adding more memory, or a fancier graphics card or whatever, when you have some spare cash.

A good choice would probably be any motherboard which has an LGA 1151 socket, as this is a common type that many motherboards and processors make use of, but don't take this as gospel, you might decide differently based on your budget and preferences. Buying a slightly less fancy PC which has the potential to be upgraded will allow you to get a 'foot in the door' with something that works, but spreads the initial cost by deferring buying fancier stuff for it until later one when it suits you.

There is no easy way around this stuff and no magical shop which is selling fancy PCs at a quarter of the price of everyone else unfortunately. They are fairly expensive things, so the only thing you can do, is plenty of research as to what PC processors and GPUs have pretty decent performance when running reasonably modern games with fancy graphics (this is a good guide as to how well they will run a fancy flight sim), and which motherboards that go with these have the best likelihood of an upgradable future longevity, then armed with this information, do a search on PCs with these components, or buy the components yourself and put the thing together yourself (which is always a cheaper way of doing it and not as hard as you might suppose so long as you are not clumsy and can use a screwdriver).

 

What's your budget?

What you could be looking for is something like this:

 

CPU: Intel i5-10600k AMD Ryzen 5 3600X or Ryzen 7 3700X

GPU: Nvida RTX 2060 Super or 2070 Super or AMD 5700XT

Ram: at least 16GB, better 32GB

Harddrive: 512GB SSD, better 1TB SSD