Returning to Flight Simming

[CAPT Shark 3]

Hey All,

After several years of inactivity, I am preparing too return to flight swimming.  When I saw the release of MSFS 2020 I knew I had to get back in to it. I haven't upgraded my system yet as I am currently using PC's and MacBooks for work.

 

My plan is to run it at High End to Ultra settings and my budget is $2000-$3500. Are there prebuilt rigs out there or should I go custom.  I've seen a few videos and have also looked into Origin PCs.  Any suggestions and recommendations would be great.

 

CDR Shark

[HighBypass 2,339]

6 hours ago, CDR Shark said:

...I am preparing too return to flight swimming. ..

Welcome to AVSIM! I take it you'll be using the Icon A5 a lot then? ... swimming? water... floatplane...

I'll get my coat...

I can't comment on buying a new PC, but if you know how to assemble one to a custom spec, then it may be better for you to go that route as you might make your budget go further in terms of value for money.. 

[Chock 17,769]

Welcome to Avsim. 🙂 

With the kind of budget you're looking at, there's going to be a lot of choice. As you are no doubt aware, you can often get a bit more bang for your bucks building something yourself, so if you're content to do that then you might end up with something slightly flashier for your budget. But...

Having said that, lots of places which build 'gaming rig' PCs are able to take advantage of the the economy of scale when it comes to purchasing their components, so it's not always true that there are huge savings to be made in building something yourself.

However, since it's always likely to be a bit cheaper putting one together yourself, but not necessarily by so much that it's never worth considering going with something ready to rock, the smart thing to do is look at pre-built stuff within your price range, and then take a look at how you might put something similar together yourself. And see which option you prefer. Perhaps combining the two routes; maybe buying a pre-built PC, but then tweaking it a bit further yourself.

Certainly one of the parts where you can trim a lot off the price, is with the PC case; gaming PCs are usually built to look flashy so they look good on a picture for that 'wow' factor, but you can usually put the same components in a cheaper more mundane-looking case, forgoing the looks and doing just as well. When doing that, it's possible to find a big case with plenty of room in it to cram in other stuff later down the line, such as additional drives and this is an important consideration. 

Lots of people are adding dedicated SSD drives to their PCs specifically for the new MS sim, having only that and some folders for making your own stuff (which is pretty easy to do) on that SSD, thus leaving room on the drive for the streamed scenery files and maybe going with a larger traditional HDD to run the stuff where access speed is not so important. The full 'Premium Deluxe' version of the new MS sim takes up about 130 Gbs, the Standard version of the sim is around 90Gb, meaning that a dedicated 500 Gb SSD is adequate to do this whilst still having room for a few add-on files, and since SSDs can be had for about 50 quid, so there's really no reason not to do that.

You should be aware however, that add-ons for the new sim are tending to be pretty large these days (there was a free add-on livery pack for the default Airbus A320 which ran to being 10Gb in size for example). So with that in mind, a 1 Tb SSD might be more usable to have as a dedicated SSD for the sim, but this is why I suggested having a bit of breathing room in your PC's case so you might consider doing that somewhere down the line and just going with a 500 Gb SSD for the sim in the interim.

As ever with PCs, the really important thing is to build a bit of life into them by choosing a motherboard that has expansion possibilities, so with that in mind, whilst browsing about, have a good look at the trends, such as which CPU socket type appears to be the most popular, which GPU slot configuration is the most popular, and which RAM slots and the number of them appear to be the ones builders are going for. More RAM is better of course, the new MS sim needs at least 16 Gb to run well, but 32 Gb (or more) will certainly help matters. More RAM than that will pretty-much future proof the thing for many years. 

GPU wise, the minimum sensible choice nowadays for a flight sim PC is 8Gb; anything less than that is not going to be much good with modern flight sims if you intend to use high settings such as 4K resolution, so regard than as the absolute lowest amount of VRAM you'll be happy with. Most people are finding their GPU is working pretty hard with the new sim, so don't forget decent cooling too, and a decent power supply unit as well.

Theoretically the GPU is doing the bulk of the work on the sim, but the CPU is carrying some of the load, so whilst you don't actually need a super-duper CPU to run the new MS sim, it will certainly help matters and since doing this is well within your budget, there's no reason not to.

Don't forget the cost of a controller too. These days you're looking at a minimum of about 75 quid for a decent joystick/throttle, and probably a lot more (figure several hundred) for something which is built to last, with stuff such as hall sensors rather than the more traditional (and liable to wear out) components.

With all this said, you don't need a super-computer to run the new MS sim if you are happy to run it at a resolution of 1080p rather than 4K, so anything you do build with that kind of budget should eat the new sim for breakfast, which is good because remember that flight sims such as those from MS have always been something of a 'starting point' and usually end up with a ton of add-ons making them fairly demanding eventually.

There is a decent hardware forum on Avsim with plenty of knowledgeable people frequenting it, so ask in there if you are unsure about a potential purchase. Just be aware that you're gonna get people saying things like: 'Don't build it now, wait for the new super-sex bomb 9000X CPU to come out in six months' and all that kind of malarkey, and if you listened to all that kind of advice, you'd never build or buy anything. 🤣

Apart from that, join in the fun and try the new sim on whatever PC you've currently got. You can get a Microsoft Gamepass membership for just 1 quid/dollar which will let you download the Standard version for no extra cost other than that, so apart from the lengthy download time, there's no reason not to try it, and that too will give you some idea of what kind of PC you might want to get hold of.

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by Chock