£650 budget, one chance to get it right!

[ahughes3 0]

Hi folks,

I'm after hardware help obviously. My current PC is around 8yrs old or more. It runs an i5 3310 at around 3.10Ghz, the GPU is a GTX650 and I have 8gb of RAM, with a 1Tb HDD. I use it mainly for flight sim but also for some music recording work.

I have a rare opportunity to spend a little cash on a new PC/Laptop before my kids and wife spend it. So I'm looking at what to replace my existing PC with.

Now I know I'm not going to afford a super slick, 60fps, max settings PC. But I would like to get something that will comfortable give me 30fps steadily with ORBX, Aerosoft Airbus, ActiveSky etc at least on medium settings.

So, I looking for help to understand what might be a sensible configuration, also allowing for moving up to MSF2020 at some point.

What CPU/GPU combination could I realistically look at for my £650 budget. I was thinking i5 3.8Ghz+ and maybe a GTX1660 or GTX 1060/1080 6Gb vram min.

Just interested in some help steering me in the right general direction. I'm not really an overclocker and my flight sim is usually non-tweaked. (I'm just not great at that stuff).

Thanks in advance

Andy

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

Have you read the recent topics in this forum?  Several of them address your very question.. 😉

[Charlatan 68]

Now is a poor time to be buying/upgrading.  Lots of stuff is out of stock, and way overpriced.  Personally, I'd wait until after New Year, the BIOS for B450 boards will be out, and stock will be easier to get hold of.

For your £650 budget, a decent B450 chipset board, a 5600x, 16 or 32gb 3600mhz DDR4, and at least a 1660 super will be easily doable.  Waiting for things to settle in New Year might just make a 2060 or 2060 super fit into budget.