I am starting from scratch with FS2020. Should i buy a pc or a laptop? I haven't played before but envisage a lap top screen for say avionics and a large monitor for the view outside. Or do I just buy a big monitor? Advantages of curved screen? Do they distort the image or enhance it? Thanks for any suggestions please....

Unless you absolutely favour a laptop and want to use it for other stuff, I'd steer clear of a laptop for flight sims if I were you. It's not impossible to run flight sims on a laptop, but there are two things weighing heavily against laptops as a choice for MSFS... 

The first is the GPU (aka the graphics card). There are some laptops intended for gaming which have a fancy GPU which is capable of handling things, but they are up against it in terms of available room inside a laptop, which also means cooling is difficult since there isn't much room to circulate air. You should also bear in mind that if you were toying with the idea of having one screen for avionics and the other for the views, this effectively means that a lot of the time your GPU is doing twice the work it would normally be doing if you were running on one monitor, so this would probably really push a laptop's capabilities to breaking point.

The other thing is disk drive size and expansion capabilities. You can get a fairly decent sized SSD into a laptop, but it's a hell of a lot easier to do this, and in fact have multiple SSDs in a desktop PC. Yes there are external plug in drives available, but then you are using up the ports on a laptop which you might want for other stuff such as controllers, and most laptops don't exactly have a ton of ports on them. Again, yes you can get a plug in port expansion, but you can see where this is going; you start off with something small and next minute you've got a really untidy mess of external peripherals and wiring when it could all have been in one by desktop PC box, so going with a laptop then doesn't even end up saving space, not that I suspect you are too concerned about this if you are toying with the idea of a multi-monitor set up at some point.

Beyond this, there is also pricing. Fancy gaming laptops capable of handling high end graphics are not exactly cheap, whereas you can easily find a fairly capable desktop PC at a reasonably okay price which will run MSFS easily on reasonably good settings, and it will be much easier/possible to upgrade and expand a desktop PC if you feel the need than it will a laptop, which by definition are limited in size and therefore limited in what you can fit into them.

If you had favoured a laptop for other tasks, such as work, browsing the 'net whilst you watch TV or whatever, I'd say that getting a desktop PC for your flight sims, and a cheap laptop or tablet for the other stuff would be a much more flexible solution. And I suspect it would also be cheaper to do this than to try to find a super-duper laptop which could handle MSFS easily without breaking the bank.

With regard to curved screens, so long as they are reasonably large, they do enhance things a bit and they do actually reduce eye strain a little bit, since the arc of their image area as you glance about means your eyes can remain at the same focal distance. However, as fancy as this is, you will find that a monitor of at least 27 inches in screen size will be large enough to immerse you in the sim, and these are a hell of a lot cheaper than a massive curved monitor.

That said, if you had envisaged a twin-monitor set up, you might find that it will be easier on your wallet to get a desktop PC with a monitor, and somewhere down the line, perhaps relegate that original monitor to the avionics role, whilst getting a fancier and bigger monitor to take over the main visuals.

Of course all this is mostly my opinion, and someone might come along and completely contradict what I say, but hopefully I've given you some food for thought at least.

And welcome to Avsim. 🙂

Edited December 28, 20205 yr by Chock

47 minutes ago, andrew freeman said:

I am starting from scratch with FS2020. Should i buy a pc or a laptop? I haven't played before but envisage a lap top screen for say avionics and a large monitor for the view outside. Or do I just buy a big monitor? Advantages of curved screen? Do they distort the image or enhance it? Thanks for any suggestions please....

Take a look at my specs on the signature. I have two setups, one desktop and one laptop. Very happy with both of them. The laptop is mainly used for testing new add-ons and when traveling away, something that's very restricted lately as we all know. To be honest, with a good laptop you are all set with MSFS. On my systems, of course the desktop works better, with higher FPS and higher settings compared to the laptop, and I have a bigger screen (curved one, and to ask your question, the image is never distorted) but the difference is not substantial, so what I mean is that you can get a very nice sim experience just with a good gaming laptop.

Be aware that there are too many laptops in the market and not everyone is the same. I had a very bad experience with one MSI gaming laptop that only lasted a bit less than two years (several issues over the time, starting with the "loss" of the SSD drive after just 11 months). I then switched to a brand new ASUS laptop upgraded by CUK (Computer Upgrade King). I highly recommend considering one of their models, they're absolutely the best and reliable gaming laptops I ever seen.

What you need to take care of with your gaming laptop is to avoid overheating. I use a small external fan (4 inches) properly placed near the back of the laptop that I turn on everytime I run MSFS. That helps!. I also use a cooling pad (I purchased one at Amazon that fits nicely under the laptop and helps a bit with its cooling).

Cheers, Ed

Welcome to Avsim!  I prefer a desktop PC for my flight sim pleasures.  Desktops are more upgradable and they can take advantage of faster CPU's and GPU's and cooling solutions are available that allow for overclocking the CPU while still keeping everything from overheating.  Then there are the USB ports for all the controllers that I find necessary for flight sims.

Welcome! In a nutshell, you will be limited with a laptop in terms of the experience and future upgrades. I went through the laptop stage and it is just not the same. Depending on how you expand your horizons with the hobby, you will have the best options with a PC and it will be more rewarding in the long run.

Thank you everyone for the replies. I have bought an Asus humdinger and will borrow a 36" curved from a mate and give it a go. Good feedback, thanks.