A little history. My 64 GB RAM cost me $95 (Corsair). My 5800X3D cost me $290. My 4070 cost me $500. I did not need a new motherboard or power supply, 600 watts is plenty for this basic hardware. My new water cooler cost me under $100.

If I ever upgrade, then I will buy an all new system. It won't be the best, I never buy the best, too expensive.

I doubt my upgrading from 32GB to 64GB actually accomplished much. 

Forgive me if someone has already suggested this but you could get Game Pass for one month, the sort that allows you to install games on to your pc. Then you can give msfs2024 a good test on your system for a fairly nominal amount.

Edited November 27, 2025Nov 27 by Riddlesdenlad

I recently found my 2024 community folder.  It is still empty after a year. 🫡

dd

I hope you find this useful

https://youtu.be/hy8JXDsYZl0

I just can’t believe how expensive and difficult it’s become for home PC enthusiasts to be able to upgrade their hardware.

I’ve spent months watching for parts and things just say high or run out of stock.

Edited November 27, 2025Nov 27 by Dreamflight767

2 hours ago, Dreamflight767 said:

I was going to take advantage of "Black Friday" sales to buy or build a new PC for FS2024 but with costs of GPUs and memory, I just can't justify it.  I think that means I'll be sticking with FS2020 where I can use higher settings where if I were to switch to FS2024, I'd probably have to lower my settings.  As such, I decided to just buy lots of add-on airports for FS2020.

My biggest push for a PC upgrade is PMDG 747.  I really loved that airplane in P3D.  Maybe I'll kick myself in the future for not upgrading.  From what I read, no new higher gb GPUs are coming on the market until 2027 so that means anything on the market right now is going to dry-up or become even more expensive.

I used to keep FSX and P3D on my computer and switched back & forth when that was a thing but I did not like that - just my preference.  I liked having higher end PC for this hobby but I think I'm tired of chasing it.  Just wanted to see what others are thinking.   

 

Your current system is more than adequate to run 2024 at High settings, probably even ultra at 1440P (4K maybe on ultra but you may have to adjust some settings as you'll be main thread aka CPU limited).  I see just above you also have 64GB ram.  That's an important component imho.  When I upgraded from 32 to 64 it made a huge difference in stutters.  The only time I stutter is if my vram is close to exhaustion (RTX 4080 16GB).

Anyway, your current system is probably slightly better than mine (12700K is my cpu), and I run at 1440p on ultra with a few settings notched lower.  I typically run TLOD 200-400.  (200 for big cities and payware, and 400 or higher when flying slower GA in rural areas).  

 

1 hour ago, ryanbatc said:

I see just above you also have 64GB ram.  That's an important component imho.  When I upgraded from 32 to 64 it made a huge difference in stutters.  The only time I stutter is if my vram is close to exhaustion (RTX 4080 16GB).

I said above that my 64GB RAM probably isn't helping me. But on the other hand, I don't have stutters except very rarely in 2024. So maybe it IS doing some good. 

4 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

If you steer clear of 4K, I doubt that 16GB VRAM is going to be a problem.

Beg to differ on that. Still maxing out vram in ultrawide resolution unfortunately. The only good news is that it doesn't stutter up the system (At least for me as it did a previously) so i tend to ignore it and continue on. 

Edited November 28, 2025Nov 28 by Maxis

18 minutes ago, Maxis said:

Beg to differ on that. Still maxing out vram in ultrawide resolution unfortunately. The only good news is that it doesn't stutter up the system (At least for me as it did a previously) so i tend to ignore it and continue on. 

Same here.  I easily max out on vram with my 4080 at 1440p.  If you load the sim with high end payware (aircraft, scenery) and you're running weather it's easy to do.  Plus it's not 16GB it's more like whatever is available from Windows... like in my case around 14.8 GB or so.

4 hours ago, Fielder said:

A little history. My 64 GB RAM cost me $95 (Corsair).

You and everyone else who now have 64 GB RAM should be feeling very lucky to have bought them when you did compared to the cost of RAM and a laptop now (Nov 27, 2025).


 

Edited November 28, 2025Nov 28 by Matt Sdeel

1 hour ago, Matt Sdeel said:

You and everyone else who now have 64 GB RAM should be feeling very lucky to have bought them when you did compared to the cost of RAM and a laptop now (Nov 27, 2025).


 

That is crazy??? I paid around $400 for my memory. Just wait awhile it will come down again. I replaced my laptop last year with a Acer Nitro V15 from Amazon at the list price of about $900, but I used my Hilton Honor points to bring it down to around $250.

17 minutes ago, Bigmack said:

That is crazy??? I paid around $400 for my memory. Just wait awhile it will come down again. I replaced my laptop last year with a Acer Nitro V15 from Amazon at the list price of about $900, but I used my Hilton Honor points to bring it down to around $250.

Holy schnikes I wasn't aware.  I spent about 230 USD for 2x32GB Corsair DDR5 6000 not even a year ago.  From Corsair's site the same product currently goes for 841.99 - THAT'S INSANE!

I hate the phrase "supply and demand"..as the excuse for raising prices....a seller chooses to raise their prices...a buyer doesn't force a seller to do so and has there been such a big jump in demand by the general consumer like us?...is the AI market really the cause for limiting supply to the general public or is there another cause for these ridiculous price increases?

4 minutes ago, YMMB said:

I hate the phrase "supply and demand"..as the excuse for raising prices....a seller chooses to raise their prices...a buyer doesn't force a seller to do so and has there been such a big jump in demand by the general consumer like us?...is the AI market really the cause for limiting supply to the general public or is there another cause for these ridiculous price increases?

AI, undoubtedly so but, factor in "taking advantage" which ends up just simply as greed.

I ran MSFS 2020 on 8 gigs of.......wait for it..........system memory just fine on medium to high settings. 

I'm running MSFS 2024 on a 3060Ti, in 2k just fine on medium to high settings. 

If you're buying high-end hardware for MSFS 2024 you might as well just put a torch to your money.