I enjoy building PC’s … I might consider a GPU upgrade to AMD RNA5 in the future if it’s as good as current leaked results.  But I have other hobbies and PCs are indeed becoming considerably more expensive and certainly not worth the cost to performance.  Current pricing insanity is schedule to last thru 2028.

This one took me about 2 months to build, mostly waiting to get all the necessary parts and fittings, it was about $7500 back in March/April (AMD 9950X3D, 96GB RAM, 5090, Samsung 9100 2TB and 8TB, MSI Godlike, Corsair 9000 case dual pump, single loop):

And then I needed to build a workstation for my software development work, AI processing, video editing, and audio creation ($14,000) AMD 9975WX Threadripper 256GB ECC RAM 2X Samsung 9100 4TB, 2X nVidia 5090, dual loop):

Ran a quick check on component prices today and the $7500 PC would be $10,000.  The $14,000 PC would be $22,000.

I’m old and the price to fun build ratio just isn’t there any more … getting sick of the corporate and scalper game.

31 minutes ago, SayAgain said:

I enjoy building PC’s …

 

Nice pics, good clean builds.  Yeah it's true one can buy a used car for the price of a PC these days lol!  (though not a nice used car - even those have skyrocketed)

That is the case that I selected (Corsair Frame 4000D)  There is so much space in PC cases these days now that the HDD/DVD drive cages have disappeared.

$5,000 is about £3,750 which would get you a very average PC in the UK. 

What kind of PCs do you need? I just bought a 9800x3d 5070TI from Scan in the UK for £1900 (around $2500) and i am playing MSFS2024 maxed out at 4k. Works fine. No idea my framerate. I don't check because it is smooth.

OK I am using default airports but I am  flying the FBW A320 with FSTL instead of GA, which uses more resources, but if I need more frames it's easily achievable I think. For starters I am not using any tweaks. DLSS is on but i haven't touched anything else I have seen here mentioned like Frame Generation settings (FSR?)) mostly because I don't know what they do 🙂 If I need more frames I could also just set everything High instead of Ultra since you can't tell the difference anyway. 

If you are running a 3 monitor setup i can understand a better GC is needed otherwise you don't need $5k to run MSFS well. Half that is enough.

Edited December 7, 2025Dec 7 by sanh

1 hour ago, St Mawgan said:

$5,000 is about £3,750 which would get you a very average PC in the UK. 

Perspective...I built my 9800X3D 64Gb 5090 for well under that (about £3k) myself (albeit I bought everything apart from the GPU a year ago, and the 5090 bought at a low[ish] point comparitively speaking!)

11 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

The video is titled "This PC kills MSFS".  Well, if the SU4 optimisations are as good as we are hearing, then that PC will have been a waste of money. 

a couple of tip begging youtubers have already done that video for some clicks and likes.

I was coming from an amd 5900x, RTX 3080 12GB VRAM, 32 GB DDR4. I sold the 5900x at 200 eur, then I got an I9 14900k from the Amazon warehouse at 390 eur, this CPU is DDR4 and DDR5 compatible. I was worried about the high temperatures, becasue I have a Noctua NH D15 (I hate liquid cooling solutions), but I installed my new 14900k with a contact frame, then I undervolted it at 0.075, now I have a super CPU that can fill my 3080 without any problem, the temps are around 50/60°C and FS24 is superfluid at ultra details, even landing at KLAX. The real problem is the VRAM, 12GB are not so much, and I think that the 16GB of a 5080 don't have that much room, considered many VRAM consuming addons in FS24. Maybe the Radeon 7900 XTX with 24GB could be the right choice. But at the moment I'm enjoying my 14900k, what a beast!

If you have a Noctua NH-D15 (virtually the best air cooler on the market), you do not really need to worry too much about high temperatures.

As for £3750 getting you an average PC in the UK, I spent £1750 (including VAT) for my new PC. Granted that did not include a graphics card, but you really do not need to spend £2000 on a top end Skynet GPU to get a PC that is way above average.

Edited December 7, 2025Dec 7 by Christopher Low

Think my PC was £2k 3 years ago, just threw £560 at it with a new GPU and I now don't plan to upgrade anything in the next couple of years unless something breaks. 

My PC rig as a whole though, with all the peripherals and gadgets, I've got be sitting on £7k at the very least every time I get in the thing.....to watch a pointless YouTube video!

Seeing as I've been building my own PCs since the 1990s I've easily spent North of £30k, probably a lot more than that actually, blimey that's depressing 😆

2 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

Perspective...I built my 9800X3D 64Gb 5090 for well under that (about £3k) myself (albeit I bought everything apart from the GPU a year ago, and the 5090 bought at a low[ish] point comparitively speaking!)

And how much would that cost you today, which is what we are talking about? 

Yes, but Kevin's PC is very near the top of the pile. Not even close to "average".

Edited December 7, 2025Dec 7 by Christopher Low

51 minutes ago, St Mawgan said:

And how much would that cost you today, which is what we are talking about? 

£200 more for the GPU today.  £200 more for the RAM.  Seems like much else is around the same prices.

 I bought my first pc in the late 1980's it was a Mitac, don't recall if it was 386 or 486 processor, it had 4 mb (not gb) memory, ran on Dos 4 I think and cost £999. I bought an extra 4 mb memory for £150. Dread to total how much flight simming has cost me since.

Mick

Kevin . Content not viewable in the uk?

Edited December 7, 2025Dec 7 by mickatmian
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5 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

£200 more for the GPU today.  £200 more for the RAM.  Seems like much else is around the same prices.

How much did you pay for your 5090?