Recommended Flight Sim PC Spec - February 2020

The PC you choose to power your flight simulator setup is a critical component that can greatly effect the performance and overall sense of realism you are able to achieve.  Often, a fairy modest PC is fine if you are looking for a basic procedural trainer, however if you are looking to use realistic scenery, weather and have super smooth visuals it will be important to select a PC with enough power to do the job.

Here is our current recommendation for what we would call a 'high end' PC.  Note that it is always possible to spend more for higher performance, but this configuration represents what we feel is good balance between performance and value for money.  We tend to not bother with additional LED effects as these are purely aesthetic and do not contribute to system performance

CPU Intel i9-9900K 8 core $478.89
CPU Cooling Water cooled to enable overclocking, NZXT Kraken X62 $139.99
Motherboard ATX style that supports overclocking and M.2 drives, MSI Z390-A PRO $125.99
Memory $168.99
GPU
Suitable to drive 3 primary display screens, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
$1299.99
Case
Medium form factor ATX case, NZXT H510
$79.99
Power Supply $140.54
Storage

Samsung EVO Plus 1TB M.2 SSD >3,000MB/sec read/write speed

$199.99
Operating System $105.00
TOTAL $2739.37

 

At the time of writing, the above configuration is available from NZXT computers using their BLD program, fully assembled and configured for $2,948.89.  A similar system is available from X-Force PC for $3695, although this system has more storage and includes a standard keyboard and mouse.

The above components and specifications are what you need to build the PC, however there is a lot of skill involved in putting it together and setting up the correct overclocking configuration to get maximum performance.  It is possible to do this yourself, however we would recommend that you get an expert to do the build and overclocking configuration for you.