Recommendations for an upgrade

[sck451]

Yeah, that actually sounds right, not like low performance at all.

Honestly your temperatures look fine -- a bit to my surprise, to be honest. I'd expect the 9700K to suffer more in that case with that cooler. An upgrade wouldn't hurt, but I'm not sure I'd spend money on it (unless you would then look to move it into another system as and when you upgrade).

I would upgrade your graphics card either to a 7800 XT or a 67(0|5)0 XT depending on budget and, unless MSFS is your main use, upgrade the monitor to a 1440p one like the MSI MAG274QRF-QD, currently under £300. Those are both long-term upgrades that would transfer over well as and when you upgrade the rest of the system. I think anything else would be a waste of money.

 

[Alir99]

Honestly I might as well get a new setup altogether. As mentioned, no point in bandaging up an existing one if there's no point. I'd give it until the end of the year hopefully and just get a new system altogether that would be good for long-term? Would definitely get a new 1440p monitor though, I had no idea that could be a bottleneck.

 

[Scott]

To be completely blunt the PC wasn't well configured at all for upgrades. If you want to get the most you can out of MSFS2020 while cutting your losses I would actually suggest selling the PC and looking to start from scratch, only this time I would get advice on a build that would have a good upgrade path.

If you were happy with the 1080p resolution then I think £1400-£1500 would hit you right in the sweet spot for MSFS.

The AMD GPUs offer the best value rasterization, but the Nvidia options tend to offer better bells and whistles (especially with MSFS is concerned). If VR is definitely not a concern for the future then it's a complete toss up with which route you want to go down, I don't think there is too much in it with pricing but I think you typically get more vRAM with AMD just now so that's something definitely worth considering with future use in mind.

For an upgrade I would personally want:

New Case
Fast M2 Drive
New GPU
Higher PSU
Better Cooler
Better Wifi card (If you use it)
New Monitor (1440p minimum for me, if budget is no object then the G9 or something like that for MSFS. This will impact the new GPU significantly though).

By this point you're a motherboard, CPU & RAM away from a new system. All of which would give better results with an X3D chip in MSFS, hence why I would suggest a new system and selling off the old. Would probably work out the same cash.