Aiming for a new rig - how important is RAM, which GPU + CPU would be advised by the community (FSLabs + heavy sceneries + ultra settings)

[Claas Krause]

Hi everyone,

Hope you’re all having a cracking day.

I’m currently looking at upgrading my setup and could use a bit of steerage from the community on which direction to take. My budget is sitting around the €2,400 – €2,900 mark, and I’m aiming for a fairly beefy spec.

The plan is to build around an RTX 5080 and the AMD Ryzen series. I’m currently torn between the 7 9800X3D and the 9 9950X3D; I’ve been reading up on the performance benchmarks and it seems a bit counter-intuitive, so I’m curious to hear your real-world thoughts on which delivers the smoother experience for flight simming.

On the storage front, I feel a 2TB SSD is a must these days, though I might drop to 1TB if I spot a decent bargain on eBay or Kleinanzeigen here in Germany. As for memory, I’m leaning towards 64GB of RAM. I could start with 32GB and upgrade later, but I’d love to know if you think 64GB is truly the “sweet spot” for the more memory-intensive addons.

The Goal: Currently, my HP Omen (RTX 5080 mobile) is struggling to keep up. When I’m flying heavy 3rd-party airliners (Fenix, PMDG, iniBuilds, etc.) into complex sceneries at Ultra settings, it just doesn’t cut the mustard. I’m seeing about 20 FPS (boosted by Frame Gen), which is a bit of a struggle.

I’m aiming for a rock-solid, smooth experience—ideally 80 to 90 FPS with Frame Gen (so about 40–45 base). Since my monitor is capped at 60Hz, I might just lock it there, but I want that overhead to ensure it never stutters.

A few questions for the experts:

• In your experience, how much of a difference does 64GB vs 32GB make when juggling heavy sceneries and complex aircraft?

• Between the two Ryzen chips, which one is currently wearing the crown for stability in the sim?

Thanks a million for any advice you can spare.

Warm regards,

Claas

[Marios Martinis]

Hi, regarding RAM , I am using 32GB and not having any issues at all, I would say more than this is not necessary unless you want to run a couple of other programs together with the sim.

For me Sim, chrome-youtube, and couple sim apps running together are just running totally fine in my setup.

Have in mind that if you go for 2 sticks - 32GB total and later you want to buy another 2, so 4 sticks and 64gb total you may end up having stability issues running AMD EXPO at suggested speeds.

32GB - runs fine, much cheaper with current RAM price

64GB - surely more future proof but you may not see any difference right now.

By the way my settings are not all the way right - but fairly high (using 7800x3d 32GB 9070xt 1440p resolution)

[Claas Krause]

are you using Texture Resolution at Ultra?

thank you for your comment! - I think you have a rather strong AMD CPU which helps a lot! may I know which graphics card you are running?

[Marios Martinis]

Texture res at high. I don't see any gains at ultra rather than high/max vram values and lower performance.

I am using amd 9070xt.

[Tim_Marchant]

I run a RTX4080 super 16Gb, and currently run in to vRAM usage issues, but to up to more vRAM with Nviidia is a problem!

[Aaron Brand]

I remember how much 64 GB of RAM cost me when I built my 5090/9950X3D system in November, and last I checked the price has more than doubled since then.  Good luck sir!!

[Claas Krause]

5 hours ago, Aaron Brand said:

I remember how much 64 GB of RAM cost me when I built my 5090/9950X3D system in November, and last I checked the price has more than doubled since then.  Good luck sir!!

I just found a pretty sweet rig for €2,500: 64 GB Kingston Fury Beast CL36 6000 MHz RAM, Ryzen 7 9800X3D, an Asus Prime 5080, and a 3 TB SSD. It’s not going to be a “no-compromises” NASA-level beast, but it should be a serious upgrade. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the FSLabs PW performs on this setup. And who knows—maybe I’ll find a good option to rent or lease a 5090 down the line, and I could even sell the 5080 on top of that.

I found a good option for a 4K OLED Samsung G80SD as well. Does anyone have experience with that one?

thanks a lot.

PS

doubled??? I mean, I know why but still ... that´s crazy. let´s see when this bubble pops.

[Claas Krause]

Dear FSLabs community. 👋

I hope you are doing amazing.

As mentioned above - I’ve recently upgraded to a more robust machine (RTX 5080, Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 64GB RAM) and I’m flying on the MSI MPG 321URX (240Hz OLED). While the performance has been initially very very bad - updating the msi-bios from June 2025 to March 2026 did wonders and now it´s actually showing very impressive brute force but it seems I can´t fine-tune it the way that I want.

Currently, I’m seeing some weirdness with frame counting:

• Native MSFS 2024 and Nvidia counters show me around 40–60 FPS.

• AutoFPS reports anywhere between 140–240 FPS with dynamic frame gen active.

It feels smooth, but it's overshooting my target and causing some inconsistency. My goal is to stay locked at a 120 FPS output (ideally via a 40 FPS base with a 3x frame gen multiplier). What is amazing - the FSLabs (with cabin - that feels actually so sweet) can work even at EGLL ... mostly Ultra-ish settings, but for now I keep it on high-textures only. Yes, there are very mild stutters but these are gone in the blink of an eye, they don´t bother me. Also they were only present while testing and basically panning was the only thing I did ... so irl we would be focussed way more ...

A couple of questions for the gurus here:

1. Is it better to leave my monitor at 240Hz and let VRR handle the gaps, or keep it at 120Hz?

2. What’s the best way to hard-cap the internal frames to 40 so the 3x gen doesn’t "run away" into the 200s and hammer the hardware unnecessarily?

3. Somehow the internal max-frame rate doesn´t work so in check with consistent frame gen. Maybe I should set a post-framegen cap in AutoFPS at 120?

Would love to hear how you guys are balancing the 50-series power with MSFS 2024's mainthread demands! ✈️

[Michal Depta]

The best practice in MSFS when using frame gen is to lock your FPS in simulator. In your case, 40 fps should be the sweet spot as that is your minimum. That makes sure, your fps will be stable when using 3xFG and will result in stable 120fps. Also, set your monitor to 120Hz so it's natural.

This way, your computer will have some overhead and should  prevent any massive spikes/lags.

[Claas Krause]

19 hours ago, Michal Depta said:

The best practice in MSFS when using frame gen is to lock your FPS in simulator. In your case, 40 fps should be the sweet spot as that is your minimum. That makes sure, your fps will be stable when using 3xFG and will result in stable 120fps. Also, set your monitor to 120Hz so it's natural.

This way, your computer will have some overhead and should  prevent any massive spikes/lags.

Dear Michael,

 

Thanks for checking in. Interestingly, this was the first approach I tried—capping my monitor at 120 Hz and setting the frame rate to 40 × 3. In theory, it made sense, but in practice it didn’t work well. For reference, I’m using a 4K OLED MSI display with a 240 Hz refresh rate.

 

After a couple of frustrating days experimenting with those settings, I recalled my very first sim session on the new system. It wasn’t perfect—I hadn’t yet updated the BIOS, which can apparently make a significant difference—but it was relatively free of stutters. Frame rates were fluctuating wildly between 140 and 240 FPS, yet it still felt smooth overall.

 

Out of desperation, I switched the monitor to 180 Hz and removed the in-sim frame cap—and that improved things considerably. I also discussed this with some MSFS forum users, and the general consensus seems to be that monitors perform best at their native refresh rate. I’m not sure if that holds true universally, but it certainly worked in my case.

 

At the moment, I’ve capped the frame rate at 60 FPS, with AutoFPS and dynamic settings tuned well below that threshold, and dynamic frame generation up to 6×. For now, the experience is stable, though I’m still fine-tuning.

 

I’m also considering upgrading to an RTX 5090. Currently, I have to run DLSS in Performance mode—4K resolution is simply quite demanding on a GPU with 16 GB of VRAM.

[Stephen Whiterod]

41 minutes ago, Claas Krause said:

Dear Michael,

 

Thanks for checking in. Interestingly, this was the first approach I tried—capping my monitor at 120 Hz and setting the frame rate to 40 × 3. In theory, it made sense, but in practice it didn’t work well. For reference, I’m using a 4K OLED MSI display with a 240 Hz refresh rate.

 

After a couple of frustrating days experimenting with those settings, I recalled my very first sim session on the new system. It wasn’t perfect—I hadn’t yet updated the BIOS, which can apparently make a significant difference—but it was relatively free of stutters. Frame rates were fluctuating wildly between 140 and 240 FPS, yet it still felt smooth overall.

 

Out of desperation, I switched the monitor to 180 Hz and removed the in-sim frame cap—and that improved things considerably. I also discussed this with some MSFS forum users, and the general consensus seems to be that monitors perform best at their native refresh rate. I’m not sure if that holds true universally, but it certainly worked in my case.

 

At the moment, I’ve capped the frame rate at 60 FPS, with AutoFPS and dynamic settings tuned well below that threshold, and dynamic frame generation up to 6×. For now, the experience is stable, though I’m still fine-tuning.

 

I’m also considering upgrading to an RTX 5090. Currently, I have to run DLSS in Performance mode—4K resolution is simply quite demanding on a GPU with 16 GB of VRAM.

What frame rate are you looking at getting with the 5090? If it's your monitors native rate, I think you will still be disappointed or have to make adjustments to the dlss/fg settings or in game settings. I've been running lately at DLAA with FGx3 with mostly max settings and get around 110-120fps with dips occasionally down to 80-90 but g-sync handles those dips well. Ideally I would want to use a lower FG as you do get some issues, hopefully as performance improves with SU5 and beyond I will be able to lower it. 

[Claas Krause]

15 hours ago, Stephen Whiterod said:

What frame rate are you looking at getting with the 5090? If it's your monitors native rate, I think you will still be disappointed or have to make adjustments to the dlss/fg settings or in game settings. I've been running lately at DLAA with FGx3 with mostly max settings and get around 110-120fps with dips occasionally down to 80-90 but g-sync handles those dips well. Ideally I would want to use a lower FG as you do get some issues, hopefully as performance improves with SU5 and beyond I will be able to lower it. 

Dear Stephen, thanks a lot. Yes sure ... 5090 wouldn´t be the cure for cancer, that´s a given. But exactly, I am actually fine with a higher rate of FG but I would like to get to a different preset and maybe no more VRAM-dicey situations? did you upgrade to a 5090 from a 4080 Super or how was your journey? you might be right that the upgrade from a 5080 to a 5090 might in fact NOT be worth it. 

[Stephen Whiterod]

23 minutes ago, Claas Krause said:

Dear Stephen, thanks a lot. Yes sure ... 5090 wouldn´t be the cure for cancer, that´s a given. But exactly, I am actually fine with a higher rate of FG but I would like to get to a different preset and maybe no more VRAM-dicey situations? did you upgrade to a 5090 from a 4080 Super or how was your journey? you might be right that the upgrade from a 5080 to a 5090 might in fact NOT be worth it. 

Yes I upgraded from a 4080 super, it definitely helped me raise my settings and I don’t have vram issues anymore. I still feel the bottleneck is the main thread on my 9800x3d hopefully some improvements made by asobo in su5 will help with that.

[Claas Krause]

16 hours ago, Stephen Whiterod said:

Yes I upgraded from a 4080 super, it definitely helped me raise my settings and I don’t have vram issues anymore. I still feel the bottleneck is the main thread on my 9800x3d hopefully some improvements made by asobo in su5 will help with that.

Ah wow - so I guessed it correctly out of the blue. 🙂 Sure, that´s what I was thinking as well. The panning stutters are mainthread related anyway, right? - so they are basically persisting?