Advice on getting the best for my system with limited funds?

[George O'Toole]

Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64-bit
CPU
Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.00GHz
Haswell 22nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 799MHz (11-11-11-28)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z97-K (SOCKET 1150)
Graphics
G246HL (1920x1080@60Hz)
2460 (1920x1080@60Hz)
2460 (1920x1080@60Hz)
4095MB NVIDIA Zotac GeForce GTX 1080
Storage
447GB SanDisk Ultra II 480GB (SATA (SSD))
232GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB (SATA (SSD))
1863GB Western Digital WDC WD2003FZEX-00SRLA0 (SATA )
3726GB TOSHIBA HDWE140 (SATA )
465GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (SATA (SSD))
This is the current specification of my PC. I am looking for suggestions regarding getting the best of what I have? Am I better to stick with what I have and maybe replace three monitors with 1 widescreen 4K monitor, or upgrade RAM or go the whole hog and replace motherboard, chip and increase RAM to 32GB?
This PC is only used for X-Plane! I am retired so have limited funding available?

 

[orbitalwalsh]

1080gtx ... should do well with X-plane . I know most use gtx 1080ti but thats trying to eeeeek out every last frame .

overclock your i7 and push at least 4.5ghz, will help as clock speed plays a key role! they are trying to update coding to allow better threading support but will be another year or so for Vulkan support.

I see you have 3 monitors ? only thing it you wanted to upgrade that would be going ultra wide 1080p or 1440p - ultra wide 1440p would display more pixels , so take a lot out of the 1080gtx but least allows for G-sync to make gameplay smoother

personally wouldn't upgrade the core system just yet, spepcially if low on cash . selling 1080 and maybe getting 1080ti i could understand

worth looking at forum's based around flight sims. I know there are tons of options which can make or break FPS gains or smooth FPS in that game . worth knowing which hits the CPU and which hit the GPU

 

[George O'Toole]

Thanks for the advice. I do think the bottleneck is the CPU rather than the CPU becuase the 1080 is only 8months old whereas CPU approximately 3 years...