Laptop for MSFS?

ajf · 14 May 2025 at 10:09

I want to get a decent laptop for MSFS, although will be a fairly casual player.
What sort of spec should I look at for smooth running and decent graphic settings?
I’d love to get the latest 50xx gpu spec etc but not sure £3k+ is on the cards.
At some point it would be conected to a 4k monitor so guess that impacts performance a lot.

How close to desktop performance are the equivalent mobile 40xx cards?
Memory and CPU also important?

picnic · 14 May 2025 at 11:52

I used to use a HP Omen laptop with a 2080, worked really well but I never tried it with an external 4K monitor

Junglist · 14 May 2025 at 13:30

I have a mobile 4090 and it handles 4K pretty well but that's with some assistance of DLSS/Frame Generation.

Edit: I should say in general. I don't play MSFS so that may well be a non-starter for that game

xaldub · 14 May 2025 at 13:42

The problem with laptops that have high end graphics cards is thermal throttling which can kill performance. You'll need to research each manufacturer/model and see which ones perform best in that regard. Also, I don't want to be a buzzkill, but MSFS is a bug ridden, technical disaster ... especially the latest edition.

Junglist · 14 May 2025 at 13:47

Replacing the stock thermal paste with some Honeywell PTM 7950 helps a bit in that regard. Though laptops get hot. Mine can happily chug along at 90-95c

Which took me a while to get used to as my fully watercooled PC my GPU (980Ti, so a few years ago now!) never went above 40c after hours upon hours of Battlefield.

ajf · 14 May 2025 at 16:59

Thank you for the feedback so far.
Regards the game itself, I thought it was fairly well respected, although I was aware the 2024 update has/had issues.
I’d thought you could simply just buy/install the previous version - possibly not?

A desktop is a possibility for this instead. Laptop just makes the purchase a bit more flexible.

Perhaps I’ll reevaluate the game and the type of hardware then.

xaldub · 14 May 2025 at 17:25

ajf said:
Thank you for the feedback so far.
Regards the game itself, I thought it was fairly well respected, although I was aware the 2024 update has/had issues.
I’d thought you could simply just buy/install the previous version - possibly not?

A desktop is a possibility for this instead. Laptop just makes the purchase a bit more flexible.

Perhaps I’ll reevaluate the game and the type of hardware then.

MSFS 20 and MSFS 24 are two distinct entities. Buying the latter doesn't give you access to the former, and vice versa. I would strongly recommend against buying MSFS 24 in its current state. As for MSFS 20, it is in better shape ... but still has its issues. However, there is a wealth of 3rd party software that remedies many of these problems, but that's a rabbit hole which can get expensive quick.