Don't get me wrong, I hate lap tops.
Like I posted before, you can find GOOD desktop PCs at "back to school" sales and/or at the "big box stores" or on-line. Shop around and you should be able to find one with a monitor included. These are desktops aimed at students going off to Uni. They don't have top-line mother boards and GPUs but they usually have a fairly stout and reliable CPU, which makes for a great starting point. These desktops tend to be priced in the $300-$400 range (US), so we're not breaking the bank.
If you're buying a new store-bought pre-built desktop, the odds are really good its pre-loaded with Windows 10. Win 10 needs a "minimum" of 8 Gigs of RAM to run and most of them are sold with a 1 TB hard drive or an SSD/HD combination, at least that's how the new desktops are sold. Use that to your advantage, no matter which OS you plan to run.
In terms of "FS2019", I'd take a really hard look at it before I bought it.
I happened to see it listed on Amazon the other day which is odd for what's essentially donation ware.
The old flavors of FSX are still good (I run FS 2002 and still enjoy it) and X Plane still looks promising.
Most of the flight sim titles still don't make use of multiple CPU cores (like most games) so your biggest bang for the buck comes from CPU clock speed.
Luckily, most newer CPUs are clocked between 3.5 to 4.5 Ghz anyway. You really don't need to consider over clocking.
So, try doing some shopping on Amazon or one of the on-line stores. Search for desktops and take a hard look at the "bargain builds".
