I was hoping @NEVO would chime in.
I am one of those who flies VR exclusively, for reasons detailed above by others, but am not sure if I would recommend it for someone just starting out with DCS or flight sims.
For some people, VR stays nauseating even after the first few days.
On top of that, there are other reasons why specifically for people getting started in DCS, I would not recommend it.
I detailed those here a few days ago:
I didn’t even mention the lowering of graphics settings and the software complexity which results in being tempted to do a lot of tweaking.
As for AMD vs Intel: they are on the same level so it doesn’t make much of a difference which one you choose at the moment.
The early AMD USB issues are long solved.
AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series outperformed Intel 11th gen in every way, but Intel has caught up with 12th gen, mostly.
On the lower end, i5-12400f vs Ryzen 5 5600X, Intel has slightly better single-core performance, and higher energy efficiency at single core loads and idle. AMD is much more performant and efficient at multi-threaded tasks.
Currently, Intel is slightly cheaper here (B660 mobo + i5) so I would recommend that over B550 + Ryzen 5600X.
On the higher end, Intel is also slightly better at the single-threaded loads, which are important for us, but don’t get the i9 as that one comes at a huge cost in energy and thermals compared to the AMD equivalents.
I’ve heard good things about the new i7 but haven’t looked in detaik at how it stacks up against the Ryzen 7 5800X3D