Gaming
- Mostly a huge array of co-op games, performance doesn’t matter much, just good 1440 frame rate with high settings.
- HOWEVER, sim racing is my exception and I’m wanting to upgrade from a single 27" to something more immersive. Considering I’m on the most minimal, a TV, triple 24s, or VR are all big immersion upgrades, but each with their pros and cons. But all demanding more of the GPU,ideally keeping rates at 120, even 90 maybe… 1080 for triples, but ideally 1440 all-round to make use of FSR better.
Data Science
- I need my PC to be a workhorse. Many hours of my week are ETL of big datasets and complex models. Lots of calculation time and lots of loading tables/arrays into memory for queries and transforms.
- Ive recently gone up to 32GB DDR4 3600 (going to go to 64) and an R9 5900X. It’s done nothing huge for gaming, but it’s increased my data crunching tasks significantly.
What I have right now…
Guts
- Asus PRIME X570-P ATX AM4 Motherboard
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 3.7 GHz 12-Core Processor
- MSI MECH 2X Radeon RX 6700 XT 12 GB Video Card
- Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory
Storage (This is way behind)
- Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
- Silicon Power UD90 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
- And some ancient 2TB 7200 HDD that’s a dying archive only drive
Primary display
- Acer Nitro XZ272U Pbmiiphx 27.0" 2560 x 1440 165 Hz Curved Monitor
Cooling
- Lian Li Lancool II Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case
- Deepcool LT520 85.85 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Where I’m stuck…
- Should I go up to AM5 even though I just got the 5900X?
- Do I then go DDR5 instead of 64GB DDR4 or am I getting too many year’s ahead of myself?
- The 6700XT is not overclocking friendly, for sim racing I may need to bump up if going for more display.
- For storage, what’s the best way to go for a bunch of games installed, but also not having stuff get in the way of data crunching applications and calculations? Should I reserve a drive purely for data? Can I dedicate anything to it on top of the 64GM RAM coming in?
- Lastly, the display conundrum for sim racing; VR, TV, triples… 49" UW on top of any above upgrades is just way over budget.
I’m basically just after ideas of what to prioritise next, what can wait a while, and what path I should be starting on for future-proofing without spending the budget on future gear too soon while it’s all expensive.
Advice much appreciated.
To give yourself a boost in gaming, you pretty much need a better GPU. The 6700XT is considered the minimum entry point for 1440p gaming. Not that lesser cards can’t do it, but that’s what will give you the best experience for 1440p on the lower end.
I’m a bit rusty on current gen cards, but you’ll probably want to aim for something better than that that does PCIe4 with 16+GB of VRAM on a 256-bit bus. That will give you the most performance increase.
Unless you feel like you’re maxing out your R9 5900 for computing, probably don’t need to focus on that upgrade other than RAM for a while.
If it was me and my money, I’d do:
- GPU
- RAM
- Monitor(s)
- ??? VR and Steering Wheel ???
- CPU + RAM + Motherboard
If you can wait, Christmas time usually sees lots of sales, so I wouldn’t bother looking for parts until Black Friday through Christmas to save money.
Cool, thanks. I suppose doing GPU next makes most sense. Anything else would hold out until the next major switch to a new board with newer gen sockets/slots.
GPU shopping is the worst lol. But I have the luxury of checking in on sales like you say, since everything is working fine at the moment.
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