watts300

That includes Windows. Nice. My kid just sent me this as a potential idea: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/jJYHjZ. Omitting that 4TB drive, what do you think?

Oh ya, what I meant was that we'll be reinstalling Windows fresh on a brand new drive, so we'll need new SSD storage. The ssd we have now will become secondary storage.

I don't think we have a preference. Whichever makes more sense and performance for the budget. I'm editing the original post above with the gpu I just ordered.

Budget (including currency): $1000ish. Country: USA Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): I'm looking to help my adult kid build a new gaming computer. Not much will be re-used, except for the case (NZXT S340) and the power supply (EVGA Supernova 850w G2), and peripherals (keyboard, mouse, speakers, display). The current SSD will be downgraded to secondary (non-C: drive) storage. I just ordered an ASRock Phantom Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB. She'll using the budget mentioned above to buy the remaining parts. Currently playing on a 1440p display; the interest in a 4K display is obviously present, but not included in the budget. I'm just mentioning it in case it affects any parts recommendations. So unless I'm forgetting something, I think what we'd need is a motherboard, CPU, RAM, and main storage. Maybe some cooling fan recommendations? Not too interested in overclocking. Our choice of AMD versus Intel is whichever one has the newest current generation.

Where are we with those?

I was looking at October as the target for purchases due to a birthday that month. But sounds like October would be a bad month to upgrade then, no?

Budget (including currency): $2000 Country: USA Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Reusing from current system: EVGA SuperNova 750W Platinum power supply, NZXT S340 case, and storage drives. Playing at 1440 resolution, 60hz. Keyboard and mouse and other peripherals will be carried over. We want to upgrade from a 980ti and i7 6700 system. I'm expecting to need: graphics card, motherboard, CPU/cooler, and memory. I'm a bit overwhelmed regarding figuring out where we currently are in the life cycles of current-generation products from the different manufacturers. I haven't shopped for computer parts in literally years. I would appreciate some guidance. I see that DDR5 is a thing now, as is the soon-to-be Nvidia 4000 series. What's current from Intel? From AMD? Which socket is what? Does either AMD or Intel have a gaming performance edge over the other?

No not really. The inability to use any other drives (without slow-down) with NVMe is a dealbreaker. In the thread I learned about usage for any future builds, but for the build I have now, SATA 2.5 drives will do.

Very interesting. It also sounds like if a difference is noticed (as you said, it probably wouldn’t) it doesn’t come with a good trade-off. I don’t like not being able to use sata drives unless it slows down the rest of it. I feel like I’ve learned that my current PC status is “It’s still good enough, just upgrade the video card.” Which is fine by me.

Even in open world 3D gaming? I would have thought faster storage technology would help with that.

Dare I ask ... do you have a recommendation for another technology that would still be an upgrade? The sata drive I have now is whatever 6Gbps is in real-life usage. If that can be bumped up with a new drive but still allow me to use other (slower) drives (the ones I have now) then I’d like to do that. Otherwise, I’ll consider an erase and reinstall.

Ok I see what you mean. It’s a daily driver computer. Media consumption. And also gaming yes. I’m looking for a path to give it a refresh. Currently has a 980ti, too. I figured an NVMe drive would be a nice-to-have in the meantime until 3070s start to exist in the wild again.

Are you referring to the generation of board I have? Do newer motherboard platforms have features that don’t create a bottleneck like that? I would be nice to have a fast NVMe boot drive and still use the slower 2.5” sata ssds I have currently. If a new MB purchase would mean that ability, I’d find myself considering a new MB.

I’m not sure what you mean - an upgrade to improve performance.

Okay so any other storage would need to be external to not slow down the 970?