BanthaFodder23

I guess just to come back to this - you're 100% right, but going hard on either platform or GPU now means shelling out a lot more initially than my stopgap solutions. If I reframed the original question and said I only have £600 quid to spend - anyone have any thoughts on which side I'm better off investing it in?

Serious question, what benefit am I going to get from a 7800x3d in the next 18 months (before I can drop a zen5/6 x3d part in) vs a 7600 which seems like a very capable gaming CPU (especially when OC'd). Unless I go up to a £1k+ tier GPU I'm likely to always be GPU bound, so the extra £120 odd quid seems unnessecary?

Yeah, makes sense. I guess I'm kind of resigning myself for a 'good enough for now' option and trying to keep my outlay right now as low as I can. It might end up costing me more in the long run for exactly the point you make though.

I've already got a 1200w PSU, about 5TB of storage between m.2 SSD's and larger HDD's so I can save money there. I guess I'm not keen on a total rebuild because for £1500 quid I'll be making compromises. I'd rather upgrade half now and half next year / year after and keep the cash for the wedding fund!

Budget (including currency): £1500 (GBP) - although in practice I'd like to spend as little as possible Country: United Kingdom Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming - Massive variety. AAA such as Jedi Survivor/Starfield/AC Mirage, sims like Anno, Civ & Factorio and casual MP games recently including Fall Guys, Payday, WoT 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): Hi All, I built my current rig back in 2018 which is a 1080ti, 8700k (OC'd to 4.9), 32gb DDR4 (not sure on speed but it's nothing fancy) and 5 years down the line it's starting to show it's age and I'm now struggling to hit 60 fps on my 3440x1440 ultrawide without cranking the settings right down - Starfield was unplayable. I'm slightly depressed at how much I spent then and what the same money will get me now. I'm also getting married next year which makes it hard to justify a complete rebuild. In my head I've got a couple of options: -Buy a 6950xt at £550ish new which seems like the best bang for buck GPU option which will tie me over for now, the wait until AMD releases Zen5 and pick up a 7800x3d/ B650 combination when the prices fall. -Stick with my 1080ti (for now) & platform rebuild with a b650, Ryzen 7600 combination for £600/650 (CPU, Mobo, RAM, Cooler). Wait for something decent to happen in the GPU market where I can get a decent performance uplift for £5/600 and have an upgrade path to Zen5/6. I'll stick with my current case, PSU and I don't need any peripherals etc. Ultimately my target is to be able to play AAA games at 120hz on my 3440x1440 monitor (I've no plans to upgrade it any time soon) at the best quality I can. I could go the whole hog and do a total rebuild, but I'd be compromising on either GPU or CPU if I do and it seems like a waste of money given where things are in the current market and that I still have a perfectly servicable build. So the question is really: -GPU today, but one that's a generation behind 'as new'. Suffer being CPU limited (and unable to play things like Starfield properly for now) for now in search of a better deal next year. -CPU & platform today with a hopefully decent upgrade path to avoid this total rebuild situation in the future, and deal without any real gaming improvements until the low end GPU's are far enough ahead of my 1080ti to make something worthwile buying. Ask me on a different day and I'll give a different preference. As a secondary note, anyone with any advice on decent B650 boards would be great. The whole idea of going Zen4 rather than saving with Zen3 and reusing things like RAM is to have an upgrade path. As a final note, I'll resell my old components once they're upgraded to claw a little cash back.

Thanks for the responses both As I said, I'm 100% aware this sensible in terms of benefit and there is a lot can go wrong - the main appeal of this is the the challenge and to practice for other projects, so I'm not going to be easily dissuaded. I'm mainly looking to see if anyone who's actually done it ran into any problems I could avoid, specifically around the heat-sink materials on my GPU. @Fasauceome Out of interest, are there any specific pastes would you recommend more than others?

Hi - first post here so be kind! I'm looking at experimenting with liquid metal in my PC, the only justification is that I don't really have much else to do other than tinker in lockdown (I'm in the UK) and it seemed like a pretty low cost (unless I brick something) thing to play around with. Of the components I can replace the TIM on, my GPU is the one I care about bricking the least as I've been eyeing an upgrade - its also where I get the most thermal throttling, I can get between a 5/10 FPS boost (and a lot more stability) in some games by cranking the fans up to max using afterburner if I'm willing to deal with the sound. The problem is; there is plenty of advice around saying you shouldn't do it, but I've found nothing reliable from people who have done it and what the results are. Can anyone with any experience of this weigh in? My main concern is what the material on the GPU heat-sink is and that its not Aluminium (I'm aware of the chemistry around electrolysis and what happens to liquid metal applications over time). I'm running: -GTX 1080 ti Founders (No OC) -Intel 8700k, OC'd to 4.88 mhz (with a beefy air cooler, no issues or throttling here) -120hz, 3440 x 1400 monitor NB. I'm aware this isn't the most sensible project, nor are the potential for gains that high. If anything this is practice for other projects I have in mind further down the line.