Future proof for how long?

[MDA1998]

Built the following rig back in August 2022. I play 1080p only but my question is for how long this will last me and which components do I need to sell and upgrade in the times to come if I plan to switch over to 1440p. The upcoming AAA Titles are going to be demanding and I wish to play everything at high settings. Will 4070 Ti be worth it with this rig? 

 

Specs;

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

GPU: MSI RTX 3060 Ti 8GB

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32 gb 3600 mhz 

MOBO: ASUS Prime B550M 

LED: ASUS VG258Q 165hz 1080p 24.5 inch 

Casing: NZXT H510 Flow 

 

[spaghet rat]

19 minutes ago, MDA1998 said:

Built the following rig back in August 2022. I play 1080p only but my question is for how long this will last me and which components do I need to sell and upgrade in the times to come if I plan to switch over to 1440p. The upcoming AAA Titles are going to be demanding and I wish to play everything at high settings. Will 4070 Ti be worth it with this rig? 

 

Specs;

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

GPU: MSI RTX 3060 Ti 8GB

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32 gb 3600 mhz 

MOBO: ASUS Prime B550M 

LED: ASUS VG258Q 165hz 1080p 24.5 inch 

Casing: NZXT H510 Flow 

 

the gpu may be a cause for concern in the future because the only 8 gigs of vram but everything else looks solid.

[spaghet rat]

i would not waste money on a new nvidia gpu. get a radeon rx 6800xt and you will be set for a while.

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 minutes ago, spaghet rat said:

i would not waste money on a new nvidia gpu. get a radeon rx 6800xt and you will be set for a while.

That really depends if you are going to play games with Raytracing and/or that support DLSS.

I'd argue that if you're worrying about "future proofing", then Raytracing is an important consideration as its a key feature future games will be using.

[thewarden00]

There will always be faster parts being released right after you've made a purchase.  The question is what you find acceptable and which games you'll be playing specifically.  From a quick glance at specs I might assume that your GPU is going to be the limiting factor first, especially moving from 1080p to 1440p. 

 

As covered extensively by HardwareUnboxed (https://www.youtube.com/@Hardwareunboxed) the amount of VRAM on graphics cards is likely to be a major factor for the next few years.  The 4070Ti is a solid upgrade over 3060Ti (~40% to 50% faster in some cases) but unless you're already running into performance issues it is almost always better to wait.

 

Your listed specs are one generation behind current and it's very common for people to wait three or more generations before upgrading, longer if there's no immediate need.

 

 

Edited May 24, 2023 by thewarden00
clarification

[QwertyChouskie]

34 minutes ago, MDA1998 said:

Built the following rig back in August 2022. I play 1080p only but my question is for how long this will last me and which components do I need to sell and upgrade in the times to come if I plan to switch over to 1440p. The upcoming AAA Titles are going to be demanding and I wish to play everything at high settings. Will 4070 Ti be worth it with this rig? 

 

Specs;

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

GPU: MSI RTX 3060 Ti 8GB

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32 gb 3600 mhz 

MOBO: ASUS Prime B550M 

LED: ASUS VG258Q 165hz 1080p 24.5 inch 

Casing: NZXT H510 Flow 

 

The real answer is use it until you are no longer satisfied by the performance, then evaluate upgrade options at that point.

[johnno23]

nope......... 40 series are totally over priced and any benefit you get is minimal unless you start going 4k.

your system can handle almost anything you throw at it with 1080p and pretty much all games at high settings on a 1440p.

just dont fall into the ultra setting trap.........Ultra is almost impossible to see in a game when running compared to high settings.

And even then you can just drop the shadows to medium and gain a few FPS.

[ImWilly]

3 hours ago, MDA1998 said:

Built the following rig back in August 2022. I play 1080p only but my question is for how long this will last me and which components do I need to sell and upgrade in the times to come if I plan to switch over to 1440p.

 

 

 

The way I see it, as long as you're playing on 1080p, no necessary upgrade is required, and as this community has suggested, you don't really need to play at ultra setting as it will hog a lot of GPU VRAM with little benefits on visual compared to high setting.

But if you're planning to upgrade monitor and GPU to accommodate 1440p, I would say RX 6800 XT is a good choice (if your main rig is focused on gaming and not for specific task such as AI training or super specific encoding production)

If you really want to use NVIDIA, I would suggest RTX 3070TI or RTX 3080, but always check pricing to get a good deal

 

[Arika]

No such thing as future proof.

[Avocado Diaboli]

Weird Al was right in 1999

 

In all seriousness, you have two paths: Chasing the latest tech in the futile hope of staying ahead of the curve or playing the games you want to play on your current hardware for as long as possible and upgrading once you notice your machine can't actually keep up anymore with the demand. I know which option I would choose.

[LAwLz]

Buy what you need, when you need it.

Don't buy more expensive stuff than you need because "in the future, I might need it", because the future is very hard to predict and your needs might change.

 

What you think you might want two years from now might completely change. Chances are it probably has. A new feature might come up that you really want and therefore your old card, even if it was high-end at the time, might not even be as good as a midrange card for your specific needs.

 

For example, imagine if you bought a really high-end graphics card because you were planning on streaming to Twitch and you were planning on streaming the latest COD. You buy a really beefy GPU to handle it. Then the year after Twitch allows you to stream AV1, which your GPU might not support, and you ended up only streaming Hearhtstone, a really easy game to stream. All of a sudden a newer GPU for half the price might actually be better for your needs.

 

Another example that happened to me was that I got into AI art, and AI in general. As it turns out, the most popular programs for that only run on Nvidia GPUs. If I had bought an AMD GPU before, I might not have been able to run those programs at all. But the reverse could have been true as well, which is what happened with mining (in the beginning was mostly focused on AMD cards).

 

 

When people say they want to "future proof" they are usually talking about spending more money than they actually need now, in the hopes that their build will last them longer. When people say "there is no such thing as future proofing" they generally mean that the future is very unpredictable and you usually just end up wasting money on things you don't need.

Plus, a lot of "enthusiasts" upgrade their PCs way more often than they need to begin with. They never even reach the point where the extra money spent actually mattered. They buy a GTX 1080 instead of a GTX 1070 because they want their PC to last 3 years instead of 2, but then they upgrade their PC anyway after only 2 years. 

"Future proofing" usually just ends up being an excuse used by people to justify buying more expensive things than they actually need.

 

 

With all that being said, I believe there are some components that are more "future-proof-able" than others, but it's the "boring" stuff that people generally don't think about when they talk about "future-proofing".

 

Cases rarely change, so if you buy a nice-looking case with stuff like USB-C and support for an ATX motherboard, you are probably set for several builds.

 

If you buy a high-quality PSU of a decent size you will be able to reuse that baby for like 10 years. 

 

High-quality fans can last for years too. The more expensive CPU coolers usually get new mounting kits for new sockets as well, so if you buy for example a Noctua CPU cooler you can probably keep using it over and over.

 

Most peripherals are very "future-proof-able". Mice, keyboards, headphones, office chairs, desks, microphones, speakers. All of those are things that can last a really long time and that I see a lot of people overlook. They buy 1500-dollar computers every 2-3 years and then don't want to spend 300-400 dollars on a good chair that can last them 10+ years.

[johnno23]

45 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

They buy 1500-dollar computers every 2-3 years and then don't want to spend 300-400 dollars on a good chair that can last them 10+ years.

so very true and then so often the same people complain they have back ache.

[Holmes108]

5 hours ago, Arika S said:

No such thing as future proof.

 

Sure there is. All people mean by the term is extending the time before upgrading by a reasonable amount. Otherwise you're effectively saying there's no such thing as a bad buy.  e.g.: 8GB cards are perfectly fine today, but buying one right now might not be the best for future proofing.

[Avocado Diaboli]

1 hour ago, Holmes108 said:

Sure there is. All people mean by the term is extending the time before upgrading by a reasonable amount. Otherwise you're effectively saying there's no such thing as a bad buy.  e.g.: 8GB cards are perfectly fine today, but buying one right now might not be the best for future proofing.

Buying a bad product today is not the opposite of future proofing.

 

Besides, what's a reasonable amount? As I outlined in my previous post, I consider that it's time to upgrade when:

1. the hardware can't keep up anymore with my needs.
2. newer hardware offers me new possibilities I can't reasonably achieve with what I already have.

Anything earlier than either of those two scenarios (i.e. upgrading just because you feel like it or you're chasing the best performance) means you already shouldn't care about future proofing and anything later basically makes any attempt to future proof pointless in the first place, because the two scenarios already outline the Goldilocks zones where you should upgrade. 

[Holmes108]

4 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Buying a bad product today is not the opposite of future proofing.

 

 

 

Not necessarily, that's correct. And yes, we will all have different ideas of what it means, and none of it is clear cut. But I strongly disagree with the sentiment I see around here sometimes  that it's a meaningless term.

[Avocado Diaboli]

2 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

Not necessarily, that's correct. And yes, we will all have different ideas of what it means, and none of it is clear cut. But I strongly disagree with the sentiment I see around here sometimes  that it's a meaningless term.

It is meaningless though, because it never takes cost into consideration.

 

Realistically, any advice on what hardware to buy should always be "the best you can buy for the amount of money you can/are willing to spend". If that means you can only buy a bad product today, you obviously can't think about future performance. The advice then is obviously "save up and wait until you can afford a non-bad product".  After that, the previous two scenarios kick in.

 

By buying the best you can afford today, you're already as future proof as you're reasonably going to get, because you can never tell what will happen in the future, so it's a concern that always comes dead last after every other important factor. That's why it's meaningless, because if you prioritize it above any other metric, you will hamstring yourself somehow.

[Holmes108]

16 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

It is meaningless though, because it never takes cost into consideration.

 

Realistically, any advice on what hardware to buy should always be "the best you can buy for the amount of money you can/are willing to spend". If that means you can only buy a bad product today, you obviously can't think about future performance. The advice then is obviously "save up and wait until you can afford a non-bad product".  After that, the previous two scenarios kick in.

 

By buying the best you can afford today, you're already as future proof as you're reasonably going to get, because you can never tell what will happen in the future, so it's a concern that always comes dead last after every other important factor. That's why it's meaningless, because if you prioritize it above any other metric, you will hamstring yourself somehow.

 

"What you can afford" can be equally meaningless. Maybe an extra $50 to a build is trivial to me. That doesn't mean I want to throw money away though. But there's still figuring out where that $50 should go... or if the extra $50 is necessary at all.

 

Spending a bit extra to go from 16GB to 32GB of system RAM? Perhaps a waste.

Spending a bit extra to go from 8GB to 16GB VRAM? Maybe not?

Going from 12GB to 16GB of VRAM? Becomes slightly less clear maybe?

 

After considering budget, those are all factors of "future proofing" as far as I'm concerned. 

 

Edit: and then also factoring in knowledge of upcoming products is important too. Is a new socket around the corner? Maybe it's relevant, maybe it's not. It's not meaningless though.

 

Edit 2: I suspect some of this disagreement may be semantics more than anything else. You might call it "good buy vs bad buy" and others like me consider it a form of future proofing. But I don't see the need to get hung up on labels.

 

The importance of researching and considering which components to put your money into, and when to go up a tier and when not to seems obvious to me.

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, Holmes108 said:

"What you can afford" can be equally meaningless. Maybe an extra $50 to a build is trivial to me. That doesn't mean I want to throw money away though. But there's still figuring out where that $50 should go... or if the extra $50 is necessary at all.

 

Spending a bit extra to go from 16GB to 32GB of system RAM? Perhaps a waste.

Spending a bit extra to go from 8GB to 16GB VRAM? Maybe not?

Going from 12GB to 16GB of VRAM? Becomes slightly less clear maybe?

 

After considering budget, those are all factors of "future proofing" as far as I'm concerned. 

 

Edit: and then also factoring in knowledge of upcoming products is important too. Is a new socket around the corner? Maybe it's relevant, maybe it's not. It's not meaningless though.

 

Edit 2: I suspect some of this disagreement may be semantics more than anything else. You might call it "good buy vs bad buy" and others like me consider it a form of future proofing. But I don't see the need to get hung up on labels.

 

The importance of researching and considering which components to put your money into, and when to go up a tier and when not to seems obvious to me.

To me, that is not "future-proofing".

 

When people say "future-proofing", it's usually along the lines of "should I spend an extra 200 dollars on this component even though I don't need it today".

 

Buying 16GB of RAM because you know you need it already, or need it soon, is not "future-proofing" to me. That's just common sense. That is "buy what you need, when you need it".

 

Buying 32GB of RAM when you only need 8 today, because you *think* that in 3-4 years, you might need more than 16GB is the type of thing I usually see when it comes to "future-proofing".

 

 

Or buying an i7 even though the i5 is more than enough for your current needs, in the hopes that it will last longer. I'd say that most people don't need to upgrade their processors very often. I go roughly 5 years between CPU upgrades, and I doubt most people even need to upgrade that often. 

At that point, 5 years down the line, I don't really think it matters if you got an i5 or an i7, you will want to upgrade anyway because the newer stuff is so much better.

I doubt there are many people out there with a Ryzen 1600X that are thinking "damn, if only I had bought a 1700X instead then I wouldn't feel the need to upgrade to a 7600X". I doubt someone with a Ryzen 1600X that is considering buying a 7600X would change their mind if they were offered a free 1700X either. They probably want to upgrade to the newer platform anyway.

I think that's where the whole "I am going to future-proof this PC" breaks down. Because when their PC is at the point where it needs an upgrade then progress has made it so that both the midrange and high-end stuff they were choosing between are equally obsolete.

[Holmes108]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

To me, that is not "future-proofing".

 

When people say "future-proofing", it's usually along the lines of "should I spend an extra 200 dollars on this component even though I don't need it today".

 

Buying 16GB of RAM because you know you need it already, or need it soon, is not "future-proofing" to me. That's just common sense. That is "buy what you need, when you need it".

 

Buying 32GB of RAM when you only need 8 today, because you *think* that in 3-4 years, you might need more than 16GB is the type of thing I usually see when it comes to "future-proofing".

 

 

Or buying an i7 even though the i5 is more than enough for your current needs, in the hopes that it will last longer. I'd say that most people don't need to upgrade their processors very often. I go roughly 5 years between CPU upgrades, and I doubt most people even need to upgrade that often. 

At that point, 5 years down the line, I don't really think it matters if you got an i5 or an i7, you will want to upgrade anyway because the newer stuff is so much better.

I doubt there are many people out there with a Ryzen 1600X that are thinking "damn, if only I had bought a 1700X instead then I wouldn't feel the need to upgrade to a 7600X". I doubt someone with a Ryzen 1600X that is considering buying a 7600X would change their mind if they were offered a free 1700X either. They probably want to upgrade to the newer platform anyway.

I think that's where the whole "I am going to future-proof this PC" breaks down. Because when their PC is at the point where it needs an upgrade then progress has made it so that both the midrange and high-end stuff they were choosing between are equally obsolete.

 

That sounds more like a mind set of a frequent upgrader, like most of us here. But my wife currently has an I7 4790K and a GTX970. I'm glad it was a pretty top of the line computer back in the day because it still performs admirably at 1080 all these years later. She still plays Ark, Warzone, you name it.

 

That's an extreme example, and not necessarily one you can strive for, or predict, but I think it's a decent example. If you have a choice today between a PC with 32GB of RAM and a 1060, or a PC with 16GB of ram and a 3070, I think the 2nd PC is more "future proof" (ie, it will last you longer. Also, pretend it's a laptop and you can't upgrade the ram later lol). That's all I think most people are talking about when talking future proofing. Trying to make sure you don't end up with an obsolete component, in, say, a year or two from now. 

 

The discussion, examples and advice can vary wildly from one component to another, but that's all I think people are talking about with the "F" word. 

 

Edit: And I think saying "buy the best you can afford" is at least as meaningless as the term futureproofing. What's the "best"? Maybe I can afford 64GB of RAM, but I shouldn't buy that. It won't futureproof my system nearly as much as a better CPU or GPU.

[cmndr]

Things you can future proof:
1. Shoes

2. Shovel
3. Clothing
4. Ethernet cable going into a wall, not to be disturbed for 20-30 years


Things you can NOT future proof:

1. Computers
2. Phones
3. Tablets
4. Servers

 

These aren't exhaustive lists. Do commit it to memory though. Your computer is NOT future proof. The way you handle the future is by spending as little as possible to get your immediate and near-term use cases handled and to then hold out some budget for the future. 

[Holmes108]

Nah, I think some of you guys have a super narrow view of what the term should mean. No reasonable person is suggesting you can make it so your PC will be 100% competent in every way you expect X years from now, and you should obviously not over extend yourself financially for any of it. But again,it's not about any of that. It's about being smart and strategic in where to splurge more, which components you should choose to invest in. When selecting from different tiers, which components decisions like that are more important for. 

 

If you're telling anyone right now "If you're in the market for a videocard, you might not want to buy an 8GB card today", you're talking about future proofing. (I happen to think 8GB will still be fine for a while, btw... I just know it's a big conversation right now).

 

I still think it's mostly semantics. Some people have a real aversion to some phrases here, like "bottleneck". Yes, we all know every system has a bottleneck. But when the majority of people mention it, it's pretty obvious they mean BAD bottleneck. Like how putting a 4090 in my wife's aformentioned 4th gen intel build would be pretty stupid.  But then I'm just opening another can of worms here I supposed, lmao.

[Avocado Diaboli]

8 hours ago, Holmes108 said:

If you're telling anyone right now "If you're in the market for a videocard, you might not want to buy an 8GB card today", you're talking about future proofing. (I happen to think 8GB will still be fine for a while, btw... I just know it's a big conversation right now).

No, because there are games out right now where 8GB of VRAM isn't enough anymore, some at 1080p and quite a few more at 1440p. That's not a future that's yet to come, it's here already. That's why I said buying a bad product today is not the opposite of future proofing and buying a good product today is not future proofing.

[Holmes108]

4 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

No, because there are games out right now where 8GB of VRAM isn't enough anymore, some at 1080p and quite a few more at 1440p. That's not a future that's yet to come, it's here already. That's why I said buying a bad product today is not the opposite of future proofing and buying a good product today is not future proofing.

 

Not that I'm saying going more VRAM isn't good advice, but I think a majority of the current issues are more related to optimization. There's no reason the most recent high profile issue games couldn't run better. More VRAM would indeed help solve it, but it shouldn't have to be the solution. Even the fact that so many NVIDIA cards are still coming with 8GB practically backs this up. 

 

Not to defend them. I think their pricing has been insane, and for the cost it would take, cards should still come with more, and they should realize people expect more. But I also don't think 'greed' is the only answer (for the VRAM specifically). I don't see them releasing a line of cards in which half of them will be useless in a year. I think they understand the landscape well enough to know it'll be okay. Is "okay" good enough? What level of graphics are good enough? That's up for debate. But the vast majority of games will still run just fine on 8GB cards for the foreseeable future. 

 

Edit: If devs smarten up a bit. If they don't they're gonna feel the wrath of people though. That's kinda the sentiment for most PC ports these days in general though.

[LAwLz]

17 hours ago, Holmes108 said:

Nah, I think some of you guys have a super narrow view of what the term should mean. No reasonable person is suggesting you can make it so your PC will be 100% competent in every way you expect X years from now, and you should obviously not over extend yourself financially for any of it. But again,it's not about any of that. It's about being smart and strategic in where to splurge more, which components you should choose to invest in. When selecting from different tiers, which components decisions like that are more important for. 

 

If you're telling anyone right now "If you're in the market for a videocard, you might not want to buy an 8GB card today", you're talking about future proofing. (I happen to think 8GB will still be fine for a while, btw... I just know it's a big conversation right now).

 

I still think it's mostly semantics. Some people have a real aversion to some phrases here, like "bottleneck". Yes, we all know every system has a bottleneck. But when the majority of people mention it, it's pretty obvious they mean BAD bottleneck. Like how putting a 4090 in my wife's aformentioned 4th gen intel build would be pretty stupid.  But then I'm just opening another can of worms here I supposed, lmao.

I think that being strategic in how you allocate your budget is good advice, but from what I have seen that's not what people ask about when they say they want to "future-proof their PC". In this case, OP is talking about upgrading his 3060 Ti to a 4070 Ti because he MIGHT play 1440p games in the future, and when he starts doing that his 3060 Ti MIGHT not be able to handle it anymore.

 

That is the type of "future-proofing" I see people do all the time, and it doesn't work. The better advice would be "buy a 4070 Ti when you start playing 1440p games instead of preemptively buying it", because all those MIGHT and IFs might never occur, and if they do occur the price of the 4070 Ti might have gone down a lot or maybe we even have a 5070 Ti which gives higher performance per dollar.

 

There are very few times in the history of computer hardware where it has been beneficial to buy something BEFORE you need it, rather than when you need it. Also, OP literally bought his PC 8 months ago and is already thinking of upgrading it. That is the typical "future-proofer" I see on this forum. They don't actually care about "future-proofing" but rather they just want an excuse to buy a new expensive and shiny thing that they don't actually need, but need a way to justify it. 

[Holmes108]

20 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I think that being strategic in how you allocate your budget is good advice, but from what I have seen that's not what people ask about when they say they want to "future-proof their PC". In this case, OP is talking about upgrading his 3060 Ti to a 4070 Ti because he MIGHT play 1440p games in the future, and when he starts doing that his 3060 Ti MIGHT not be able to handle it anymore.

 

That is the type of "future-proofing" I see people do all the time, and it doesn't work.

 

Yes, I don't disagree with any of that. I guess the main difference in this particular case is upgrading (when you have very capable components) vs. considerations for a new system. Getting rid of something that's currently fully functional and doing the job usually makes no sense. I definitely agree there.