For gaming enthusiasts that are looking to build or purchase a new rig.

$3500? Easy there moneybags!

I spent less than half that.

holy shitcicles batman that's a lot of bread for a room heater...


seriously though theres no reason to spend out more than $300 on any part for a pc as a home user/gamer... and those enthusiast grade cards are just cash sinks if your not doing heavy graphics work like video encoding or games design, they don't materially add to your ability to enjoy a game just hover cash out of your wallet and heat up the room a lot meaning your burning even more cash on the air con to cool it back down again /

hell even as a hobbyist doing a couple of hours of videos a week theres no point in upgrading from an fx8350 and rx480 8gb gfx card to a newer system until either they drop the prices drastically or something breaks ... although I did invest in an upgrade on the water cooler and a new pc case (went from a 5 yr old h80i to a h115i, and swapped my old first generation storm scout case to a mastercase5, along with a full set of new fans) in a couple of years though when the second or third generation of threadripper and vega cards are out and the current generation are down to the sub $200 price range theres a slim chance I might make the change 

the last time I spent more than $800 on a pc was 1997 when I got suckered into getting a pc for the first time (one of the latest generation of Cyrix instead jobs) 

To be honest even without the price of GPUs being at an all time high I would advise people to wait if they're building a high end rig meant for 4k gaming.

Nvidia is going to announce their new Volta architecture cards later this year, and they're going to be the first cards that will be capable of reliably maintaining 60 FPS @ 4k on ultra in modern games without needing to get multiple video cards.

Of course, they'll probably be expensive as shit as well.

At least I work from home, so my nice gaming rig is a "work expense" due to the fact that I need to use my computer. My upgrades tend to not actually cost a great deal of money all things considered because of that.

That and GPU is the only thing I'm aiming to upgrade anyway.

sure a 5 year plan is a sorta good way to look at it but you only need 16gb of ram today and you only need a single 8gb gfx card, a brand new ryzen 7 1700x with a cheap mobo (upgrade to a better one in a year or two wen its going to be 3worth pushing it past stock speeds)  my 5 year plan that turned into an 8 year plan was buy an expansive case and psu, get a top of the line gfx card and semi decent cpu with a cheap mobo 2 ssd's and a couple of large spinner drives alongside a blu ray combi drive (which still works despite being 7 years old) that all cost about $700, and a half of that was the gfx card, shit I got such a good deal on the day I bought 3 of everything and built two extra pc's, in the years since I've had to rma 2 of the psu's all of the gfx cards the mobo's and 2 of the cpu's (mostly because I went with stuff that had a 5+ year warranty on it) ive spent maybe another $600 on the upgraded parts I've put in the system after the rma'd parts were either replaced new for old or refunded at full purchase price (actually I've rma'd the gfx cards multiple times as none of them ever lasted 2 full years) I've upgraded from 8gb or 16 gb of ram and added a couple of extra ssd's 

my original build cost $2250 for 3 pc's (all of which are still in use today) theres literally zero point in spending up front on any part because new stuff comes out all the time and your always going to want to upgrade something or replace something that just looks like shit compared to the new stuff....

stay away from NVidia because without g-sync its no better than budget amd, except g-sync monitors cost as much as the graphics cards so you might as well go with amd cards and get a freesync monitor at the same price as a basic 1ms one, monitors are another area where price is a fallacy, there life-ex at around 5 years max, if its cost price is more than $50 a year its too expensive to be disposable....  buy cheap and replace when ssomething better comes along or it starts to look dull (pretty much the best way to stay up to date on everything pc related other than the PSU and if your getting one a water block really) 

thinks like keyboards and mice I spend money on and the chair I really spent some cash on, my keyboards have been the g15 version 1 through 5 and then the g19>g19s (rma'd a few times and replaced with newer versions, until the g19s went bye bye after 23 months and they gave me a full refund since the new versions didn't have the screen) the g500s mouse and my chair is an ergo wave mesh 24hour rated one that cost almost as much as my original pc (oddly also been rma'd due to materials fault that left it in bits one morning after 4.5 years)  

the bits your going to use for a long time and need to feel nice in your hands spend the money on but don't bother on the bits in the case under the desk, similarly with headset, if it costs more than $25 its a rip off, you'll be lucky if it lasts a year especially if your constantly taking it on/off and wireless ones might save you from the inevitable head yank when you forget its on your head but they break even more often......   just find a cheap one thats comfortable to wear and has decent sound (I liked my current pair that much I bought 4 more of them and after testing shoved them under the bed, just a cheap set of 5.1 surround sound units from amazon via china cost me around $70)  


you can get carried away with buying the latest greatest bit of tech only for it to be money down the drain a few months later when the next best thing comes out and you realise you bought a very expensive ceramic heater for your lounge...... 

oh and stay away from anthill /NVidia if long term ownership is your goal, every time they release something new the new drivers pushed out via update downgrade your current cards performance, its one of the major ways they keep people interested in buying new stuff all the time.... otoh so far amd has always tried to upgrade the output via new drivers over time (true this can cause things to overwork and thus die but if its several years old that could also just be a poor component, and there not deliberately overpumping stuff to make it burn out and force a replacement......

honestly anyone who  thinks there going to buy something this year be suing it daily and still have it working in 5 years time without loads of upgrades is deluded about just how often "planned obsolescence" comes into play especially when it comes to things like mossfet /capacitor choice, a certain company has even bragged in the past that it was able to know exactly how many hours of runtime a pc had by the state of the capacitors fitted to the mobo (cant remember if it was dell or hp) anything over 12 months old and they started to drop in performance consistently undervolting the cpu... because the substrate was formulated that wayand within 26 months at least one cap would of started to deform if not leak and cease to operate ... and since it was such a cheap repair (grab a new mobo off the shelf) they didn't care how many got rma'd if something went off early .....

the proble mwiht razer products is how long they take ot put out a driver update each time a new game comes out and there products are causing black screens.... 

I sent my razer keyboard back and got a corsair k70rgb instead much less hassle  in that regard (thank god for the 30 day money back no questions policy in most online stores) 

Tell that to my 5 year old rig that I use daily, including working hours, and is still running modern games just fine at 1080p and even well optimized ones like DOOM at 1440p. This isn't even the first time I've built a rig to last this long.

Literally the only upgrade I've made to this thing is I bought a SSD for it a month ago because I ran out of space on my HDD and I figured I might as well get a faster drive to install the games I'm playing the most on.

I did say "this year"

things have changed a lot in the last 5 years where tech is concerned and not for the better...
you can tell this just by looking at the standard of warranty offered most things now your lucky to get 1 or 2 years warranty with them unless your buying the pro or business grade stuff then you might still find the same quality standards your expecting but then again maybe not....

and it doesn't strike you as odd that the 1080 is sub par to the lesser iteration cards ? the 1080 should be either walking all over the 1070ti or be on output performance parity with it despite the age of the 1080.... a clear indication of just how much NVidia downgrades performance of its older generation cards over time, indeed benchmarks for the older cards get worse with every driver update, its been that way ever since the 8600gt.... and the 1080 on release was doing 4k at 60fps without any problems (indeed that was its primary selling point over the lesser 1070 and 1060's) the video standard hasn't changed since it was released the cpu's and ram only got better since then so the only reason its not holding parity with the 1070ti is deliberate performance degradation brought about through updates ..... 

I think if I was about to upgrade the graphics then I would opt for the new vega 64 cards and save at least 50% of the purchase price up front rather than be waiting for the next best thing from NVidia, hell you can order 2 of the new vega cards for the same price as a 1080, that's just retarded

It is. It totally is and I am not that educated to know the difference. When I initially placed the order, my OCD demands every slot filled. 8 slots for 128GB of maxed out memory. I don't want to overclock it myself so I bought the highest speed the mobo can handle which was 2400. Corsair Platinum with heat sinks/fan setup ran $1159. No sweat. Then another smart poster messaged me and said 16GB is the sweet spot. 32GB is for future proofing, but that's overkill. That knocked the price down $299. I originally went with Kaby Lake i7 chip, but NewEgg was running a special at the time for i7x series that fit 2066 boards. So I went with the 8-core because that's what I have now in AMD on this Unreal rig. Why have 4 when you can have 8? Then another forum member messaged me that I was blowing money, but it was okay for future proofing and maybe do some broadcasting from the man cave. The MSI combo that I ordered (mobo/1080ti watercooled) has been out of stock ever since I placed the order. Guess what? They would've shipped today and charged my account. Thank you Cyonan. Anyway, this Frostbite rig was built by committee and everyone (BUT ME) did their part to save me money. God bless you and the rest of the forum members that helped. Y'all are good, good people.