Most rational upgrade path from 9600KF/RTX 3070/16GB DDR4@3000@14?

[NewbieOne]

As per title. Already have a 420mm AIO (Arctic LFII) but the CPU and mobo (Z390 Aorus Pro) are poor overclockers. The SSD is pretty average for PCIE3/NVME (PNY CS3030), no need to upgrade that. The PSU is Corsair RX750, which will need an upgrade this decade.

The cheapest route — and who knows if not the best bang for the buck — would be to find some sort of superfast DDR4 sticks, 32GB, on a sale/from an outlet/b-stock, and stick with that.

However, if I'm going to buy memory rather than rely on my existing sticks, I might as well buy DDR 5 already.

DDR5 puts the 7800X3D on the table, which seems to be up to 10% faster than the 13700K while consuming less power, so keeping the bills lower and delaying PSU insufficiency.

If keeping my DDR4 sticks to conserve money, I guess I could get something like the 12700K and a Z690 mobo to keep the expense to a minimum and probably get the most frames for money. On the other hand, doing this would reduce the upgrade distance from my 9600KF. On the Intel side, the 14600K looks like the most rational choice unless you can find a 13700K for the same price.

Could also keep waiting for a more significant game-changer, as I still have some older games to catch up on.

This is all a bit too many variables, becoming a bit too cumbersome to crunch. WWYD? What's the smartest way out?

[pasa]

If you want to conserve money, just do nothing.

If you want to buy stuff, buy good stuff instead of fooling around. Creating an AM5 build makes perfect sense, reusing the gpu.

[De Hollandse Ezel]

one usually upgrades once per 2 generations.


so with an rtx 3070.. you pick a 5070 when it comes out.
your cpu is however old.

but if you were to buy a system now..

Ryzen 7 7800X3D
32GB (2x16GB ddr5 6000-7400mhz (true latency 9.5 or lower)
RTX 4070 (possibly the 4070 Super thats about to come out)

that seems a logical upgrade... from what you have now.

the 4070 performs a solid 25% faster.. than a 3070..
and as your current cpu bottlenecks that 3070 you got.. you likely see a solid 50-60% overal fps increase