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Help me justify upgrading my pc (programming.dev)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have a B450 motherboard, 16gb DDR4 3200 RAM, 1660 Super gpu and a Ryzen 5 2600 CPU. I don't plan on updating the GPU this time, because I don't play a lot of games that require anything more, I'm playing a lot of older titles currently. The problem is this also makes me feel like I shouldn't update the pc at all.

I think I mostly just want to mess around with a decent home lab, but because I dont have an intended use case I'm struggling to justify. I also had parents who don't like to spend money on this sort of thing and I've got their disapproving voices in my head.

The plan is to upgrade to a 5900XT and 64 gb of ram and probably run a lot of virtual machines in a little lab environment but I'm not sure how often I'll have them all running so it could be overkill. The upgrade is about $700 all up too so not small but not too much. I know I'm extending the lifespan of a computer instead of e-wasting the entire thing but I'm still a little apprehensive.

Good idea or nah?

P.S. I run Linux Mint on all my machines if that somehow changes anyone's mind or is somewhat helpful? Can't let the arch users be the only ones to announce.

Edit: thanks for the replies. I went to bed so I'll try to reply to people as today goes. Thanks for the ideas and the one person who asked if I was a sex worker, you've made me laugh and think.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I had a very similar system, but with an old R9 380, and upgraded to a 5700x and 64GB RAM. I picked up an RTX 3060 too. Now, I agree with your doubts - the upgrades didn't make much difference for day to day usage, and did feel like a waste sometimes. However, I like to take photos, and was using Photoshop with the AI features (before I realised how shit they are), and the upgrades made a huge difference.

My older games were mostly running smoothly with everything set on the highest graphics settings anyway, but now run perfectly even with half a dozen Firefox windows full of family tree research tabs open. I've played games while Firefox is using 32GB without issue. Minecraft can run at around 1,000 fps, which means that I can turn the settings up or have lots of mods installed.

I bought another motherboard and built the old parts into a computer for my kid, which is more powerful than my media server. The media server has about a dozen different Docker containers running things like the Arr suite, Immich, Navidrome, and a few others. I've got two small Minecraft servers and a magic mirror running on it too. I'm using these to learn more about Linux and networking, and generally improve my knowledge.

You'll enjoy the upgrades, and will have to do them eventually anyway, so you might as well enjoy them now 😁

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

I did a stint of YouTube gaming and coding tutorials at one point, I've sometimes considered getting back into it. I doubt I would because I'm a little too privacy conscious these days but it's a consideration.

Plus running Minecraft and other older games at 1k fps sounds hilarious. I think I'm realising I can find use cases for the upgrades