AskBeehaw

10-15 years is a lot to ask no matter what budget.

Don’t get me wrong it may still work completely fine, i have used older parts, but if you plan to play new games you’re gonna end up struggling. 10 years ago the best gpu was a gtx 980 and its barely holding on right now.

If you plan on playing a very specific set of existing games and don't play new fancy titles, you might pull it off though. But thats not the vibe i am getting here.

With that budget you can straight up get a rtx5090 (if available anywhere) which is currently the top tier consumers gpu on the market but chances you are still going to want to upgrade over a year of 5 but its definitely gonna last longer then any other (in theory).

Which bring me to my best advice, the main advantage of your desktop isn’t just performance it is upgradability. Providing a list of software and games you use you can easily get a pc perfect for that, saving some money for the future when those needs change. Then upgrade the part that needs it. Bonus is eventually your old parts will eventually end up becoming a secondary pc.

Which bring me to my last point, if you are serious about streaming you may want to split that budget into 2 separate systems. One to play the games on, and another tailored to streaming and twitch. Many streamers do it this way for practicality and performance.

There's a lemmy.ca community for this btw: [email protected]

Over the last few years, the one thing that has made older computers obsolete to be able to play high end games at high settings is card VRAM. Because AAA studios and Nvidia are pushing BS AI stuff it's more important than ever. Try to obtain a card that has 16GB VRAM.

Besides that, since the GPU is your highest cost line item, build the rest of your rig around that, and based on your remaining budget. Even old parts, from Ryzen era onward still hold up decently well for performance.

DDR5 RAM and motherboards are very expensive but are more performant. DDR4 is far better value for money right now but the limits to upgrade is the downside.

Find a CPU for that, AMD and intel both have offerings that are good value for money. Late releases of AMD AM4 socket Chips are very good (the R7 5800X3D ranks consistenly high for its price), but AM5 might have a better ability to upgrade in a few years time. Intel changes its socket more often, but if you get a previous gen chip, you will know in advance what you can upgrade into.

Find the max TDP of your CPU and GPU, add them together, multiply by 1.2, get a power supply of around that amount. Choose a reputable maker, try to get one with a good manufacturer's warranty, and if you want quieter then choose one with better fan control. This component gets overlooked a lot, but an extra $100 to make sure a failure does not cook the rest of your components is a worthwhile investment IMO.

Case just look at fans, cooling, size, whether your components fit, ssd and hard drive bays. Pc part picker can help with size constraint estimation.

Memory express people are okay for general advice. You can check scamegg, ebay, kijiji, Canada computers, your local store, for deals on new and used parts. We had a pcsales community with an auto crossposting bot but it has been quiet for a while.

That 4070 isn't going to last as long as you want. If you want realistic 7+ years, you need to get today's or last gen top of the line.

Here are two random thoughts:

1. If you live near a Microcenter you could get a CPU/Mobo/RAM bundle that'd be more performant for the same price. I got a 7900X, 32GB RAM, and top of the line B650 Mobo for I think $550.

2. If you want to game on Linux I'd recommend an AMD GPU instead of NVIDIA

Another tool for researching parts based on the specs you want:

https://skinflint.co.uk/

I find its level of detail is often more helpful than PC Part Picker.

I was also thinking a better Nvidia card might be worthwhile?

Why Nvidia? AMD's GPUs are quite good these days. They're also better supported on Linux, which you might consider running some day, since Linux is better than Windows at getting performance out of aging hardware.

It's also worth noting that AMD's X3D CPUs are superior at gaming in many cases.