I'm planning a PC for gaming, video editing, digital art, and streaming with a budget of around $1,700, though I could stretch to about $2,000 if absolutely necessary. My current system is old but still handles gaming, rendering, and streaming reasonably well. It originally used a GTX 780 Ti, which I've replaced with a GTX 1080 Ti. I also have an ASUS PB287Q 28-inch 4K monitor that I'll continue using, so I don't need to budget for a display.
I'm open to upgrading the existing machine, but I suspect a complete rebuild makes more sense. One idea I had was to game on a new system while sending the display output to the old PC for streaming, although I'm not sure whether that would be worthwhile.
I'm located in central Michigan, USA, and have access to a wired network connection. I don't have specific size, noise, or lighting requirements. I'd prefer a system with room to expand, especially with additional hard drives, and I'd like plenty of USB ports. Is it better to build now or wait, and what kind of parts would make sense for this workload?
2 Answers
Given the age of the current platform, this is effectively a complete new-build situation. The 1080 Ti may still be useful as a temporary or secondary card, but replacing individual parts around the old system probably won’t give you a balanced upgrade. A new system with a modern CPU, plenty of memory, fast NVMe storage, and a current GPU would be the better long-term route.
Since your current PC is still usable, waiting may be the smarter option. You don’t have an urgent need to replace it, and upcoming CPU and GPU generations could bring substantial performance improvements. Building now is still reasonable if you need the performance immediately, but waiting several months could give you better hardware choices and possibly more favorable prices. When you do build, plan on replacing the core platform rather than trying to carry over most of the old parts.
That’s useful advice. I’ll probably keep using the current system for now and reassess once the next hardware generations are available.
That’s pretty much what I suspected. I appreciate the confirmation, and advice on what a new build for gaming, editing, and streaming should look like would be really helpful.