I'm running an i5-12400F with an RTX 3060 12GB, an MSI B660M motherboard, and 16GB of RAM. I mainly use the PC for Blender, including sculpting and rendering, plus lighter gaming such as Final Fantasy XIV, The Witcher 3, Total War: Warhammer 3, and War Thunder. Since Blender is my main reason for upgrading, I need to stick with NVIDIA. I found a used RTX 4070 Super locally for €250, but I'm unsure whether that is a genuinely good deal, whether I should wait, or how to check that the card is working properly before buying it. I'm also wondering whether upgrading my system RAM would be more useful first.
4 Answers
A working RTX 4070 Super for €250 would be an exceptional deal and a major upgrade from the RTX 3060, especially for CUDA and Blender workloads. However, that price is far below the usual used-market range, so treat it cautiously. Ask to see the card running in the seller’s system and test it with a demanding game or benchmark. Check that the display outputs work, temperatures stay reasonable, the fans behave normally, and there are no crashes or visual artifacts.
I’d upgrade the RAM before replacing the GPU only if the 4070 Super deal cannot be verified. Your 3060 is still usable for light gaming and Blender, while 16GB of system memory can cause slowdowns or swapping. If you buy more RAM, match the existing kit’s capacity, speed, and timings where possible, or replace it with a tested 32GB kit.
The GPU is tempting, but 16GB of system RAM is a likely limitation for Blender. Going to 32GB should be a priority, particularly for larger scenes, sculpting, animation, or rendering. If you can afford both upgrades, take the 4070 Super and add matching RAM; otherwise, make sure the RAM upgrade is not being overlooked.
There’s no obvious need to replace the i5-12400F for this upgrade. It should pair well with a 4070 Super for the games listed, and Blender’s GPU rendering work would benefit much more from the faster graphics card. A newer CPU would be a lower priority unless you specifically run into CPU-rendering or heavily CPU-limited workloads.
That helps, thanks. I wasn’t sure whether the 12400F would bottleneck the card, but I’ll focus on verifying the GPU and planning a 32GB RAM upgrade.