Thank you all for your insights. I understand the concerns regarding the RX 7800 XT’s positioning and its long-term viability. When I refer to a balanced build, I mean achieving strong performance for my current needs while maintaining an upgrade path for the future—along with some extra headroom to experiment with new technologies/software.
Right now, the RX 7800 XT delivers solid native 3440x1440 high/ultra performance, hitting 120-200 FPS in the games I play, which is a major leap from my GTX 1080. While it's true that in 4-5 years, I might need to tweak settings or leverage FSR, I consider that an acceptable trade-off, at the end we gotta profit those techs. I've also planned for future GPU/CPU upgrades, but only after 3+ years, and only if new games I plan to play demand it.
I did consider going up a tier in GPUs, but with new generations launching now, I opted to wait and see how prices and performance settle. Spending 50%-70% more on a GPU right now could have led to regret if significantly better options emerge soon and my demands grow. And besides, I was being stubborn-stingy-old schooler as stated in some posts ago.
To me, a balanced build isn’t just about maxing out specs, but choosing components that offer good value, exceed some of your current requirements, and allow flexibility for future upgrades. Of course, I enjoy high/ultra settings with RT on, I want to experience it for the first time, but I’ve never been overly demanding with graphics. If I ever need to dial down to Medium in certain games, that’s fine by me, at least for now.
This approach lets me game comfortably now while avoiding unnecessary overspending on hardware that might not be fully utilized.
1TB boot drive is the only drive I see unconditionally fulfilling "compact, balanced, and long lasting." You seem to be looking for input on hitting that last mile which would ideally be a single 10TB or larger gen 4 storage drive. Given that is unrealistic, I'm wondering your thinking on putting current three drives together?
In terms of storage, I didn't thought that much TBH, and since the previous rig was a multiboot machine, my space for Windows was always limited, so everything was going to be an improvement after 750GB total I had. I found a really good offer (30% off) on the 1TBs SN850X and I took it, maybe I should have opted for a 2TB or 4TB unit, but the offer was really good, as with the 2TB Sandisk that I got for free since it was laying around home. Right now one M.2 is for the OS, extra software and some games, recent ones, the other M.2 holds recent games as well, I'm condemning older games than 2015-2017 to the SATA SSD.
But yes, i'm using three of them together (not RAID or anything, just 3 drives) giving a total rough of 4TB,
