I have been considering a big upgrade from my RTX 1060 6GB for a while now. It took me a while to decide whether I wanted to upgrade to a RX 9070 XT or a 5070 Ti, even now I'm not 100% sure on it, but Nvidia's RT and Frame-gen advantage has pushed me towards the 5070 Ti. I doubt you care, so I'll get to the important bit.
I started building PCs in the early around 1990, not many years later most of the performance needs related to AutoCAD for vector GFX were also well suited to gaming,and it was have to say I loved being able to write off my "CAD Builds" as a business expense. After 2000, the CAD boxes got handed down to the kids. As they got older at the age when doing anything with ya parents was "embarrassing", building PCs became a bonding experience. Soon all their friends were coming over and asking for advice and they'd build their boxes in my conference room (aka what my wife calls the dining room table) with me helping them thru it. Now we have a neighborhood full of "puter nerds" building their own and other than a telephone call when selecting parts, don't see them much. We built a few lappies, buying a chassis and adding the rest of the components but got away from that as it can void the warranty. And it didn't save money really to make it worth it. Now I have the laptops built buy a custom builder
One of the tenets of our instruction .... be a "Hardware Whore" ! What's the best brand ? the one who has the best performance (fps,cooling, overclockability, etc.) In the 2000s, wewere pretty much an Asus Shop ... amost every build we did had an Asus MoBo and GFX card. We had a string of troubles w/Asus using their premium boards which they'd sent a replacement BEFORE sending the old one back) .. one arrived bent like a banana and it took weeks to sendout a 2nd replacement as the "computers show you already got one"... that was when Asus tech Support was being handled by AS Rock's parent company. At the same time, Asus was not longer showing up as Editors Choice here on TPU and toping the testing comparisons. In the 2000-teens,It was mostly MSI (Titanium MoBos and Gaming X Cards forexample) ..they were killin it here on TPU in the reviews,
Personally, I built my last desktop in 2013, (thread here on the topic) I am typing this message on it .... water cooled, dual pumps w/ less about 8.4C Delta T. I use it every day for AutoCAD tho mostly use the laptop as I am out and round. It still does 80+ fps in Witcher 3 Not much time for gaming however these days. The kids of course are builing or upgrading their boxes and as far as brand selection ... there all whores like their Dad. No brand loyalty ... andmuch to my chagrin,color or LEDs often factor into .
Dropped that to give a perspective on component selection proces sover the last 35 years ... thanfully today we're not paying wgat we paid then .... in 1990 I paid $2k for a 1200 x 1600 monitor and $1k for a 1 GB SCSI HD.
Today, I see TPU likes the MSI Vanguard based upon the performance specs. If I can hear my PC when running benchmarks with the monitor off, I'm not happy. That's my main reason for water cooling, tho do enjoy the huge overclocks. The Gaming Trio and Vanguard would definitely be on my short list for performance sound and cooling. If I was doing air cooling ... 28 dba would be about my tolerance level, but over 25 dbA makesme from a bit.
Of course,especially when they 1st drop,the ones topping the charts are hard to find and carry a significant price penalty .... I usually wait till the fervor dies down which is about the time reviewers needing something to talk about start writing about the next gen.
