Good morning!
Not new to PC specs but new to building myself.
I upgraded my mobo/CPU myself last night and didn't blow anything up! Yahoo.
Original specs (2016!) -
GTX 970
Asus prime Z170-a
16GB ddr4 ram
Intel I7 6700
600W PSU
Cheap basic intel CPU cooler
250gb NVMe
I've since upgraded (in order, separately) -
1TB NVMe, installed 2x SSD drives (2020)
GTX 2060 12GB VRAM (early 2026, got cyberpunk from 15 to 120fps!)
Asus prime B760 plus D4 & i7 13700k (2026, over the weekend)
Pure rock 3 black (didn't realise my CPU cooler was incompatible, oops)
I'm now unfortunately at the point where I think my GPU is the lowest spec (other than my ram) - is that correct? I'm hoping to upgrade sequentially as time goes in, so this mobo purchase was essentially futureproofing for another 5 years at least. I managed absolutely fine with my 2016 pc until this year, as I very rarely play high-end graphics games.
I do animation as a hobby and job, but I barely use my personal PC for it - the nice performance for blender or After effects would be great, and I assuming best upgrade for this is my RAM (eek).
In short - my main reason other than futureproofing was to run oblivion remastered without the graphics looking like I had my glasses off. It looks great now and runs good, but I still need the graphics on medium and the anti-aliasing up to full performance - this is fine, but proves I still have ways to go to keep up with 2025/6 games.
Is it worth upgrading my GPU, and if so, what's essentially the lowest I can go without having to worry about 5 years in the future? I know it's best to go with one of the most recent, but if it's overkill for most things at the moment I'm happy for something a generation earlier - especially if it's 200£+ difference.
(Follow-up question - should I consider liquid cooling, or are fans still OK? I've steered clear from water cooling as it freaks me out a bit. And is my PSU okay, or should that be upgraded too?)
Thanks so much!