Totally get it. I considered all of my son's needs- he's not a tinkerer who always wants to build his stuff up. He doesn't really even play a lot of cutting edge graphic intensive games. He really only wants to play VR games with the Oculus Quest 2 he bought earlier this year and a few other games and coming from my old 2012 Alienware laptop so this will be like a nitro-fueled Lambo to him. In a few years we can bump up the RAM, processor and video card at a lower cost to keep it running. One trick I use is to pay for all big purchase with my AMEX. Built in extended 3 year warranty. I used it for my first Apple watch when it broke after two years. One phone call, sent in some paperwork and it was fully refunded. If I get the runaround on a warranty I will be able to do the same thing with this PC.
Yeah, I rarely have issues with pc parts failing. My issue is once I build it, I want to use it for about 5 years. The only part I'll even consider upgrading in that period is the video card after maybe 3 years. My current PC is one I built back around 2015-2016 and the only thing I recall doing to it is adding more storage (SSD) to it a couple of months ago. Everything else is the same stuff from back then and it works fine for me. The only reason to upgrade is some of the games I want to play in the future, I'd like to play at higher settings and I don't think the jump from a 1080 to a 3070 would be enough to justify it, but then the jump from a 3070 to a 3080 or 3080 TI in price is going to be a lot. Ah well, no biggie. No rush, but even Windows 11 is saying my PC doesn't qualify for upgrading to it (i7 6700k isn't supported). But there are registry hacks for that, so that's not as big a concern.
I never do my shopping early. Scratch offs have an expiration date, so you don’t want to buy them too early.
This isn't my favorite brand... but I found a Zotac AMP edition 3070 here randomly: https://www.zotacstore.com/us/ It got shipped out and was priced inbetween msrp/scalping (it also already had tax priced in). I've had it running for maybe 2 weeks now testing out mining/breaking some of the LHR and it has honestly run really great. It also has a 3 year warranty. I'm also on evga's various waitlists but got a member from hardforum to send me a 3080 ti from EVGA. I almost had a 3090... and a 3080 ti at msrp through best buy... Some of the changes they made at least slowed the bots down, like it was in cart with reserved countdown for the ti but I skipped it since I would have rather have had the 3090 (this was before I got the 3070 and 3080 ti). I'm not going to flip cards or line up/pay scalper prices but since I can get technically more money for the 1080 than I originally paid for it I figured I'd just get it. The 3070 I'm just letting someone buy it for what I paid. With LHR being slowly broken/shortages I think it's going to get worse. Anyway, if I happen to get lucky on evga I'll try to let you know if you're still interested. Tldr The 3070 alone killed my 1080, it really surprised me with the limited gaming I've been able to do so far... I am just running an 8700k atm, I'm waiting for Intel's next move or might go AMD. I am not serious miner but wanted to really test 3070... And even have 1080 doing some too, lol. But yeah... The 3070 straight up killed 1080 - I'm running 1440p @165 hz
There's a 3080 TI on there right now. lol. Thanks for posting. I'm surprised the 3070 was that much better than the 1080 at 1440 -- or at least noticeably better. I expect it to be better, but didn't think it was worth the price bump for the improvement. I'll be running at 1440, too. I may have to re-think it if that's the case. I'm still holding off for now, but hell, that may change within 30 minutes.
Yeah, I think it's priced with the tax already included, they do charge shipping but you get the warranty too vs dealing with a ebay scalper etc. I do think buying the pre-built was a good move too though. I think the 3070 was $880 shipped, I only did it because the 1080 can be sold at a silly price too. So it didn't really matter much.
So just an example of benchmark on 3dmark it took my score from 7k to 12k, like fps doubled in most of the tests, I can try to see if I have a screenshot of it later. It really surprised me for sure.
Oh I know man, me too, I just wanted to try it and see what it could do - and it didn't disappoint. I mean I skipped the 2xxx series altogether like you so this definitely feels like a real jump, like before I had 970s in sli and then the 1080 (basically a better move due to sli lacking on support but not a ton of difference if the title actually used sli correctly... Not a lot of those, haha). I mean I really wanted msrp too but finally gave in, especially since the 1080 is going for about ~$400 so that's how I justified the crazy price with it being more than msrp. The jump on this card though almost reminds me of when I got the 8800 gtx near the original release date. Unfortunately I haven't gamed a ton lately but figured I'd be ahead for when I finally can.
