You’re right (as usual), I don’t think I’ve properly wrapped my head around it. I wanted to go team red on this build, but if I had an extended period of time sans GPU, I would just build with an i7 and rely on the integrated graphics until then.
Or just build it with Ryzen and eBay an old card. Build is for a non-gamer interested in starting, but rig will be 80% for photo/light video editing (hence the i7 vs i5 request).
It's really hard to get out of the "poor student" mentality and that while you're totally fine at the higher level, you're always a bit cash poor due to being a responsible person. I see many of my former students still eating substandard food when they certainly afford better. Figuring out how to spend more to get more versus conservativism is a balance. I was just pointing out that for the amount of time you're stressing over it, you can spend. My personal rule is that I don't spend more than a couple hours thinking about wants if the cost is less than a day of takehome pay. The only reason I thought about 80 vs 90 which both were in my means was the generally bad track record of the 90s in the past which I declined in favor of an 80.
Ok, so you're not a hardcore gamer, that's cool. Don't listen to those who push the 3080 as it's for the ultra AAA experience. (For Flight Simulator, you're actually better off with Quadro). The generality is to get a 60 series if you don't care about future proofing and a 70 if you want a generation future proof. The secret is that supercomputing then and now drives the version control. So, Summit like Titan drove the architecture more than anything else. That's why the ray tracing started. It's nice for games when they start, but it was a requirement for DoE blast modeling. Not necessary for what 99% of gamers "want" and no real AAA utilizes that part of the API yet. It's kind of funny how much gamers subsidize those cards for us.
Build over buy, but I really would future proof my motherboard for an open socket and PSU (really recommend EVGA Platinum as I've used the same one for eight years and still strong). As for me, it's Puget Sound's premium all the way, because it is for work, but even if not, what else is money for in my case?
Whatever you do, don't buy a used graphics card from the 9 or 10 series (and debatably 20 series) at this point. They all are suspects for mining, so you're basically buying an ex-rental car that was abused. My last system lasted from the 9 series and costed around $4,500 with 100% part warranty for 5 years (just expired necessitating a new system purchase). This one cost $6,000 (Puget Sound Peak 4) and it should last me 5 years without any issues and is constantly doing linear optimization work.
