Question Looking for suggestions on $2k gaming build

[memory]

Not really kept up with the current tech since my last build. With the prices of GPU's now, not sure if I will get a video card now. May use my current GPU which is a 1080ti until prices come down, if it ever happens. On the CPU, I have always bought intel in the past, current cpu is 8700k. Does AMD have better options price and performance wise? Looking at Intel cpu's, is the 11k series better than the 10k series? This will be used for gaming at 2k resolution. Don't need monitor, keyboard or mouse.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Not really kept up with the current tech since my last build. With the prices of GPU's now, not sure if I will get a video card now. May use my current GPU which is a 1080ti until prices come down, if it ever happens. On the CPU, I have always bought intel in the past, current cpu is 8700k. Does AMD have better options price and performance wise? Looking at Intel cpu's, is the 11k series better than the 10k series? This will be used for gaming at 2k resolution. Don't need monitor, keyboard or mouse.

In your budget, getting a card better than a 1080ti takes luck and/or time and effort. If you are up for the hassles and potential pitfalls of selling it, you could get enough to finance an upgrade and not bust the budget. Otherwise, keep it.

10 and 11th gen are a mixed bag compared to each other and the market on a whole. With your budget, and not including buying a GPU, I would go Z690 and either 12600k or 12700k with a DDR4 board. DDR5 is meh for gaming, hard to get, and expensive = not worth it.

AMD is fine too, and at 1440p with decent settings you will be mostly GPU bound anyways. Honestly, I am not sure it makes any sense to upgrade from a 8700K using a 1080ti. What is it bottlenecking you in? I would say keep your setup, and get a new GPU, but now is a terrible time to buy, as you know. Selling the 1080ti you can probably pull of the complete 12th gen and RTX upgrade, and then I think it makes the most sense to me. But, you do you, don't let my proclivities impede you.

 

[memory]

In your budget, getting a card better than a 1080ti takes luck and/or time and effort. If you are up for the hassles and potential pitfalls of selling it, you could get enough to finance an upgrade and not bust the budget. Otherwise, keep it.

10 and 11th gen are a mixed bag compared to each other and the market on a whole. With your budget, and not including buying a GPU, I would go Z690 and either 12600k or 12700k with a DDR4 board. DDR5 is meh for gaming, hard to get, and expensive = not worth it.

AMD is fine too, and at 1440p with decent settings you will be mostly GPU bound anyways. Honestly, I am not sure it makes any sense to upgrade from a 8700K using a 1080ti. What is it bottlenecking you in? I would say keep your setup, and get a new GPU, but now is a terrible time to buy, as you know. Selling the 1080ti you can probably pull of the complete 12th gen and RTX upgrade, and then I think it makes the most sense to me. But, you do you, don't let my proclivities impede you.

If I was to sell the 1080ti, any idea what I could get for it? I play FPS games and get back into BF2042. Do I really "need" an upgrade, not really but I was just getting the itch to upgrade. With the gpu prices the way they are, I may hold off. I also worry about prices of other components becoming like gpu's.

Would any 30 series gpu be a significant upgrade over a 1080ti or would I have to get a higher end 30 series? Looked at a few prices on the 30 series and wow on the prices of the 3090 cards. Definitely not going that route but are those really that much better than a 3070 or 3080? I mean they are double the price or even more.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

If I was to sell the 1080ti, any idea what I could get for it? I play FPS games and get back into BF2042. Do I really "need" an upgrade, not really but I was just getting the itch to upgrade. With the gpu prices the way they are, I may hold off. I also worry about prices of other components becoming like gpu's.

Would any 30 series gpu be a significant upgrade over a 1080ti or would I have to get a higher end 30 series? Looked at a few prices on the 30 series and wow on the prices of the 3090 cards. Definitely not going that route but are those really that much better than a 3070 or 3080? I mean they are double the price or even more.

Completed auctions on ebay for a 1080ti right now are averaging around $700. I would not buy/settle for a 8GB card in what is basically 2022 now. And as you noted, the higher end cards are crazy money. I'd hold out as long as you can.

Other components look to be stable now, and at good prices. I would not sweat those going bananas again for a good while.

Watching reviews, unless a patch dropped since then, 2042 is going to push your 8700K for all its worth. Some of those 128 player maps are hungry. If the upgrade itch is really getting you, buy a new CPU and board.

 

[memory]

Completed auctions on ebay for a 1080ti right now are averaging around $700. I would not buy/settle for a 8GB card in what is basically 2022 now. And as you noted, the higher end cards are crazy money. I'd hold out as long as you can.

Other components look to be stable now, and at good prices. I would not sweat those going bananas again for a good while.

Watching reviews, unless a patch dropped since then, 2042 is going to push your 8700K for all its worth. Some of those 128 player maps are hungry. If the upgrade itch is really getting you, buy a new CPU and board.

When you say 8gb, not sure if you are talking about the 1080ti or a newer card. My 1080ti is 11gb.

Ty for the response. Not sure what I will do, may hold off for now but got a feeling gpu prices will not be coming down any time soon.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Yes, I meant a new 8GB card. I like that yours' has 11GB. It means you don't have to compromise on textures which is a big visual enhancer without performance impact. As long as they fit in the frame buffer of course. Which is why 8GB is a bad buy in the higher end now imo.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

And I agree, GPUs will be staying ugly for a good while. If you are near a MicroCenter that is the best you will do in this market. The EVGA queue takes forever, but that is another option. Both are better than trying the open market.

 

[blckgrffn]

So, if you got good money for your 1080ti there have been 6900xt cards for about $1500. I know that’s insane but that was a $1k MSRP card and it’s not nearly double that, and 1080tis were edging to $300 or lower before crazy town happened. So that would have been a $700 upgrade then, and still would be now.

6900xt is fairly beastly and 16GB.

I don’t know if your budget included selling the rest of your goods, but your board and CPU are likely worth over $200, which should cover a DDR4 z690 board. A 12700k is as low as $350 at Microcenter and it’s unlikely that a “really” faster will drop for a couple years. The raw state of firmware aside, it’s likely if you bought good DDR4 you can just reuse that with minimal impact.

Refresh your PSU and maybe grab a nice 1TB PCIe4 nvme and I think you’ll have updates you can feel all around. Given you are open to AMD GPU I guess . A 3080ti is right there too 🤷‍♂️ But that’s going to eat a lot of the budget :/

That’s just an option. Like @DAPUNISHER laid out keeping the 1080ti and just doing a nice Intel build is viable too. You can even do it in two parts - get the CPU done and see what you think. Figure out the GPU second or impulse buy something here on the forums. 6900s in particular have been making appearances.

 

[letmepicyou]

It's all in the video card, man. I'm looking at your current CPU (8700k) and I'm far from offended by it. I only run a moderately faster chip (9700k), having myself upgraded from a 4790k not too long ago. I suggest you do what I did. I was running my 9700k on a GTX 1080, and on my 1080p 32" curved Samsung, it ran perfectly fine on any game I played on it.

But I decided I wanted to upgrade my display to something much bigger, and obviously 4k. It should be no secret to anyone here that the 1080 is NOT a "4k powerhouse", so that's where I focused my efforts. I managed to find a good deal on an RTX 2080 Super, so now that's what runs my 50" 4k Sony display. Have to tell you, 4k gaming performance from this setup is fantastic. You DON'T need to spend a ton on upgrading everything if you don't want to. If it were me, I'd put my money into the biggest video card you can afford, and perhaps upgrade to 32gb, make sure you're all SSD obviously. You'll see the greatest performance improvement at 2k (with the potential to upgrade in the future to 4k) with a simple graphics card upgrade. Being very honest, if you keep your current card and upgrade everything else, you're going to see a performance increase per dollar spent that has a VERY low ratio. If you upgrade the video card and leave the rest alone, THAT is where you'll see the greatest boost to FPS per $. IMO.