Toughy. I upgraded late last year, keeping my current motherboard/case etc. But then again, I was going from a first generation Ryzen 7 1700X to a Ryzen 7 5800X, and replacing my GeForce 1070 Ti with a GeForce RTX 4070, so both were several generations of improvements (and I doubled the RAM as well).

It would be much tougher I think to make the case for a smaller bump of CPU generation. Of course on the other side of this, you do eek out a bit more life from the mobo. If it was me, probably not worth it, but YMMV.

YMMV is the point. I'm reasonably happy to spend a couple of hundred to enjoy two or three games properly, plus the bits and pieces of tech stuff that keep me busy. I mean, I've been buying a whole new console every few years to play Mario/Zelda so...

This is a comparatively small spend that will make a game that I played with a Cyrix 386 and a Matrox Mystique enjoyable again.

Of course, I know what you're saying and it's a perfectly sensible way to spend your cash. I think my motivation is different so the changes in the world of gaming hardware are sometimes hard to follow. I guess if I was more of a gamer I'd lean more your way. I'm more like the bloke who enjoys a driving holiday every so often and figures some new tyres and a battery might get me there.

If it'd make Riven more fun and immersive, and you can afford it, go for it!

My computer's limping along. My GTX1070 died a while back and I had to replace it but had no money so ended up with a big downgrade. Which is fine since 99% of what I play is stuff that could run on a raspberry pi.

I'm loathe to get a better GPU cos this PC is going to give up sometime and when that happens I've decided to get one of those Beelink mini-PC things that are basically just laptop hardware in a box. Usually using an AMD APU. Which would be fine for me and I'm very much done with dicking around with PC hardware.

I did just treat myself to a Miyoo Mini Plus*, since I had a tiny bit of spare money for the first time in like 3 years. It's on its way from China. 

* Cute little 'retro' handheld. Plays all games up to PS1. I'm not a retro gamer and I don't have much nostalgia for old games but I thought it'd be fun to play some of the old games I missed out on on a little handheld thing.

I understand your decision to go for something like the Beelink as and when your present computer expires. I've found my last few adventures in hands-on fucking about with computers has been far less fun than it used to be. I built a tiny computer based on a mini stx motherboard a while back as opposed to buying a similar sized beast ready made. Although that was largely because I had some specific requirements, such as wanting to add two SATA HDDs to hold music plus a backup, there's no way I'd do it again. And no need to either when these days I can buy a higher spec computer that supports SATA drives for less than I spent and without the hassle of building it. Even if I wanted to to do some reasonably performance-hungry gaming, something like this would make me think twice. More than competitive with what I have now for the same price as just my CPU, GPU and RAM. Add the cost of cooling, PSU, case, drives etc. and it doesn't make sense.

Yeah, absolutely. Not wanting to dick around with hardware is a huge part of it. 

Also it increasingly bothers me to have all this redundant power. My 7+ year old PC is still hugely overpowered for most of what I do with it. We just have to have this potential power for *some* games. For most of what I do I'd notice no difference on an i3 and integrated graphics.

And I play so few AAA games these days (and when I do they're usually disappointing). Most of what I actually enjoy playing looks like this. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that shitty graphics are the best indicator that a game is actually going to be *fun*.

And I'm starting to care about power-draw. Not *really* out of environmental concern cos obviously I'm aware that my PC drawing a bit less is going to do fuck all there but out of an increasing sense that PCs are *good enough* and we really should be working on power consumption now. I'd rather have a passively-cooled PC than raytracing or higher refresh rates or a 4k monitor.

And I'm okay with not being able to play everything, I'm okay with missing out now and then. I'd rather have a cheaper, lower-powered, quieter PC that's less hassle than the ability to play *everything*.

(There's a story to that screenshot. That's UnReal World, which is a roguelike (which has been in constant development since 1991) set in iron-age pseudo-scandinavia. It's basically a hunter-gatherer sim with low magic (very low, to the point where you're never sure it's actually *doing* anything, you just feel it's probably better not to piss the gods off).

I was playing Owl Tribe for the first time and they're very small people who're not capable of carrying everything needed to survive (literally, miss one hunt in winter and you're dead). So I'd need a reindeer to carry my stuff, which I'd have to trade for at a local settlement, and reindeer are *expensive*.

I got lucky early-on and encountered a sleeping bear which I managed to kill before it did me any serious damage. I skinned it, butchered it, roasted its fat to keep me going and hung all the meat up to dry and then got to work tanning the *very valuable* pelt. Tanning and curing is a very long process and I wanted to take my time to ensure the hide was high quality. My bear fat kept me going for a long time but then I needed to hunt while the bear meat finished drying. I also made sure to hang the bear skull on a tree and do the proper ritual to thank the spirits for my good luck.

Many weeks later, when tanning and curing were done, I had a nice quality bear pelt to take to a nearby village and trade for my very first reindeer. I was so excited. It was slow progress cos I could barely carry the bear pelt alone and I was loaded up with everything I wanted to trade. I got there eventually, made my trade, and even had enough to get a nice axe and some smoked meat too. 

I took my reindeer back to camp, so fucking proud of myself. And decided to start on my next project - a kota (like a yurt) so I could properly begin my new reindeer-based nomadic life. I'd need to pop back to town for a few things which I should've got the first time but forgot in my excitement. No big deal. I'd heard wolves on my way there so decided to leave my reindeer at camp. I knew to tether it to a tree so it wouldn't wander off, in a place with plenty of grazing. I'm not an *idiot*.

Set off back for town, it'd be a quick trip now I was travelling light, super excited to start my new nomadic life. Aaaand got back to camp to find this.

I was genuinely fucking heartbroken.)

I guess images used to be smaller.

Aha! You managed to edit the post while I walked from my laptop to my desktop in another room to see if it would fit on a bigger monitor.

For some reason I have never got into rougelikes. I don't know why, they're true to the style of the very earliest adventure games since before computers were a thing, so they're doing something right. 

Anyway, just think how fab that game would be rewritten. I mean, the name says it all, UnReal World on the Unreal Engine, with an  i9 14900KF and an RTX4090 plus 64GB of DDR5 TBH.

I sort of agree. And yes, for environmental reasons as much as anything, and for my electricity bills. I think things like bitcoin and now AI have been a fucking disaster. And gaming doesn't help. Every time Nintendo has a new game that runs on its underpowered Switch platform is a bonus. 

I'm kinda sick of roguelikes. Or I'm sick of very game *being* roguelike(/lite). Every new cool looking RPG and I'm like I'll play that... oh, it's roguelike. I want to get lost in games, not start from scratch every few hours.

URW gets a pass cos it's really a survival game where you can't quicksave which is a *bit* different. 

I enjoy roguelikes now and then but I don't want *everything* to be roguelike.

And hah, a first person remake of URW would actually be amazing.

And yeah, amen to AI And crypto being fucking stupid.