Reading TR daily and receiving daily sale flyers from newegg is like burning poison ivy in a tornado. Although, it does allow me to be very thrifty with my spending since I know the absolute best sale prices of many components and what's worth buying. Building systems for others (and to a smaller degree, helping TR gerbils pick out components) does take some of the focus off upgrading my own system.
Everyone needs to think along the same lines for PC upgrades that aren't a necessity of a hardware failure:
1) Do I have the money? And, is that money best spent on computer hardware right now? This can go with other concerns about timing of holidays/sales, new product releases, whether you can sell the old hardware to supplement the expense. etc etc.
2) Do I use the hardware enough to justify the cost. This is usually the most difficult reality to face. Is your current hardware doing just fine, but you want something better just because it's new and shiny? Would it be better to wait one more generation to increase the performance jump or wait for pricing to come down? Is the upgrade for work purposes, or casual purposes? What is the expected lifespan of the product you're looking to buy (3 years? 10 years?).
As others have said, these days, core PC component performance isn't growing by the leaps and bounds it once was. But it is growing nonetheless, some areas more than others, peripherals vary to some degree (ie monitors these days). It's good to have an upgrade plan, but try and set chronological goals as well. I personally try to limit myself to one component
upgrade per year.
My personal list, in order:
New
keyboard: My comma key isn't registering (I post mostly from work). Can't decide if I can justify a mechanical keyboard or if another rubber dome keyboard would suffice just as well for my usage.
27" 1440p Variable Refresh IPS
monitor, which would also require a new
graphics card, the GTX 660 won't cut it at 1440p. However, I play games less than 5 hours per week. The GTX660 is getting long in the tooth even for my current 1080p monitor, so that would probably happen before the monitor. Waiting on the whole Free Sync vs G Sync war to straighten itself out.
My 15 year old
headphones died, but I rarely used them. Only when Skype-ing my brother while gaming. On the plus side, my ear buds allow me to hear the wife yelling at me
If I were to get a new set of over-the-ear cans, the relatively low cost would be easy to justify.
New 2.1
speakers. I have some crappy old Logitech set that I bought....10+ years ago, and they weren't nice by any stretch back then. But I don't sit at my computer and listen to music like I did in college, so, difficult to justify.
VR would be nice, but unlike the monitor which would be usable for other general purpose tasks, VR goggles are much more restricted to "gaming" at this point. Would still require a new GPU. Probably not in the cards, no matter how cool it would be to have.
Main: i5-3570K, ASRock Z77 Pro4-M, MSI RX480 8G, 500GB Crucial BX100, 2 TB Samsung EcoGreen F4, 16GB 1600MHz G.Skill @1.25V, EVGA 550-G2, Silverstone PS07B
HTPC: A8-5600K, MSI FM2-A75IA-E53, 4TB Seagate SSHD, 8GB 1866MHz G.Skill, Crosley D-25 Case Mod
