So I’ve been planning this upgrade for a while but wanted to wait for the right price.

Before my upgrade I had a i3 12100F and a RTX 3050 8GB. It was a decent rig, and good enough all but the latest games at 1080p. However I do video editing and wanted to get more RAM on my GPU and more core would help with some games and workloads.

So I waited for the right parts at the right price. My first good luck came in the form of a $170 discount on a i7 12700KF. I paid $270.08 CAD with tax and shipping. For single threaded workload (read FreeCAD) it didn’t do much but for games it was a smoother experience and so far nothing has ever maxed out the CPU outside of Shader Caching.

But the upgrade I was keeping an eye out for was the GPU. 8GB of VRAM is just enough for what am doing. However I really wanted 16GB. I was aiming for the RX7600 XT, however $450-$500CAD for it was too much for me to stomach. With no real used options I tried looking for a RTX 3060 12GB. For the same price and no performance difference it’s not a good choice new… but used it’s frequently $350CAD. However I got it in my head I wanted it for $300CAD. I kept seeing it creep down to $330-$320CAD, and was tempted. But I held since it wasn’t an urgent upgrade. Then I found it, a Zotac 3060 12GB for $288.27CAD with tax and shipping. Scooped it up immediately and it finally arrived today.

My upgrade total was $558.35, and the result was actually pretty nice. From a quick comparison from running some games and video renders before and after the upgrade. For games I saw +20FPS improvements in modern games and for games getting 200FPS I saw my GPU utilization drop from 100% to 70%.

For video editing it’s very interesting. My render times dropped by 20-30 seconds depending on the video and number of effects. However after reviewing my hardware utilization, it seems like the software may be bottle necking me more than the GPU. Or maybe it’s a RAM issue.

Regardless I am very please with this upgrade, epically the price for this upgrade. Outside of more RAM, I don’t think I’ll be doing anything else with it for a long while now.