It’s unfortunately a valid “defeatist” point that I hate finding myself falling back into over and over on so many issues. It shouldn’t be so hard to say ‘yo can you stop taking advantage of me for personal financial gain in every possible scenario’?

I got mine for just under $1800 US early this year, with just online deals available at the time, no waiting for better pricing (honestly PSU prices were INSANE at the time and that made a difference). I wouldn’t change a single part today. It does everything I need (including video editing/rendering)

Short answer: good plan. Check PCPartPicker. Your build is definitely overkill for most people, and you can easily get away with consistent 4k gaming for much cheaper.

Going back through your specs…bro a 4090 costs basically the same as my whole PC that’s running games at 120 FPS+ on a 4k monitor with no issues.

Check out combo deals on Newegg for Mobo+RAM+CPU, or Microcenter if you have one nearby (I don’t). Your biggest factor for gaming will be the GPU. You can run 60+ FPS on a 1080P monitor on 5 year old midrange GPUs. If you need 4k res, ask on PCPartPicker forums.

What I usually tell people is “set a budget”. You can always fall in to the trap of $20 more here, $40 more there…etc and explode your budget.

If you can keep moving the needle, you can keep dumping more into better components in different areas.

Use PCPartPicker to make sure everything is compatible, check the price history to see if there’s a similar component available for cheaper or if you’re getting a good value, and make decisions on what is necessary. Also, pick a date. You can hang around for MONTHS waiting on a certain part to hit a price drop.