I upgrade mine in minor phases for the board components and only do a chipset upgrade every 4-5 years or so. I have a
- 6700k @ 4.7ghz (H60 cooler)
- MSI Z170A SLI Plus mobo
- MSI GTX 970
- 16GB DDR4 2400MHZ 15-15-15-35 timing
- Samsung EVO 850 250GB
- 2x WDD Caviar Black 1TB drives in RAID 0
- Corsair 700W modular PSU (my oldest part)
- Fractal Design Define R5 windowless case
Generally, gaming computers only really need a decent video card, 4GB total RAM, and a mediocre CPU with good single thread performance (this is why Ryzens suck for most games). More specifically, any cross Console/PC port AAA title will not require much. I play a lot of Arma 3, which is the other way around. It is much more CPU and RAM intensive than it is GPU because it makes thousands of ballistic calculations and AI decisions in real time, so if you want to give your gaming rig a run for it's money I would recommend trying that game (although, it is not for everyone). The GTX970 can take any current game on ultra settings just fine (@ 1080P), but I think I'll get a 1080 this year since their price plummeted due to the TI release. Although I will sooner swap over to 3000mhz ram. Initially I just went with 2400 since in about 99% of games anything past 2400mhz will yield diminishing returns, but memory speed in Arma (and I imagine a lot of simulators) is crucial to performance.
Monitors are pretty important, too. 4K doesn't look quite up to the beans yet so I'm going to uprade my 5+ year old monitors with a nice g-sync monitor.
Computers like any material hobby are a benchmark comparison. People like to buy the best possible stuff just so they have the latest and greatest, and will likely only use 10-20% of its potential, until it is deemed obsolete by the next generational release. I know of someone who had 2 1080s and is now getting rid of them just so he can have 2 1080 TIs. I'm pretty sure he just plays Overwatch which is kind of a joke in the visual fidelity department. That's kind of like buying a .338 lapua rifle and putting a dot sight on it and shooting at room-distance targets. That's cool I guess if you have that much money to burn, I'd rather spend it on stuff like guns, bourbon, or just not spend it.
I bought what I bought so I could play current games like Witcher 3, overwatch, etc. With great framerates. And when the next generation of games come out in a year or 3 that are more leveraging of the cpu, play those, too.
A friend of mine has an i7 4xxxx, gtx970, 8gb ram ddr3.
He cranked up Wow last night on 1440, and maxed everything. Fps in orgrimmar was around 60, avg. And memory showed 80%+ utilization.
My pc used to do that about 5 years ago. Then 4 years ago, it barely hit 50, then 2 years ago, it became literally unplayable even at lowest settings.
My goal was to future proof my pc as much as possible, with the exception of knowing I'll need a new gpu in 2-4 years.
My i7-7700k can over clock to a very stable 6+ghz all day long with liquid cooling like I have. 32gd ddr4 should last a while (I find ram sticks go bad from time to time over the years though). Anyway, the only thing I forsee issues with in the next 5 years is the gpu. Maybe.
That is why I spent the $1750 inc. Tax and shipping...because it was cheaper than building a "minimum for Witcher 3, today" pc....which would have initially cost me around $1k, even cannibalizing my old PC. With virtually no futureproofing, and needing an upgrade likely in less than 2 years.
I had my last pc built in 2010, I believe. I just over clocked it to 3.6ghz 2 days ago. It's still foundering. It's at the bare edge of usability for net surfing and struggles with starcraft 2 on lower end settings. That is 7 years from a mid to upper level 2010 build that I pinches a few pennies on. I am really hoping for 8 years (technology increases faster than linear) out of this PC, which I consider a near top end build (within reason/for common gaming use). It just makes sense financially to do it this way rather than shooting for minimum spec for today.
Just like your rifle analogy, I bought a Daniel defense carbine for hunting and home defense. Now, I run a suppressor full time and pump thousands of rounds suppressed downrange every year with it. I bought smart at first, and now that I'm using it harder, it's not disappointing. Still shoots around 1" at 100. Next I need a .308, so I have an sr25 acc on order. It will kill deer...or make me competitive in PRS gas gun competition if I so choose.