If you've seem my reviews, i review usually each part individually, then add it up and it's basically the average of all it's parts. It's usually Graphics, Sound/Audio/Music, gameplay, story, and annoyances (3 to make a -1). Sometimes even i'm surprised by the final score.

Hmmm I'd probably make 10Gb 1 annoyance (size/space/download time), so any game can get a subtle or large impact by the score.

From the 10600k to a 10900k seemed like an odd choice at the time. There was this persistent voice claiming that it would mean a lot in terms of stability for those hugely open worlded games. Be it, a total war warhammer 2 grand campaigns or duking it out nicely in later levels of the Mass Effect Andromeda world. Of course, this is always what risks are if you decide to follow the parts upgrade path instead of buying a whole machine. Imagine the 12900k just released with several hints by reviewers that both the previous cpu, the 11900k and the 12900k have several issues along the board in a wide variety in games. The 11900k actually underperforming in open world titles, compared to the 10900l and the 12900k coming with several compatibility issues concerning older titles. Sure, the pcie 4.0 looks tempting, not to mention the DDR5 ram but we all know how much of a performance effector ram truly can be. Of course no one would have thought that same persistent voice, as mentioned at the start of this reaction would actually lead to another purchase of RAM about year later on. With that knowledge the choice for a complete new MB CPU and RAM set would have made a lot more sense. Though, nobody tells you upfront about that your motherboard is about to fail just when you decided you are finally complete with the new monster GPU you just purchased..... Still, there are luckily no losses. The parts that didn't survive this lunatics rebuild insanity found either a place in a relatives life or are gathering dust for the moment i need a spare.... or finally come by to create/buy some sort of display for those old but treasured hardware parts

Oh i see... you enjoy big stories just as me. Okay... now i have to study what PC he actually got.

Alder Lake + DRM does not scope well, actually affecting newer games: https:/.../www.gadgets360.com/laptops/news/intel-alder-lake-12th-gen-core-processors-drm-issue-games-far-cry-n eed-for-speed-assassins-creed-2601325

Thankfully neither do i own Alder Lake (hybrid is my nightmare) nor those ugly DRM-games.

I'm not entirely sure..... Control was one of the starter RTX titles that really grabbed my attention at launch. After Control i did try other titles but none that really managed to display RTX as Control did. If you watch a video about ray tracing used in different games, you will most of the time find yourself amazed by different stills that indeed look even more beautiful/natural with ray tracing enabled. When you start playing those same games, it is nice to suddenly remember that other argument. That one argument specifying that ray tracing is nice and all but, really, who has time to enjoy those subtleties when dodging bullets

edit:
- I had actually planned to start a playthrough of the BF 4 campaign but, that game turned out to be too old. For one, the game lacked decent xbox support. Only keyboard tooltips, no controller buttons mentioned in explanations, menu's that only can be exited with a keyboard button, etc. The other part was the huge amount of weirdness going on. The first mission went okay but in the second mission. You have to extract some poi's from a hotspot... in China no less. Suddenly you have bystanders ghostwalking and opponents warping. That was a bit too much. Still a looker!
After that one i installed BF1 and damn, after the introduction to the game i was surprised to see in the menu that the resolution was set to HD! That is how nice everything looked.

Anyway, so, no the 10900K is not affected by compatibility issues i assume, so using a 10900K is surely the right choice. 12900K i would not get because hybrid really is "ugly" and a bag full of troubles for gaming. I think the 10900K will still last you many years... the GPU is the main culprit for any modern games.

If i go Intel, i would "stay" on the 10 000-series CPU, and PCIE 4.0 is totally sufficient (DDR4 RAM too).

For AMD users, AM4 is clearly the "budget board" now... can not go wrong with. I took the pricy and risky AM5-path and i had to pay a heavy price for it. However, my system is performing great now, as the issues has been solved.

yea, the 10900k pretty much works like a dream. And certainly when compared to the 10600k and the r5 2600 which i both have a good year of experience with. The 10700k might have worked too, but with the current experience i presume i will stick with intel's 9 line in the future.

Ah yeah, the 10 000 series CPU got no native PCIE 4.0 but it can be done by the boards chipset (not every board may support it).

Actually, not even the Z590 got 4.0 on the chipset... Intels chipsets really are not impressive to me, AMD is more advanced. Although PCIE 3.0 is sufficient because there is barely any difference in real time-gaming loads... as this is typically CPU-limited (when the CPU goes full load during loading you know what i mean) and in general limited by a badly optimized game. With bad optimization, it will take all days days, no matter what you got.

Sure, with a good SSD a few sec faster is sometimes possible but fact is: You own a fast SSD for bragging rights, not because it is "the thing that really makes a difference".

What is really "hampering" a SSD are the small files... ANY SSD without exclusions. Yet, by using a PCIE 4.0 drive, even on 3.0 boards, it will boost those "small files performance" which is most critical. The sequential performance is just for bragging but with usually few real-world advantage.

Interesting enough: My huge 20 TB Toshiba HDD is handling small files better than a external Samsung T5 SSD... Those external SSDs really does not live up to the hype, yet there is no good alternatives anymore (small HDDs just are gone at this spot). But internally... a huge HDD is way better performing than i ever expected and great at doing the datacenter-task. Sure, it got a crazy amount of 10 platters with 20 "heads" (2 per platter) attached... this is some crazy specs almost no one is noticing. They all work simultaneously, which makes a lot of "hidden performance". In the very old days... a HDD had 1 platter with 2 heads... and it was 10-20 times slower. I think this datacenter-HDD may even work great as a gaming drive, yet this is not its task anymore.

But you see, the bandwith does not really matter that much, as long as the drive can not handle small files sufficiently.

I feel like i'm getting in the way of a interesting conversation but regarding the 100GB+ games Dirt Raly 2.0 is one of them. My installation folder reported 109GB and I'm pretty sure with a lot of DLC's size will increase drastically.

I seem to remember a game with 200GB+, was it MS flight simulator?

TBH, I really don't get all this outrage after Baldur's Gate 3 release about big games, that ship already sailed long time ago. I think the jump from 10/20 GB to 50+ GB, back when the only SSD's available at decent prices were 250GB at most, deserverd much more outcry than a bunch of games now hitting the 100GB mark.
I don't like big games and have better ways to spend my limited storage space, but can't really get the outcry. It's not like not playing Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a option...

A few years back I was having this kind of conversation with the kids and they told me Fortnite had increased from something like 25GB to 85GB (can't recall the exact numbers), I can only guess the game needs much space nowadays.
This is true for any long term update life game, CS-GO still have the 15GB requirements but last time I look at a instalation folder (5+ years ago when the game wasn't even free to play) it had ~45GB. GTA V requirements are 72GB but I assume after years of updates and modes available, the install size will grow to at least twice.
I can only guess Borderland 3 and others are pretty much the same.
I think otherwise, people will do the same as ever. Even if it means having a bunch of CD/DVD's for one game.

Just checked my install. It's at 320GB. FSX (using default meshes) is at 17GB on my PC.

Then again, this video demonstrates what that extra 300GB gets you and boy is it gorgeous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcMD9s6TAlA

(also, bear in mind the video is 2 years old and there's more content and better visuals in the sim since then)

The game is freaking gorgeous and probably one of the most interesting big releases in the last years, not that is my couple of tea but is technically interesting :)

I was having a thought about how big games had impacted my way to play games. Dirt Rally (2015) is close to 50GB with DLC's and back when I bought it, was hard to fit the damn game on a 250GB SSD. I believe was my motivation to get a 2T HDD.
Also, Richard Burns Rally is a game with almost 20 years but after install, modern mods, like NGP, and a bunch of cars it hit 70GB easy.

Disclaimer: Car games are seemingly my only interest but I can't think of any other game type that big that I currently enjoy. The biggest non-driving game I have on my main desktop is X-com at ~20GB

My bet would be around 155
another surprise... racing titles, been a while since i touched one of those and if i do it is usually a need for speed title.

Ark Survival is apparently also a 200+ game

So, we can say 100 GB is the sweet "big" spot.

That is a difficult question.

As in, I just managed a personal victory today in Warhammer 3. With a customized graphic configuration and fps set to 35 i manage to both have something i can look upon in good favor while the gpu wattage won't go past the 150Watts. 150Watts seems to be really the sweet spot for my GPU in terms of amount of heath dispersed, before it becomes it noticeable to me as a user and lowest amount of sound generation coupled with the ability to provide good enough graphics, i'm far from the line that i say, no this is certainly not what i want to look at for a whole evening.

Ark Survival Evolved is just over 330 GB and runs slightly better than Final Fantasy 15, which isn't even close enough to be worth it until I upgrade. Good thing I claimed it for free.