

I had a very similar system, but with an old R9 380, and upgraded to a 5700x and 64GB RAM. I picked up an RTX 3060 too. Now, I agree with your doubts - the upgrades didn’t make much difference for day to day usage, and did feel like a waste sometimes. However, I like to take photos, and was using Photoshop with the AI features (before I realised how shit they are), and the upgrades made a huge difference.
My older games were mostly running smoothly with everything set on the highest graphics settings anyway, but now run perfectly even with half a dozen Firefox windows full of family tree research tabs open. I’ve played games while Firefox is using 32GB without issue. Minecraft can run at around 1,000 fps, which means that I can turn the settings up or have lots of mods installed.
I bought another motherboard and built the old parts into a computer for my kid, which is more powerful than my media server. The media server has about a dozen different Docker containers running things like the Arr suite, Immich, Navidrome, and a few others. I’ve got two small Minecraft servers and a magic mirror running on it too. I’m using these to learn more about Linux and networking, and generally improve my knowledge.
You’ll enjoy the upgrades, and will have to do them eventually anyway, so you might as well enjoy them now 😁
This would genuinely be handy for me though. I’ve got a nine year old, and have similar aged kids over quite regularly. If I’m dealing with the kids, I can’t always hear the air fryer finishing. A notification to the phone that’s in my pocket would be really helpful.
As you say though, there’s always shit tacked on :(