New to PC realm, I need some friendly advice or help.

Fusionsk8r

I'm new to PC gaming, back in 2011/2012 I had an HP laptop that could barely run anything new at the time and struggled with a few older titles. It had like 4Gb of RAM. Long story short I've been on PC once before but about a month and a half ago I built my first rig. I'm trying to seek out help and guidance on my build and where I should start for upgrading. It runs most games on medium or High so far, some games like Rage 2 and other newer titles I can get ultra settings running great with minimum 60fps or higher. 
My System specs are;
[I7-9700k (3.6 GHz) Unlocked and Stock.]
[2x 8GB DDR4 3200MHz Corsair Vengeance RGB(Overclocked from stock to 3200mhz)]
[Be Quiet Rock Slim Air CPU Cooler (Silver with Black Fan 120W)]
[ASUS ROG Strix Z390E Gaming Motherboard (No M.2's installed)]
[Acer VG271 144Hz monitor 1920x1080p (some games I run in 2560x1440 at 60hz)]
[MSI Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super OC GP Edition 8GB DDR6 256 Bit]
[850W GameMax RGB power Supply]
[Samsung EVO 860 1Tb SSD(6Gb/s)]
[Seagate Barracuda 2Tb HDD]

I'm just needing help understanding PC better. From what research I've done so far, my specs are a good Mid tier High end PC for stock usuage. I've heard alot of people say that overclocking the 9700k helps it preform better but most use a liquid cooling while doing such. I'm just wanting to get the most out my PC. I use it for Gaming and Unreal Engine and Blender. 

Ian

Greetings. Everything looks good there, the biggest improvement you would probably see would be going up in "tier" of video card. You wouldn't have any bottlenecks or anything going to a top of the line graphics card if you wanted.

Fusionsk8r

So should I think about investing in a 2070S/2080(when it releases)? I asked another person and they mentioned me just upping my RAM to 32gb. All I'm looking for is Ultra settings @ 144hz in 1080p or Highish settings when running 2560x1440+, ill have to buy a 4k monitor rated for 144hz if I want 4k 60fps+ I'm sure. 

Ian

Fusionsk8r said:

So should I think about investing in a 2070S/2080(when it releases)? I asked another person and they mentioned me just upping my RAM to 32gb. All I'm looking for is Ultra settings @ 144hz in 1080p or Highish settings when running 2560x1440+, ill have to buy a 4k monitor rated for 144hz if I want 4k 60fps+ I'm sure. 

I doubt the RAM is holding you back for gaming purposes. A good way to tell is just open up task manager under "heavy" usage, and see how much RAM you are using. You can find that under the Performance tab, or Processes tab will show how much RAM is being used by each program etc. open on your PC. 

Fusionsk8r

Is there anything specific RAM usage wise that I need to look for? A couple of my processes are using about 20-30% of RAM, I'm definitely not super tech savvy and and basically running this show blind lol I know certain processes and applications have to be running for the computer to function, but I also don't know what processes are purposeless and using my RAM for no reasons. I just don't want to bug or annoy people with my green questions mostly but I KNOW I am not educated enough in this field to just click things either. 

TS_JosephF

Fusionsk8r said:

Is there anything specific RAM usage wise that I need to look for? A couple of my processes are using about 20-30% of RAM, I'm definitely not super tech savvy and and basically running this show blind lol I know certain processes and applications have to be running for the computer to function, but I also don't know what processes are purposeless and using my RAM for no reasons. I just don't want to bug or annoy people with my green questions mostly but I KNOW I am not educated enough in this field to just click things either. 

When checking the RAM usage, you will want to check how much the game is using and the total RAM usage. If you are getting somewhat close to 100% total RAM usage then that's when you will want to consider upgrading. In your case, 16 GB of RAM would be plenty for gaming. You should consider installing an M.2 SSD before upgrading the RAM to 32 GB. 

Fusionsk8r

Would an M.2 basically give my build better speeds? The thing that confuses me mostly is how for example, Rage 2 can be ran on Ultra in 1080 with no lag or rarely any screen tearing whatsoever, but Space Engineers and a few other games have a hard time running. Do game developers vary in what is used? Like will some companies use RAM primarily while another studio uses GPU or CPU primarily? And Ive been looking into an M.2 as well, just again I have absolutely no idea what I'm needing for what I want basically. I came from consoles and was tired of the load screens, the horrible fps, and the screen tearing that came with it. I've tossed around taking my RIG to a Geek Squad (all that's available in my area besides personal overpriced businesses) technician diagnose my build and such. I'm just completely lost at where to begin basically. I've had a few say my GPU needs to be better, and others say I need more RAM, or better CPU, I'm just confused and not that I'm on a budget clearly for buying such expensive parts day 1, but I'd rather not drop ANOTHER $500 on a GPU or CPU that isn't gonna boast the capability I'm looking for. I know Unreal and Blender are Hogs from hell, I use those far less than originally intended due to my system not being as worthy as I was led on to originally believe. But for Gaming itself I have rather newer stuff, all items are within what a 5yr bracket of being new age tech. So I don't understand why my computer is having as hard of a time as it is, and aside from being forced to keep Steam, Origin, Xbox, or GoG open when I play a game, I don't know what else could be eating my memory like candy causing my system to not perform. 

TS_JosephF

@Fusionsk8r
If you have a lot of programs installed on the PC then they tend to consume your RAM usage even in the background. You can look into uninstalling some programs that you do not use to try and free up some RAM. If your RAM usage is still close to 100% then you might want to consider upgrading. 
About the M.2 drive, it will certainly provide a boost in overall performance. An NVMe SSD would be roughly 7 times faster than a 2.5" SSD and over 20 times faster than a standard 3.5" HDD. Now, a lot of gamers have a different set up for their drives. I would recommend a small one for the OS, like 256 GB. Then you could install a 1 TB in the 2nd slot for your games. 
In order to know what you should upgrade first, you need to see where your system is bottlenecking. You will have to monitor the CPU, GPU, RAM, and HDD usage while gaming. Whatever is consistently running at a high usage is what you will want to upgrade first. I simply recommend installing an NVMe SSD because it is significantly faster than both SATA SSDs and HDDs. 

Fusionsk8r

TS_JosephF said:

@Fusionsk8r
If you have a lot of programs installed on the PC then they tend to consume your RAM usage even in the background. You can look into uninstalling some programs that you do not use to try and free up some RAM. If your RAM usage is still close to 100% then you might want to consider upgrading. 
About the M.2 drive, it will certainly provide a boost in overall performance. An NVMe SSD would be roughly 7 times faster than a 2.5" SSD and over 20 times faster than a standard 3.5" HDD. Now, a lot of gamers have a different set up for their drives. I would recommend a small one for the OS, like 256 GB. Then you could install a 1 TB in the 2nd slot for your games. 
In order to know what you should upgrade first, you need to see where your system is bottlenecking. You will have to monitor the CPU, GPU, RAM, and HDD usage while gaming. Whatever is consistently running at a high usage is what you will want to upgrade first. I simply recommend installing an NVMe SSD because it is significantly faster than both SATA SSDs and HDDs. 

This makes more sense, thank you very much for taking the time to explain this to me. Okay so I'll check out the M.2's first and go from there.