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Zkuq said:

Probably going to be ordering a new PC very, very soon, and while I'm happy to finally upgrade, I really don't like the current market situation:

• GPUs: Not much to say here. It's a bad choice one way or another.
• CPUs: A bit unclear whether this is a good moment to get a new one. At least the next gen sounds like it's going to be a refresh for both AMD and Intel so nothing significantly different in a while, but pricing is a bit bad: I want to future-proof my PC as well as possibly while still not investing too much, so it sounds like Ryzen 5 7700 it is... which is terrible value. If it didn't sound like Cities: Skylines 2 was pretty CPU-heavy, I'd probably get a 7600 instead and consider upgrading later if necessary.
• motherboards/cases: USB-C and PCI-E 5.0 are kind of coming, and things are moving on this front. AM5 is terribly expensive, but I need it for future upgrade potential. USB 3.2 support in cases is also relatively rare.
• SSDs: PCI-E 4.0 sounds fine, but with PCI-E 5.0 coming along, I'm not confident my timing is great. At least prices don't seem too terrible (although I'm not sure if the situation is actually good, compared to historical prices).

Anyway, thinking of something like this:

• AMD Ryzen 5 7700: Future-proofing, like I said. Terrible value, and I'm not quite willing to invest in a 7700X3D. An Intel Core i5-13600 seems like something that would be more suitable for my needs, but I'm kind of interested in power efficiency, and I'm more confident in AM5's longevity.
• GeForce RTX 4060: Again terrible value, but should do at 1080p, which is what I'll be using. I'll still have to check whether it's actually usable for ray tracing at 1080p and with DLSS, but I'm expecting it to kind of be. I'm betting for DLSS 3 to be worth more than the extra raw power I could get with the RTX 3000 series, but that's a bit of a gamble for sure (+ RTX 3000 availability seems a bit poor here at the moment). For me, it probably makes more sense to get an RTX 4060 and upgrade to something like an RTX 6060 whenever it comes out than getting a more expensive GPU now (but again a bit of a gamble).
• Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi or ASRock B650 PG Lightning or ASRock B650 Pro RS: A bit of a tough choice. Sounds like ASRock might be faster at booting, but dunno. It's really hard to find any usable data on the ASRock boards.
• a bunch of whatever for the rest (been looking into these carefully but not really interesting enough to write here, aside from complaining about poor USB-C and USB 3.2 support in cases + I absolutely hate how everything has a window these days)

The 7700 is a fine CPU choice, and faster than the 7800X3D in games that prefer frequency over cache. Not sure where Skylines 2 will land, tho.

The GPU situation in that "middle-end/mainstream" market is too convoluted at the moment. There's no right nor wrong choice. If you want to bet on upscaling techs, then the 4060 might work, but if you want a card that gives you performance without tricks, then the 6700XT is a better choice.
And who knows, maybe with the imminent launch of the 7700XT and 7800XT cards, plus the "back to school" deals some stores make, you may find an unexpected deal.

If you're worried about PCIe 5.0 and future proofing your system, maybe going with a B650E or X670E motherboard is your best call, at least those that support PCIe 5.0 for both GPU and storage. And some are reasonable priced. Club386 has reviewed the soon to launch ASRock B650E Taichi Lite, that's much, much cheaper than the none-lite model, but it's E-ATX.

Tallking about mobo sizes, are you also getting a new case? And, if so, what are you looking for? The Lian Li Lancool 216 is well priced and has a front USB type-C 3.2 connector and has room for all kinds of motherboard & GPU sizes.

Finally, I wouldn't go with a Gen 5 SSD. While sequential reads/writes are impressive, the random numbers aren't that impressive to justify the cost and extra heat.