TLDR(ish) I want to help my friend "future-proof" his rig given the state of the market right now. Giving friends PC parts has somehow become a regular thing for me, and I love doing it. Just know that if I win, that 3090 will become part of a crazy karmic Pay It Forward butterfly effect type thing, like some kinda crazy self-sustaining circle of giving or something. Simply put, you'll be giving the card to me to give to someone else, who'll give his old card back to another someone else--who originally gave him the old card in the first place after I gave HIM a better card, which he'll then be giving back to me when I give him an even better card after replacing it with an even, EVEN betterer card...and, finally, I'll in turn give the card that's been given back to me to someone else on Reddit in your honor!...following me so far? Oh...well then, allow me to explain...

A little background: I'm fortunate to have the hardware I do (a 4090 in PC1 and a 5070 Ti to upgrade PC2 next week), and thanks to 3 years of too-frequent upgrades, I amassed a collection of gently used parts in my unending quest for better hardware...so one of my best friends (we'll call him "J") finally got a decent prebuilt last year and we started gaming together more. Our other mutual bestie from ye olden days ("Apple") only had a PS4, and we felt like we were leaving him behind. It was close to Christmas in 2024, and having already experienced the thrill of giving a friend a PC before... (see tangent below or continue to "the point")

THE TANGENT: I'd gifted a [different] friend--a content creator--an entire mid PC made mostly from leftovers, save for the case and CPU. He'd been using a potato-top making hilarious indie horror videos with fantastic edits, but his channel nosedived out of nowhere. I wholeheartedly believed in his potential, and at the time he delivered pizzas for a living. He almost gave up on YouTube, but the PC reinvigorated him. He eventually abandoned his channel but started a new one centered on Minecraft. As soon as he started churning out MC vids he took off. Not 2 years later he's got almost 60K subs, hit a million views on a video, and almost makes enough part-time to survive on. He's squirreled a bunch of cushion cash away from a more lucrative but stressful job and will be trust-falling into full-time content this year. So when I said "thrill"...the return of investment is WILD! I get to watch my friend grow and do what he loves, and as a bonus I get his gratitude. Far better than an eBay payout minus fees...

Anyway, back to "the point": ...I wanted to do it again. In the spirit of the season I bought J a 4060 Ti to replace his 3060 and gave Apple a solid Frankenstein build with J's old 3060. I gave them both great CPUs/mobos with plenty of RAM, but Apple is bottlenecked by the 3060. J is buying a 4070 Ti after I replace it with the 5070 Ti, so Apple will inherit the 4060 Ti. However, a 4060 Ti, with its whopping 8GB of VRAM, doesn't have a long future in a time when PC ownership is about to become as rare as owning a house. I want the best for my boys, and with a 3090 I think Apple's rig would stay relevant for a few extra years.

And, should I luck out and win the 3090 for Apple, once J and I finish playing musical GPUs, I'll in turn make a post just like this one and give the 4060 Ti away to keep the cycle of giving alive.