This motherboard remains a solid option for purchase or you can hold off.
This motherboard remains a solid option for purchase or you can hold off.
Interesting idea, but let me break it down. You're weighing Intel and AMD options and considering hardware upgrades. Upgrading the motherboard, RAM, and formatting your 256GB SATA SSD with the OS sounds solid. Keeping the second 256GB SSD is a good choice for storage. Adding a 1TB M.2 NVMe drive would be great for performance, and using a GPU bottleneck until late November when new GPUs drop could work. Just make sure your system meets the requirements for those upgrades.
3.3gb on Windows with Chrome open is completely fine. No problems detected. SSD fragmentation isn't a big deal—it's normal since the controller automatically optimizes data placement. Defragmenting an SSD just forces it to redo everything, which often leads to the same fragmentation levels again.
Windows 10 optimizes storage by keeping data in RAM as much as possible, which speeds things up. However, this means RAM is used more frequently than it should be. For Windows 10, the available RAM can feel wasted, especially when running memory-heavy applications. The system automatically allocates all reserved RAM to the task in need, minimizing any noticeable effect. Overall, there’s no indication of issues, so upgrading isn’t necessary.