Why would anynoe need to upgrade so regularly, IMO GPU when you actually NEED more FPS because your games are suffering, not just because you are chasing +20% for benchmarks, and CPU every 4-5 years or so, as long as you have something good to start with, foe example I went from an ancient 4 core i5 4670k I think and 8 gigs ddr3 ram, no hyperthreading either lol, to an i7 12700k with 32 gigs ddr5. That was one insane step up, but I told myself never again will I let myself get so far behind and suffer. So now I am looking at future CPUs and targeting 2025, as I see Arrow Lake/Pather Lake are meant penned to be performance leaders with massive IPC increases, really excited to see the new architectures that Jim Keller has come up with over at Intel. Anyways my point is, no one needs to upgrade every year, but also, don't make my mistake and slum it for almost a decade on ancient tech and suffer because your experience is so crap, there is getting value out of stuff by using it for a long time, but there is also the poor experience factor that has to be thought about if using weak technology thats left behind by more demanding software.
Maybe my example of upgrading every year is extreme, but then you see posts from people who have gone from a 20** -> 30** -> 40** series cards and I wonder why bother just for the sake of saying I have the latest tech
In terms of your mistake of 'slumming it' for a decade, my machine is currently an i5 4690K, 8gig DDR3 with a GTX560ti, I am slumming it even more, so anything I buy would be an even bigger step up than you saw with your upgrade
When the pandemic hit, I had been considering building a new machine, but when prices jumped the way they did (and stock options became limited in certain areas) I made the decision to forget about it and wait for things to settle down, but that now seems like a mistake when you look at how the cost of living has jumped the way it has
Yes, I could buy cheap and see a massive improvement in anything I decided to play, but is it really worth it? In an ideal world where budget was no concern, I would go for a 4090 along with the best money can buy and forget about having to change anything for a good number of years, but then I don't feel like that expense is justified for how much use it would get - in real terms, I would probably be better off buying a console for the games I would play
Now if a major component in my machine decides to die on me, I won't have much choice other than to replace the entire machine with something newer just due to the fact that I am not going to try and track down compatible components for the existing platform and take a chance on second-hand goods of that age
If graphics cards are going to continue to get more expensive, even for the lower end of the ranges, then I don't see a PC/laptop being anything other than a work device or a larger screen browsing device for me personally, as I have other things I would rather spend that kind of money on before a gaming PC