If you're not feeling the age of the chip for your own particular use cases (gaming, work, whatever) then I would wait until you do feel it. Put the money in an interest bearing account until you are ready.

I'm on an i9 and in much the same boat, I could definitely upgrade, but nothing seems to be bogging down on CPU for me right now so I don't feel the need. I will wait another generation or two and things will be ever better.

As everyone else has said if you feel like the speed is fine, stick with it, but before you upgrade your next GPU maybe up that CPU next. I'd recommend going with any AMD X3D CPU that should help your performance the most and maybe it'll be your next 12 year old CPU if you go x800x3d or higher

When you upgrade, it's going to be big. You'll need a new mobo and new RAM to go with that new CPU. Maybe get a faster SSD too since you're currently running SATA.

I was curious about the CPU, so I pulled some ratings from cpubenchmark.net

i7 2600K @ 3.40GHz: 5478 / 1742

i5 13600K @ 3.5 GHz: 38353 / 4176

Ryzen 7700X @ 4.5GHz: 36351 / 4258

If you plan to overclock any new CPU proportionally, then a CPU upgrade will give you an absolutely insane boost to multithreaded performance, and almost 2.5x the single-core performance. Honestly 2.5x doesn't seem like a lot for a 12-year jump but it's nothing to sneeze it either.

If you're not planning to overclock a new CPU like you did with your old one, and you're dealing with mostly single-threaded workloads, then the difference won't be so striking. Which is honestly surprising given how old that CPU is; it's been a bad decade for single-thread performance, for sure, but I was still expecting a bigger difference.

Personally, I upgraded recently from a Ryzen 1700 to a 7700X, and it's a huge bump for me. I forget exactly what the numbers were, but my framerate and performance in Civ6 skyrocketed. Generally PC usage is noticeably faster; nothing revolutionary but certainly noticeable in web browsing and stuff like that.

It highly depends on what it is you're doing. If all you do is play graphically intensive single player games at high settings, a 2600k can still be more than fast enough (especially when OC'd).

As always with hardware upgrades, you need to find current issues, measure what causes them and upgrade that component. If there are no issues you're aware of, there's no need to upgrade IMHO.

How high are FPS and GPU usage in your favourite games? If they're rather low and GPU usage is <90%, you're CPU bottlenecked and would likely see an increase in FPS.
GPU usage roughly indicates the headroom; if you're already close to 100% there likely is little point in upgrading because you'd be GPU-bottlenecked immediately after but if it's, say, 50% you'd likely see a great increase in FPS. Then you'll obviously have to ask yourself whether that increase is worth it. If you're at >100fps already, the answer would probably be "no" for instance.

Another factor to consider is power usage but I doubt a current-gen CPU would draw appreciably less power than a 2600K. I mean, it's OC'd, so you're probably in the neighbourhood of 120-150W I'd imagine but that's not unheard of nowadays either and your GPU is likely a much larger factor.

I actually had a pretty similar system, a 2700k/32gb/nonraid ssd and went to a r5 3600 and that felt amazing from a system responsiveness standpoint. Like you said it wasn't night and day immediately (say the way a hdd to ssd) felt but after using my new computer for awhile and using the old one the old one felt slower and more limited.

Edit: I also upgraded cpu again from a 3600 to a 5800x, not as much a jump but the upgrade felt so good for me I wanted more and thanks to the cpus sharing am4 all I needed was a new cpu.

I didn't OC and didn't have a raid setup, but the cpu upgrade felt better as my workload on it increased. And the nvme upgrade really felt amazing for my workload. I do web dev/automated testing and the update enabled me to use my computer to stream (sometimes multiple streams) and do my workflow (standing up database, site, running automation, manually testing) without having to close tabs or "prep my computer". The ceiling of what it can handle performantly is much higher which improves my test reliability and quality of life. The amount of stuff I can throw at it before it begins to slow down has been the biggest improvement for me.

If you're happy with your performance in games, I don't know it'll be that much better with the upgrade given what you play now. But for work, I imagine it'll be quite an improvement depending on what you upgrade to/how you use your computer.

Have you watching benchmark videos to see how far behind your 2600 is? A 13100 would give you 100% more speed, much less the 14100 that is coming out.

Since you focus on games with the 165Hz, buy a 7600x, get a quality motherboard like an Aorus Elite AX or MSI at that price, 32GB DDR5, then in 3 or 4 years you buy a 9950x and go to 16 cores on that motherboard to do a system upgrade.

Trying a new system is not the same as using it for a week with all of your programs installed and you see how responsive it is with your programd open and running.

You are missing a lot of instruction sets, and buyig AM5 now or next year buying Intel with feed the 165Hz a lot smoother and you will make better use of it. The 2600 can't keep up with the 6850 and provice consistant smooth frame timings.

You need to build a new computer including new power supply. You can only re-use the Radeon and storage in new system, everything else must be replaced. Check the price of 2600K on eBay. You whole PC minus 6850 might sell for $200. I would argue that you're holding on to something that can't sell anymore.

I just upgraded from a 2600K to a 4790. Got to reuse my RAM and everything 😂 I’m not looking to play any of the recent AAA games though so it works just fine paired with my 1070 and should last a couple more years until my son gets into PC gaming.

A 12 year old processor?