So I've recently upgraded my PC in multiple steps, and had the following experience (on PTU!): RAM: I've upgraded to 32GB (from 16), but the speed of both configurations was/is 3600MHz CL16, so it's really only the size that changed. To no surprise it didn't directly affect the frame rate, but there are some situations where the game can indeed occupy more RAM, and would start lagging if it can't. For example on Area 18 it's typically around 12GB, so having 16GB total system memory seems okay, at first... but you can easily get into situations, like visiting the Aerospace Expo show floor, where the game start chugging your RAM like crazy... Having 32GB helps the lags there, but doesn't affect the frame rate otherwise. GPU: For a long time I've felt like the graphics quality settings barely affect the frame rate, and still do. I usually go with "High". Resolution however is very critical, and can really take a toll on your performance, once you go above FHD. Problem is, that I have a 3440x1440 display... I've been using an Radeon RX 5700 (reference design, non-XT) for over a year now, and running at native resolution was challenging. Luckily Radeon Software allows creating custom resolutions, so I set up a 2752x1152 res (it's a special downscaling res for 3440x1440 that leads to better image quality, as it avoids having "half-pixels"), and enabled some image sharpening (also courtesy of Radeon Software), which led to a decent experience. However I still wanted to go native (resolution-wise) and the fps wasn't stellar (it was just acceptable, for an alpha), so I've upgraded to a Radeon RX 6800 (reference design, non-XT) as soon as I could get my hands on one. It is troubled by graphical issues in SC (which is quite weird considering I use the exact same Radeon Software version that I recently still used with the 5700 too, and that had no issues https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/issue-council/star-citizen-alpha-3/STARC-134549-Lighting_Issues_with_new_AMD_RX_6800_Graphic_Card), but that's not what I'm here to discuss now. What I found intresting is that my frame rate barely changed, and the GPU seems to "sleep" most of the time, not really hitting the clock speeds that it could. Up to this point it seemed logical to me, that increasing the resolution primarily increases the GPU load, and I should upgrade that part... but it seems not entirely true. (don't get me wrong, 6800 was faster than the 5700, but by far not as much as it should/could be) CPU: So I got to the last suspect, the processor. All that time I've been using a Ryzen 3600 (non-X/XT), as SC typically didn't load it above 65% and it seemed to do just fine in every other game as well. Regardless, I've decided to upgrade it to a Ryzen 5800X. Note that this change also allowed me to enable Resizable BAR and PCI-E 4.0 (and I did). To my surprise this change lead to a vastly more noticeable frame rate boost, than changing the GPU (at least in my case). Intrestingly SC seems to load this CPU to about 60% as well, even though it has +2 cores and much higher IPC. Walking around Area18 my fps was around 25 with the 3600, now I'm getting 40+ with the 5800X. (again, 3440x1440 High) Consequently the Radeon 6800 doesn't "sleep" as much as before... It's weird to me how increasing the resolution seems to bottleneck on the CPU noticeably more than the GPU, but that seems to be the case here. Note that I do not know how much the server currently affects the performance, but this is my experience. Side-note: as soon as they fix the graphics glitch mentioned above, Zen3 + RDNA2 seem to do just fine with Star Citizen - this is the first system I have that doesn't cause me to have nausea from all the stuttering... as it doesn't do that, it's quite smooth, at least for the state of the game.