It's funny, I've actually been finding lately that the hardware that has been coming out at a really good clip from AMD and nVidia... it's no longer being driven by gaming. PC gaming doesn't need anything more than a mid-range 20xx series card, nothing is making truly good use of ray tracing yet, gaming really doesn't touch any more than three or four cores and for that you really want high frequency counts like the 10900K... I don't know. The big advances on the graphical fidelity side and on the processing thread count side are mostly geared for workflow applications.
I find the only real hardware challenges that I need hardware for these days are coming from my photography hobby. If I want to do batch image processing on 500 RAW files, then multi-thread count is valuable. I've ordered a new mirrorless Canon EOS R5 that shoots 45 MP images and the resulting image processing will demand some horsepower. But I don't shoot video, I don't edit video, and I don't process animation or create special effects. The hardware is fast eclipsing my needs, and has been for a little while now.
I'm gaming on two very good 27" 1440p Gsync panels, 165Hz, IPS, and I'm not really looking for 4K, much less am I interested in 8K. The 360 Hz panels don't really interest me either. I sometimes see the attraction of an ultrawide for work, but not for gaming.
I'm hoping that the new console generation will drive the third party developers to start making use of the newer technology for gaming. Right now, while I know I'll eventually plunk down for a RTX 3080, I certainly am in no rush. I am gaming on 9700K and RTX 2080 Super. It's plenty at these resolutions.
I have an x570 platform with a token 3600X in it for the moment. I plan to put an AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 series CPU and a RTX 3080 in there in the next six months, but do I really need it now? The games specs just aren't there for it yet. I can wait a while.
(Except of course, incongruously, Flight Simulator. What the hell, Microsoft?)
If I were advising someone right now, I might steer him/her to go for a Ryzen 5600 when it's out ($200), a B550 motherboard ($150), 16GB of 3600 MHz RAM ($60), a good air cooler ($75) or even the stock cooler, some decent case fans ($15 x 3), and then a RTX 3070 ($500) when it's out later in the year. That's a cool $800-$1000 and it will give you plenty for most gaming purposes. Do as I say and not as I do, because I'm leaving a lot of performance unused on the table with what I built. Some of that is purely aesthetics, though.
Laptops are just a different animal. I want them to play new games and I want them to be durable, well built, and extremely compact. I don't need battery life, but I want almost everything else. I need to fit it in a medium knapsack with a lot of camera gear, and all of that small enough to carry-on even a smallish plane. That's just pricey any way you slice it.