Which monitor type should I buy?

[DG_Silva]

I've recently spent some money upgrading my PC to the following spec, and have decided to upgrade my monitor along with it. My remaining budget is around £150, so I'm looking at second hand, but I don't know whether to go for a 27" 1440p 144hz monitor or a 27" 4k 60hz model (budget won't stretch to a 4k 144hz model).

Can anyone explain the pros and cons of one over the other (beside the obvious screen res/refresh rate), and which should I go for? I normally play racing or driving sims, occasionally FPSs but nothing major online.

New spec:
Ryzen 7 5600x
16Gb 3600Mhz DDR4
Nvidia 1660 Super 6Gb (will upgrade to 3060 or something similar at a later date)
1Tb NVMe
2x 1Tb HDD
2Tb HDD
256Gb SSD

 

[sesselpupser]

I have a 27" 1440p 144Hz monitor at home and a 27" 4k 60Hz monitor at work, long story short I'd say the 1440p but you'd have to treat that 144Hz refresh rate as more of a maximum than a consistent frame rate target. Get one with variable refresh rate that works with Nvidia cards and you basically won't need to ever think about it, otherwise be prepared to globally lower the rate to 120, 90 or even just 60Hz because the 3060 is more of a 1440p 60Hz card than 120Hz plus (but that of course will depend on the games you're playing). 1440p at 144Hz is more pixels per second than 4k at 60Hz, too, if I remember correctly 4k at 85Hz would be about the same.

The other thing is your CPU will be working harder at 144Hz than 60Hz regardless of the resolution or graphics settings because it'll need to keep the game ticking at that higher rate, but I don't know anything about AMD CPUs to know if yours will put up with 144Hz or not.