Buying a new monitor, please help

Hi everyone,

I'm thinking of buying a new monitor. I currently have an old Asus VW246H, that I bought more than 10 years ago, and after building a new PC on late 2017 I think I need an upgrade.

So, first of all, this is my current build:

• CPU: Intel - Core i7-7700K 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Processor
• CPU Cooler: Cooler Master - Hyper 212X 82.9 CFM CPU Cooler
• Motherboard: Asus - STRIX Z270F ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
• Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
• Storage: MyDigitalSSD - BPX 256 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
• Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11 GB GAMING X Video Card
• Case: Fractal Design - Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case
• Power Supply: Corsair - 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply

And I'm looking into these monitors, by order of current preference:

• ASUS ROG PG279Q
• Acer Predator XB271HU 27"

I play games close to the monitor so a 27'' should be enough, I'm looking into IPS screens with high refresh rate and max 4ms of response time.

Do you think I should go for a 4K HDR monitor, or are they too expensive at the time? What monitor do you recommend?

Thanks for the help.

Honestly, the two you picked out seem like pretty solid choices for what system you have now. Last I checked, playing games in 4K with all the bells and whistles is still "almost but not quite there yet" for the more recent and demanding titles out there, so going with 1440p high refresh sounds like a pretty good idea for the time being.

As for HDR though, HDR is awesome on consoles and TVs, but I unfortunately haven't seen it a bunch on reasonably affordable monitors. So, ENB, SweetFX, or ReShade mods for the games that support those mods, or setup a different color profile on the monitor, and that's HDR on the cheap.

Also, mainly out of curiosity, have you thought about 21:9?

I wouldn't go 4k yet because as of now we really don't have to hardware yet to run 4k at 60fps without spending $1k on a graphics card, plus I don't think there is that much difference between 4k and 1440p with good anti aliasing in most games, and you can always up sample 1440p to 4k through Geforce Experience settings. I'd personally go for a high refresh rate 1440p monitor over a larger 4k monitor. Higher refresh rates are something you can see and feel in game as where 4k resolution just looks a little sharper.

As for HDR, its awesome but really only works well with displays that reach around 2,000 nits for truly great HDR. Finding a monitor like that is going to be tough. On top of that there are a lot of competing HDR standards right now so even if your monitor IS HDR, what kind? Is it "real" HDR or just the manufacturer calling wide color gamut HDR? These are still problems with high-end TVs, much less monitors where HDR is non existent. We're probably not going to see a lot of that for another few years. As it is, most HDR monitors out there are just scaled down TV panels.

@facelessvixen: I'm not thinking about 21:9 because I really don't see a benefit of going bigger then 27''. I play not far from the monitor.