Finding gpu balance is dizzying

Hey there friends. Happy day. I have a sub shoestring budget to build my grandpas old pc into something that will run games tolerably well.

We started with an HP M01F0014; Ryzen 3 3200g 8gb ram 256gb ssd

I’ve since upgraded the specs to; Ryzen 5 3600 32gb ram 2.25 tb total ssd storage (1tb in the pcie x1, 2x 500gb ssd to the usb 3.0 on the back) GTX 1650 4gb OC I’m planning on upgrading to a 500w psu soon, ahead of my gpu upgrade.

I want to upgrade my gpu, and the list of possible cards is a mile long. I’ve identified everything from the gtx 1660 super oc to the rx6800 and rtx3070 as valid candidates. Besides the estimated 300w of available power for the gpu, I also have a couple physical size limitation of 10.5 inches or 267mm. There is also the sub-shoestring budget I have to work with, I’d really like to keep things under $350. I’m fine with buying from fb marketplace as well as eBay and amazon. 4K isn’t a concern either, as my monitor is only 1080. I’d rather have the system put out a better image than my screen can display.

What cards should I avoid (and why)? What cards will pair well or outperform my 5 3600 (or the 7 3700, which is the best cpu that my mobo can handle)?

I’ll note that I’m considering upgrading to the 7 3700, but I won’t unless I find myself in a situation where my cpu is bottlenecking my gpu, and even then I don’t know that it would be a huge massive upgrade that is totally worth doing.

Maybe of interest is what I’ll be running; hell let loose, battlefield, cod, forza motorsports and horizon, war thunder, enlisted.

The other part of this story is the sob story. I’m currently dealing with some severe health problems that have left me 50% bedridden. I went from being extroverted and traveling the world 6 months a year to a depressed cripple. I started gaming on this pc to help cope with the depression caused by my circumstances.

I’ve also found that tinkering with this pc has been as fun, if not more fun, than gaming on it. I started out by adding the ram. Then I sprung for my first gpu, an rx550. I didn’t much know what I was doing, so I quickly swapped to a gtx 1050ti. I was happy with that for a little while, and eventually found myself the 1650oc. I’ve had much more fun with the 1650 being able to play with more settings, so some mild overlocking, etc.

But I want to get a little smarter with my money. I could keep upgrading gpus little by little over time until I hit the wall, but I’d rather buy 1 good card and be done with it, since being chronically ill doesn’t pay the bills (but it does take away all other income sources, hence the “sub shoestring” budget).

Trying to be methodical about all this has basically left me confused, too many 4 digit numbers with the letters r, x, and sometime t or g, occasionally having the suffix of oc or to. The amount of options took things from fun to overwhelming a little too fast, so now I’m running to the internet for help. It’s bad enough trying to deal with life, maybe you nice people can help me in dealing with a problem that I’ve invented for and brought upon myself?