@Lightsims8 I haven't seen any evidence that Horse Ranch is as demanding as C&D. What is abundantly clear is that 4 GB RAM isn't enough to run Sims 4 well anymore, but 8 GB is enough if you don't run much else at the same time. (A lightweight app like Spotify should be fine; a dozen Chrome tabs or the Discord app might not be.) Cottage Living had major problems at launch but now seems to have an impact on the level of Seasons: clearly more demanding than early EPs or any other pack type, not as bad a C&D.
However, the effects do stack, so take your time in adding more content, or be prepared to disable certain packs if the performance hit is beyond your limit. You also don't need to complete your purchases during this sale. Going by the pattern of the previous five years or so, there will be multiple Sims 4 sales between now and Black Friday week, likely with the same prices as you're seeing now.
You can also avoid the effects of the animals by not having animals in your game, at least not now. It's not like your sim is going to adopt a horse or llama behind your back, and the only inactive sims that own them by default live in the worlds that came with these packs. There's no reason the Build/Buy or CAS items should have any negative impact on gameplay. I would be a bit careful with the animal-related lot traits from CotL—that's not to say don't use them, only watch for negative effects and be prepared to remove them if necessary.
The dust from Bust the Dust seems to work in a way that no one likes, so I'd suggest shopping around for a mod that allows you to control the effects. I know there's at least one popular mod that's been in use since the kit was released, and while I haven't tried it myself, other players say it's exactly what they want. And you can of course simply disable the feature in-game and keep the vacuum cleaners.
When you're ready to buy a new computer, feel free to ask for help with that. Whether it's advice on components, suggestions for specific models, general hardware talk, or just a second opinion on the unit you've already picked out, we're always around to answer these kinds of questions.
" It's not like your sim is going to adopt a horse or llama behind your back, " XD
Thanks again, helpful advice, & I'll for sure post on here again when it's time to get a new computer end of year or next year, it'll be gaming PC on sale & should be fine, but I might need advice between 2 choices when that time comes 🙂 @puzzlezaddict
(Just adding here; I got bust the dust & dream home decorator last night, seems OK so far, tried a very very cluttered 2 story house with full basement too, with adult, child & 2 toddlers, in a new save game where all 4 towns are untouched -meaning I left their pre-made houses & sims there. On my other save I'd been testing, I had removed every house & sim, made a one lot sim with only alot of furniture & clutter on lot to test with before I build. I like making my own town from scratch.- Anyway, the smoothness of game play wasn't too much different, but I did have a few moments of laggy gameplay with that bigger family; they didn't last too long, only at begginning when 1st loads: 1 was welcome wagon, other was when I load the lot again with nanny still on lot while father is at work as cop. I load again when he's home & she's not there & it didn't do it, don't know if it's issue with nanny or performance issue. It made CPU go up from usual 35 or 50, to 65 or 69 for about a minute, but goes away & runs fine after.)
At least it didn't crash or stay that way, so its fine. Just in case, I'll take that as a hint to stop adding until my new PC..(except for 1 more, I want dine out, hope it's OK 😉 )
@Lightsims8 Dine Out should be fine in general from a performance standpoint. But restaurants have their own issues, and if you get one to work properly, you might see a performance hit from having so many sims on the lot. You might test other situations of many sims on one lot, for example going to a community lot at peak hours and counting the sims as they arrive.
I wouldn't worry about the CPU use spiking the way it did; the only issue is the drop in performance. I'd also suggest turning off dust, as an experiment, just in case your graphics chip is having trouble rendering the dust or the sparkles.
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