Thank you for your replies, guys, much appreciated.
Some random thoughts.
1. What I knew about the 10nm process was that Intel couldn't produce cost efficient yields, not that it didn't clock well. Obviously, who knows, but hopefully, we will find soon enough. Either way, the 6950x is bound to be a decent upgrade for AMD, so....
2. How much time does a typical solution take? From what I read here and there, you can do a flop in 10 min or something, but if you solve for multiple hours, you leave it up all night?
3. SSD performance and postgresql. When I upgraded from my 4770k to my 9900k, I also got an NVME drive as an upgrade to my sata SSD. Both were high end models from Samsung. I tested the 9900k with both. It didn't make a lick of difference in loading reports.
On the surface, that's surprising, because you see that NVME drives are 5-6 times faster than SATA drives. But it doesn't matter, because those are sequential speeds and apparently database reading doesn't involve sequential reads. If I understand correctly, an SSD will make a difference from another SSD if it's faster on lower queue depths. In the regard, an NVME drive isn't faster than a SATA drive.
A few years ago, I went ahead and I bought an Intel Optane 900p which was at the time the fastest drive around. It shaved 15 seconds or so out of a report that took 105-120 seconds to load. But it was very expensive and not sure it was worth the cost.
4. Like I said before, upgrading to a later version of postgresql helped a lot with performance. The versions supported by Pokertracker do not utilize multiple cores. The latest versions do, so that's why it makes as difference.
5. RAM. I have noticed that when the size of my PT4 database exceeds the size of my RAM, there's a drop in performance. You really have to play with the settings however.
As far as RAM speed is concerned. 10 years ago, we weren't concerned just with loading reports faster. We were concerned with having the HUD updated in a timely manner when we were playing multiple tables. At some point, even a video card upgrade made a difference because a slow GPU acted like a bottleneck!
Anyway, back in the day, I was doing research on what to look for in an upgrade and I ended up in the postgresql forum, where the guy who wrote postgresql -who turns out used to play poker as well- told me to get as fast a memory as I could.
Nowadays, the HUD is updated pretty fast, so I don't know how much RAM speed affects database performance in other ways.
I do pledge that if I bing the SCOOP main event, I will upgrade my computer and tell you which components make the bigger difference. If I don't bing however, you are SOL.