

I think with your budget you’d want to upgrade either your CPU or your GPU, but not both, and should first identify the bottleneck for each of your use cases. At a guess, I’d say GPU for starfield and possibly CPU for minecraft especially if you’re using mods, but it’s worth spending time measuring that and picking the direction you want to go. You can try smaller upgrades for each, but my sense is that it wouldn’t sum up to as worthwhile upgrade as focusing on one.
An nvme drive would be nice, but I wouldn’t prioritize it above cpu/gpu. I think 16GB of memory is fine for what you’re wanting, and there’s nothing wrong with that motherboard.
Used 2080ti’s sell within your budget (and for less there are 2080 and 2080 supers on the market), and that would be a huge upgrade on the GPU side. Not a recommendation, just something to consider.
Depends on what I’m cooking, but always for chicken breasts. Roasting at a high temperature works great (it’s not the only way), but can mean the overcooking time is pretty small. It’s an easy way to respect the bird and get the best results possible.
Thighs on the other hand, I just go by eye, you really have to try hard to overcook those.
Might be worth noting that using a thermometer well does require some amount of skill and experience, you need to insert it into the right location for the data to be repeatable. Easier to learn than cooking by eye, though.