Sure, theoretically I would too, but life rarely isn’t that black/white.
Practically there are lots of variables and whatifs, all boiling down to: is the additional effort worth it?
I use(d) my friends and parents as testers, if they can’t see the difference or don’t acknowledge subtle increases in quality, I think its not worth it. 80/20 rule in effect.
My experience: even subtle changes in art direction rarely go unnoticed, purely technical render stuff rarely registers, that’s why I changed my focus.
I am talking about personal work btw, also YMMV.
Maybe I am too paranoid about (humongous) rendertimes, but this is the strongest motivator behind it. You give me a renderer who does all that without any tradeoffs and I change in a heartbeat.
If you can’t tell if it’s technically correct it doesn’t matter.
And it’s not just that. What about iterations on designs and renderings. If it’s simply too long to make certain changes and adjustments because rendertime, you might either get bored and just settle with whatever you have(if it’s your project) or risk running out of time(if it’s client work).
In an ideal world where you know you press render and you get what you want, everyone would accept some overnight animation or sill renderings. But that’s just not how it works. Just some test-renderings throughout the project will inflate time for completion drastically. Ever since I started using Unreal and eevee for some work I can’t stand any time spent on rendering.
Unless you’re doing some straight up simulation, things need to look convincing and pretty. Pretty much one really cares if it’s realistic, and no one should, you’re rendering some polygons and textures in some void, how realistic can that be?
What’s happening with light linking? I switched from Maya three years ago and light linking is the only thing I really miss, and I’m REALLY surprised that we still don’t have it in Blender. It’s maybe one of the most basic features in any render engine. So anyone know the status of that?
Sadly on hold. There was a volunteer who started working on this, but I think (speculate) that this feature was postponed due to work needed for Project Heist. Things like new texture painting workflow and baking.
I might be wrong thou.
Very sad to hear, so I hope you’re wrong 
But seeing it haven’t happen for so long I guess you are right :\ E-Cycles do have it thou, except it’s a bit buggy from my experience, but at least it shows that it is possible.
Light Linking task:
https://developer.blender.org/T68915
Patch (WIP):
https://developer.blender.org/D11636
This has probably been answered before but is it not recommended yet to enable the CPU with GPU rendering? I’ve only just noticed that it’s much faster with only the GPU enabled.
It’s not recommended right now.
There is a patch that improves CPU+GPU rendering, but the gains are minimal, and the development cost seems high:
https://developer.blender.org/T95687
I generally render with CPU only the scenes that are too big to fit in VRAM.
That sucks. Rendering only with GPU is faster but it tends to overheat which forces my PC to shut down (with max fan speed) when I test render a past project. Any way to lower GPU load via Blender settings? Rendering with lower tile size seems to improve it I think?
There IS at least still some CPU+GPU rendering improvements with Cycles X right?
BRUH. This is not a problem with Blender. This is problem with your hardware setup. You shouldn’t troubleshoot it from Blender side, but from hardware side…
Do an investigation what exactly is overheating - CPU? GPU?
Then fix it accordingly - good ventilation for a component, PC case with better airflow, fresh thermal compound on you CPU cooler, etc.
Also update GPU drivers and monitor temps under heavy load.
Really doubt it, but its really dependent on your hardware. If lets say you have threadripper and lower end GPU that might help. But it is unlikely scenario.