I did the same more than a year ago. I replaced ACR with Darktable (free), which is superior.
I use Darktable for all my raw editing. When you learn how to use it, you will not miss it.
When I need to do serious pixel replacements I use Affinity Photo 2 and tiffs.
As the noise reduction in Darktable is fair but not up to AI standard, I use DxO PureRaw 4.
The dng files from PureRaw 4 goes fine with Darktable. Don’t ever buy DxO PhotoLab.