Question 3900x vs 3700x for photo editing and gaming

[name68]

Hello, i cant decide between ryzen 3700x and ryzen 3900x for my use. Which is: photo-editing on 4k screen and gaming on 1440p 144hz screen. My gpu is RTX 2080ti. Ryzen 3900x is 250 dollars more than 3700x in my country. Or should i go intel ? Thank you

 

[drivinfast247]

3700x

 

[RodroX]

As drivinfast247 wrote, I would also go with the Ryzen 3700X (8cores/16threads).

I don't believe you're gettting a lot more performance (photo-editing wise) to justify a U$250+ tag diference.

In games, same old story, once you step to 1440p or 4K the CPU matters a bit, but not as much as the GPU (What I mean with this is, with the GPU you have a Ryzen 7, Core i7 are good enough), so again, not worth it to pay the extra price for just a few more FPS (if you even get those extra FPS at all, it will vary depending on the game). More on this: https://www.techspot.com/review/1869-amd-ryzen-3900x-ryzen-3700x/ (usually I would link the tomshardware article too, but https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ryzen-9-3900x-7-3700x-review,6214-10.html, doesn't have any 1400p game testing).

As for Intel, in my humble opinion, as viable options there are the i7 8700K (6 cores/12threads) or the 9900K (8cores/16threads) (I would stay away of the 9700K since Intel added two physical cores but disabled the HT so it become and 8core 8 thread CPU, so you pay extra for the HT when buying the 9900K).

Then again why would you buy a 8700K + an aftermarket cooler (like Hyper 212 EVO) for ~u$390, when you can get a Ryzen 7 3700X which comes with a good stock cooler for ~ u$330, and has more cores and more threads.

The choice is yours.

Cheers

 

[name68]

Thanks for a great answer. How is ryzen stock cooler in terms of noise ? I do not care about noise during gaming but I would like it to be quiet while idle/photo editing thx

 

[RodroX]

Thanks for a great answer. How is ryzen stock cooler in terms of noise ? I do not care about noise during gaming but I would like it to be quiet while idle/photo editing thx

The noise will vary depending on the case and how far it is from you. Not many stock coolers are silent, some are better than others, some have a higher pitch when under load so they seems to be doing more noise than others that have a more bassy sound.

In my own experience with the Ryzen 5 3600, the stock cooler was almost silent while on idle or doing light stuff, but under load (gaming) was loud, of course its not really annoying at all when the game sound and music are playing at a higher volume.
(In any case I did changed after a month for a somewhat cheap aftermarket cooler Deep Cool Gammaxx GTE, mainly cause I live in a place where temps can get really high on summer, and summer is comin around the corner)

Sadly the work I do with my PC is not a real heavy task for my CPU, but if Cinebench benchmark is a good indication, it was loud.

I found the main problem with fans (the ones I had to work with) to be the spining up process and how often does it hapend. Some fans make more noise than others, but after 1 or 2 mins of hearing it, you are probably going to forget about it, it will becomes part of the "surroundings sounds" (I hope this makes any sense, sorry I can't really express that well what I mean, english is not my main langauge and I'm rusty).

In short, as long as the cooler/fan has a good amount of extra TDP rating than the CPU you wana cool, it shouldn't spin up that often, so it should be a more pleasent cooler.

If the boxed cooler is loud for you (you could try it out, before buying another one), you can always go for an air tower pro solution like what Noctua offer (also theres be quiet ! which are fancier coolers with black mate finish), any of those are pretty quiet and good at keeping the CPU temps low.
BEFORE BUYING IT: If you get an aftermarket solution, just be sure the cooler will fix into your motherboard, its compatible with the CPU socket, and have enough clearence so it doesnt mess with the RAM sticks you have.

Cheers!