Question Please explain best AMD socket type for future upgrades

[jonwillard]

Hi all, I am looking to build a new machine for blender / cycles render and so far my research leads (ideally) me to a AMD threadripper pro with a Geforece 4090 rtx. Given the price of this setup, I am thinking of getting a lower rated CPU that I can upgrade in a few years - but of course I will need a fairly future proofed Mobo. The graphics card is a whole other issue - I plan on waiting for prices to come down on that.

But when I look at AMD chips I find sockets like AM4, AM5, sTRX4 and sWRX8. I don't understand these options and which socket type will keep my upgrading my CPU for the next 5 years or so to better CPUs as prices come down.

Which socket should my mobo have to best support future chip upgrades? Ideally as I have done with my current rig, I don't buy the most expensive/latest but I try to buy something that can get me to a great setup as time passes and new CPUs/graphics cards come out but reuse the same Mobo/Memory/PSU/Fans for as long as possible or until I see a good opportunity to upgrade.

Also I have a Geforce 1070ti currently. Will that graphics card work with any Mobo that support PCIe or do I need to consider variations there too?

As you can see I am thinking of changing my Mobo/Socket type, memory and CPU now (reusing my existing case, PSU, drives and fans) to get from intel 1150 socket to AMD with Mobo future proofing. Later I will upgrade the GPU, after that I'll upgrade the CPU and later memory if desired.

I think it's time to embrace AMD CPUs

 

[kanewolf]

Hi all, I am looking to build a new machine for blender / cycles render and so far my research leads (ideally) me to a AMD threadripper pro with a Geforece 4090 rtx. Given the price of this setup, I am thinking of getting a lower rated CPU that I can upgrade in a few years - but of course I will need a fairly future proofed Mobo. The graphics card is a whole other issue - I plan on waiting for prices to come down on that.

But when I look at AMD chips I find sockets like AM4, AM5, sTRX4 and sWRX8. I don't understand these options and which socket type will keep my upgrading my CPU for the next 5 years or so to better CPUs as prices come down.

Which socket should my mobo have to best support future chip upgrades? Ideally as I have done with my current rig, I don't buy the most expensive/latest but I try to buy something that can get me to a great setup as time passes and new CPUs/graphics cards come out but reuse the same Mobo/Memory/PSU/Fans for as long as possible or until I see a good opportunity to upgrade.

Also I have a Geforce 1070ti currently. Will that graphics card work with any Mobo that support PCIe or do I need to consider variations there too?

As you can see I am thinking of changing my Mobo/Socket type, memory and CPU now (reusing my existing case, PSU, drives and fans) to get from intel 1150 socket to AMD with Mobo future proofing. Later I will upgrade the GPU, after that I'll upgrade the CPU and later memory if desired.

I think it's time to embrace AMD CPUs

What is your budget ?
Five years of CPU updates probably won't happen. The AM5 socket that was just released is only guaranteed support until 2025 -- https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-am5-support-thru-2025/

 

[Math Geek]

no such thing as future proof.

AM4 has the 5000 series and won't get any newer chips. AM5 is the new socket and will have cpu upgrades for a few years.

but like the AM4 boards, the first 300 series chipset was out of date after a year and the 4 and 500 series chipsets were the better ones for the future upgrades.

i expect we'll see the same with AM5. the 600 series chipset will likely be displaced next year with a 700 series chipset which will prove to be better overall for this series of cpu's.

jumping into a new platform at the beginning is rarely a good idea. let others help work the bugs out of it and next year buy into a more mature and better optimized set-up.

in either case your gpu will be fine no matter which way you go.

 

[jonwillard]

What is your budget ?
Five years of CPU updates probably won't happen. The AM5 socket that was just released is only guaranteed support until 2025 -- https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-am5-support-thru-2025/

Thanks, so AMD sockets change quickly? What of the rest of my question, what are sTRX4 and sWRX8?

 

[jonwillard]

no such thing as future proof.

AM4 has the 5000 series and won't get any newer chips. AM5 is the new socket and will have cpu upgrades for a few years.

but like the AM4 boards, the first 300 series chipset was out of date after a year and the 4 and 500 series chipsets were the better ones for the future upgrades.

i expect we'll see the same with AM5. the 600 series chipset will likely be displaced next year with a 700 series chipset which will prove to be better overall for this series of cpu's.

jumping into a new platform at the beginning is rarely a good idea. let others help work the bugs out of it and next year buy into a more mature and better optimized set-up.

in either case your gpu will be fine no matter which way you go.

Thanks, so AMD sockets change quickly? What of the rest of my question, what are sTRX4 and sWRX8?

 

[Math Geek]

No the socket will not change. The chipset will be updated with new features n fixes. Big difference

Intel's the one who changes sockets quickly

 

[LordVile]

Hi all, I am looking to build a new machine for blender / cycles render and so far my research leads (ideally) me to a AMD threadripper pro with a Geforece 4090 rtx. Given the price of this setup, I am thinking of getting a lower rated CPU that I can upgrade in a few years - but of course I will need a fairly future proofed Mobo. The graphics card is a whole other issue - I plan on waiting for prices to come down on that.

But when I look at AMD chips I find sockets like AM4, AM5, sTRX4 and sWRX8. I don't understand these options and which socket type will keep my upgrading my CPU for the next 5 years or so to better CPUs as prices come down.

Which socket should my mobo have to best support future chip upgrades? Ideally as I have done with my current rig, I don't buy the most expensive/latest but I try to buy something that can get me to a great setup as time passes and new CPUs/graphics cards come out but reuse the same Mobo/Memory/PSU/Fans for as long as possible or until I see a good opportunity to upgrade.

Also I have a Geforce 1070ti currently. Will that graphics card work with any Mobo that support PCIe or do I need to consider variations there too?

As you can see I am thinking of changing my Mobo/Socket type, memory and CPU now (reusing my existing case, PSU, drives and fans) to get from intel 1150 socket to AMD with Mobo future proofing. Later I will upgrade the GPU, after that I'll upgrade the CPU and later memory if desired.

I think it's time to embrace AMD CPUs

It depends what you want? TRX sockets are threadtioper parts with high core counts and high multithreaded performance. They’re great if you can benefit from the cores, a waste of money if you can’t.

 

[jonwillard]

What I understand so far, get an AMD5 socket for a few years of chip upgrades. I still do not understand how AMD4/ AMD5 may or may not be the same or different from sTRX4 and sWRX8. When I search for Mobo's compatible with a certain CPU I find that sometimes the sockets are AMD4, AMD5, xTRX4 or sWRX8 - are those 4 different socket types that only fit certain CPUs or are they mostly AMD5 specializations that can take any AMD4 or 5 compatible chips? I does not seem that Mobo specs make it clear nor has googling. Maybe I'm asking some basic AMD question that most people already know (but I don't)

I just saw a Mobo with a
AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3955WX CPU 16-Core/32-Thread Processor
with a SP3 socket. Yet another socket type?

Surely if AMD has all these different socket types for Threadripper CPUs, there must be a chart showing the variations.

 

[Math Geek]

for consumer home users you want either the AM4 or AM5 socket.

the other 2 are for what is called high end desktop (the threadripper line) or server cpu's. they are not worth it unless you have need for a TON of cores for server work or maybe high end rendering or other such work.

so now that that is out of the way, your choices again are the AM4 socket which used the 300, 400 and 500 series chipsets and the Ryzen 1, 2, 3 and 5000 series cpu;s. it is now a dead platform with the AM5 boards and Ryzen 7000 chips out.

since you wish to stay upgradable with future cpu's, this means you only have the AM5 socket with the 7000 series Ryzen chips and 600 series chipset right now. it will get at least 2 more chipset upgrades (this is what determines the available features for the mobo) and probably at least 2 perhaps 3 cpu upgrades as well.

my suggestion of waiting for the next chipset (currently 600 series) is based on what happened with the 300 series chipset on the AM4 socket. it was very outdated and though if would work with the newer 5000 series cpu's, it was missing a ton of features and had a lot of issues upgrading. consider that most of the features the 5000 series could support did not exist when the first gen 1000 series and 300 chipset came out a few years before. the 400 series chipset also was missing some features but it was much more up to date and took the cpu upgrades a lot better.

so my assumption is that the next chipset (probably 700 series) will be the one in the middle again and most likely to be able to handle whatever is coming in 2024/2025 a few years from now.

there is plenty of info about past and present sockets out there. simple wiki articles list them all

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/List_of_AMD_CPU_sockets