Question Ryzen 5 3600x vs i7 8700k ?

[CaedenV]

So, I know on all of the old forums and reviews everyone is pushing the R5-3600x... but most of that is due to $150 list-price premium on the Intel side.
Looking on Microcenter I can pick up an i7-8700k for $280, plus a decent mid-range z370 or z390 motherboard for $120, plus a combo discount of $30 for a grand total of $370
On the AMD side I am looking at $230 for the chip, but then a midrange x570 board costs $190, but with a heftier $50 bundle discount for a grand total of $370
Same thread/core count, same platform cost, and very similar IPC

So... what to choose?
My system will get 2x8GB of DDR4, 1TB of m.2 storage, win10 pro, and my GTX1080 will move over.
Gaming at 4k this upgrade will do nothing for me as even my ancient i7-2600 does not bottleneck the GPU at high resolutions. This upgrade is mostly for ripping Bluray discs, and watching HDR content on streaming platforms (which does not want to off-load to the GPU, but instead only renders on the CPU... which chokes hard at 4k HDR lol).

For expansion, I currently only use a single GPU, but plan to add in a 10Gig Ethernet card down the road. Can't see any other need for an add-in card as WiFi adapters and sound cards are easily (and often better) handled via USB instead of an add-in card.

As this is a desktop, I am not overly concerned about power consumption advantage of the AMD (besides, that chipset makes up for much of the CPU energy efficiency).
PCIe4 looks neat on paper with crazy high throughput SSDs, but for real-world use benchmarks show little to no advantage there with all nvme SSDs getting ~60MB/s on random low-que depth workloads. And currently running a high end GPU on PCIe2 and seeing no advantage to moving to PCIe3 (much less 4), I don't feel that the added bandwidth will be helping in the GPU segment much either... unless future GPUs move to 4x or 8x slots instead of 16x


So short of all that; Can anyone think of any instruction sets or other advantages/capabilities that puts one platform over the other? When I first started looking I thought that this would be a no-brainer AMD decision, but now with recent price cuts, and the cheaper motherboard costs on the Intel side, it is looking like the two platforms are nearing parity again.

 

[Finstar]

B450 Tomahawk is around $100 + R5 3600 $200 = $300

 

[CaedenV]

B450 Tomahawk is around $100 + R5 3600 $200 = $300

With a B450 chipset, is there a firmware upgrade path to make it work without needing an older CPU to flash it with? I technically have access to a 2000 series part that I built for a friend last year, but I really don't want to borrow their machine, tear it all apart, and put everything back together just for the sake of a firmware update... that just doesn't sound like fun.
Are we going to see a B5X0 chipset some time in the next month or two? I really do like the idea of not having a fan on the chipset. We got away from that in the early 2000's, and it was a good move; really annoyed that it is coming back on the 570 chipsets.

Still; the point is if I am missing any other considerations between the two platforms. I could save some money going with a B or H series Intel chipset and a non-k i7. I could also save money getting a B series AMD with a non X chip. Either way, we are talking similar performance and similar price; just wondering if there are other considerations.

 

[CaedenV]

Dude 3600x is really bad choice cuz it has pretty much the same performance as 3600 but its 50+ cost. And the i7 is just 20dollars less than 3700x so I would definitely go with that R7 3700x it's worth the extra money.

So consider this option https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...ee-20&linkId=537804efe3b11d35da462b3c985db70e - r7 3700x actually it has a discount so get it now and so it costs less than that i7

Dude, the 3700x costs about as much as I want to pay for a CPU and mobo combined... why would I do that? What possible performance benefit would that offer me? I am not doing crazy video editing, or streaming, or multi-tasking, or database mining, or a VM farm. I just can't imagine a workload that I do that could push that chip at all. I mean, moving up to 6C 12T already seems borderline crazy for my use. The upgrade is mostly for IPC performance, not added thread count, and there is no advantage on IPC by adding even more cores.

 

[Finstar]

With a B450 chipset, is there a firmware upgrade path to make it work without needing an older CPU to flash it with? I technically have access to a 2000 series part that I built for a friend last year, but I really don't want to borrow their machine, tear it all apart, and put everything back together just for the sake of a firmware update... that just doesn't sound like fun.
Are we going to see a B5X0 chipset some time in the next month or two? I really do like the idea of not having a fan on the chipset. We got away from that in the early 2000's, and it was a good move; really annoyed that it is coming back on the 570 chipsets.

Still; the point is if I am missing any other considerations between the two platforms. I could save some money going with a B or H series Intel chipset and a non-k i7. I could also save money getting a B series AMD with a non X chip. Either way, we are talking similar performance and similar price; just wondering if there are other considerations.

The B450 Tomahawk is a nice board because it can be flashed from a button in the rear io panel without needing a last gen cpu.

 

[CaedenV]

The B450 Tomahawk is a nice board because it can be flashed from a button in the rear io panel without needing a last gen cpu.

hmmmm, very interesting and good to know.
Only MSI board I have ever bought is in my wife's PC, which was taking a chance and was just before MSI started becoming a real player in the motherboard market. On the plus side, it is ~6-7 years old and it still humming along... but soooo many things don't work on it. Wake from sleep never worked (USB, PS2, Lan), front panel USB was always far slower than the typical USB2 was supposed to be, fan speed control only works when using 3rd party utilities like SpeedFan... I mean, it works, is stable, and even got a decent OC on it... but it has made me gun-shy about trying them out for anything outside of GPUs

 

[mdd1963]

the 8700K and a 3600/3600X are pretty close in overall performance....

If you can get a killer deal on a 8700K w/ cooler/Z390 combo....hit it...

 

[theonerm2]

The Ryzen 5 3600, 3600x, 8700/k, and 9700/k are all so close performance wise that I'd get the cheapest one and forget about it.