Question Time to upgrade my 11 year old son's gaming PC!

[albertc30]

Hi all.

It's been a while since I last update my kid's gaming PC. We are making a move away from the ryzen 7 3700X, with 8GB X 2, 3600Mhz.

We are plaing on keepiing the motherboard, Asus B450M-PLUS GAMING, with the latest bios version.

The upgrade we are contemplating is as follows;

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
CMW16GX4M2C3200C16, 3200MHz RAM Speed, CAS 16-18-18-36 Timings, 1.35v VDIMM (32GB)

Our biggest worry is will these thre components work well together? Will they be compatable? More so, is it worth to go to AMD Rysen 9 5950X at double the price?

The graphic card we have is a RTX 3060 12GB about a year old. (We are aiming at updating it soon to a 4070 once the prices drop a bit more, especialy now with the release of the new 5090.

Any pointers on this are much appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

Regards,
Albert

 

[LinuxDevice]

Just opinion, and not an answer to all of what you ask, but any of the 12-core CPU upgrades are a beast more powerful and will work longer than the 5800x. These can be air cooled. If you go the 16-core models (which the 5950x is), then you need water cooling, e.g., an inexpensive sealed loop cooler. The air cooling tends to get rather loud. However, I have found the noise of cooling with liquid cooling to be superior and so much quieter that I would recommend this with any modern CPU. It just happens that the line between 12-core and 16-core AMD CPUs is where requirements tend to tip from "can water cool" to "it is difficult to properly cool with air without blasting out the user with noise even with headphones on". The 12-core models will have a higher core clock speed, which is better in games. The 16-core has to throttle back slightly due to the heat, and games tend to not yet take advantage of a lot of cores. 12-core is kind of a sweet spot where I would expect this to be good for several years. 16-core will probably useful in some cases even now.

That 3060 is a good GPU, and will run "ok" with many things for some time, but there are some games out now that might be a bit slow with that. It used to be that every game would work perfectly well with 8 GB of video RAM, but some games are beginning to want 11 or 12 GB of VRAM, so that part is covered; this will probably be usable for several years if the games don't require faster. Some will, some won't. At 1080p a monitor won't need as much gpu, but if you run at 1440p or 4k, then the GPU is definitely on the edge. "It just depends on what he is doing".

RAM is a bit different. If you are upgrading the CPU, then I would get new RAM. It isn't entirely due to speed. These days you are going to be severely limited in some games by having less than 32 GB of RAM. When you have RAM which is matched, then you will find that it can be run in dual channel, which is basically twice the speed of single channel. However, timing of the RAM sticks has to match, or you have to reduce back to single channel. You really should upgrade to 32 GB (64 GB if you can afford it is wonderful), and even if the outside of the new RAM sticks matches the ones you now have, they are unlikely to actually be matched close enough to avoid falling back to single channel. You would want to get 32 GB of RAM which comes in a single package (or 64 GB if you want it to be useful for a long time). Speed is important, but is not a "game changer". If you get a deal on something a bit lower latency, then most people won't know the difference. If the RAM is not matched and you can't do something like enable dual channel and XMP profile, then this will be a drastic loss of performance.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

If it’s for gaming, skip the 5800x, and skip the 12 core CPUs.

Go with a cpu such as the 5700x3d. For gaming that’s about the best cpu on that platform. Then upgrade to 32gb of ram, could go 64gb if desired. But after that you’d want to start looking at new gpu, then socket am5.

If you want to save on cooling I’d look at the Thermalright peerless assassin 120 se. Runs about 40 bucks but is a pretty capable dual tower air cooler. And if you get the rgb version your kid will probably like the extra bling.

 

[JayGau]

There's not much a big jump from the 3700x to the 5800x. If it's for pure gaming then go for a 5700x3d or 5800x3d (although the 5800x3d is impossible to find at reasonable price), and if you need to also run production tasks go with the 5900x (the 5950x is more expensive and uses a lot more power for minimal improvement over the 5900x).

Also, why are you going for slower ram? The sweet spot for this platform is 3600 MHz at CL16. I don't understand why you want to get a 3200 MHz kit.

About the GPU, unless you buy refurbished I don't think the 4070 price will drop that much since the 5000 series performance is very disappointing.

 

[beyondlogic]

Hi all.

It's been a while since I last update my kid's gaming PC. We are making a move away from the ryzen 7 3700X, with 8GB X 2, 3600Mhz.

We are plaing on keepiing the motherboard, Asus B450M-PLUS GAMING, with the latest bios version.

The upgrade we are contemplating is as follows;

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
CMW16GX4M2C3200C16, 3200MHz RAM Speed, CAS 16-18-18-36 Timings, 1.35v VDIMM (32GB)

Our biggest worry is will these thre components work well together? Will they be compatable? More so, is it worth to go to AMD Rysen 9 5950X at double the price?

The graphic card we have is a RTX 3060 12GB about a year old. (We are aiming at updating it soon to a 4070 once the prices drop a bit more, especialy now with the release of the new 5090.

Any pointers on this are much appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

Regards,
Albert

if its pure gaming 5700x3d. needs at least a 7 heatpipe cooler.

5900x if its for streaming and gaming but needs water cooled ive tried air i had to undervolt mine.

ryzen 5000 series takes advantage of all 4 slots as well so if your aiming at 3200 id recomend a kit of 4 sticks at 8gb each. ( dont mix current ram sell that off.)

as for the 4070 if you can squeeze it get the 4070 super.

what is your current power supply ?.

and resolution of monitor the games are going to be playing on.

you can drop me a pm if any questions.

regards

beyond.

 

[PiersPlowman]

With only 8GiB RAM, I would swap it out for a 32 GiB kit before buying a new CPU. And 3200 is plenty fast enough.

 

[Misgar]

if its pure gaming 5700x3d. needs at least a 7 heatpipe cooler.

CPU-World shows the 5700X3D has a nominal 105W TDP rating, so I'd be quite happy running it with an inexpensive 6-heat pipe Thermaltake Assassin 120SE.

5900x if its for streaming and gaming but needs water cooled ive tried air i had to undervolt mine.

I've been running my 7950X on air since December 2022 (Noctua NH-D15) for up to 36 hour sessions on 4K video renders, where it can hit 170W in HWMonitor and averages 140W. No PBO, but no undervolting either, just stock.

I wouldn't have any qualms running the 7950X on a 7-heat pipe Thermalright Phantom Spirit in place of the Noctua NH-D15. Sure, a good 360/420mm AIO should allow the CPU to boost slightly harder, but a big air cooler is an alternative if you don't want liquid cooling. When the 7950X CPU die hits 95C, it sits there quite happily with big air.

id recomend a kit of 4 sticks at 8gb each

I'm much happier recommending 2 DIMMs instead of 4 DIMMs on most builds. With 2 DIMMs, the loading on the CPU's Integrated Memory Controllers is reduced, which can make XMP/EXPO overclocks at higher speeds more successful. For 32GB, I'd suggest 2 x 16GB, not 4 x 8GB. You might even find buying 2 x16GB is cheaper than 4 x 8GB.

The other problem is that kits containing 4 matched DIMMs are less common than kits of 2 matched DIMMs. If you buy two "identical" kits of 2 DIMMs, you cannot be certain the memory chips are from the same bin, meaning timings might be subtly different. This can affect heavy XMP/EXPO overclocks when pushed to the limit.

So saying, I stuffed my old quad channel Xeon board with 8 unmatched 8GB DIMMs for 64GB and it runs fine, but I could fit registered RDIMMs or load reduced LRDIMMS if I need to increase memory above 64GB.