[SOLVED] upgrade for ryzen 5 1600x

mcr1324

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Aug 15, 2017
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Hey, I was curious what u guys thought was a good upgrade for a ryzen 5 1600x..I was thinking about just going kinda budget and getting the 3600, seemed like pretty good bang for buck..I saw that the 3600x was slightly more looked pretty similar, wasn't really sure if it would be worth going for something in the 7 series instead..what do u guys think..? I wasn't really planning on doing any overclocking..thx for your thoughts..
 
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This whole thing is worth it/not worth it from a perspective standpoint, basically.

If you're looking at sheer numbers, probably not.

If you're looking at if you'll be satisfied with an upgrade and want an upgrade because it'll help with productivity, better gaming and better speed...probably so.

Initially, I recently built a system that had an R5 1600 and thoroughly enjoyed its performance over the FX 8350 it replaced. I later built my dad a system to supercede his aged-out A4-centered system (the dust that resided in the case makes me wonder how a dust bunny colony didn't attack me on sight when I opened the case up to scavenge his 500GB HDD out of it to put into the new system as a secondary storage option) and dropped my 1600...

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Upgrading to Zen 2 would get you ~20% better IPC and ~10% higher stock boost clocks, so you'd be looking at 30-40% better performance. Not really worth it IMO. Going with 8-cores gives you another 33% extra on top if you do stuff that can make use of extra cores, otherwise they aren't worth anything - at least not until more everyday stuff can do something useful with 'em.
 

mcr1324

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It will help to know the other components and what tasks do you perform.
The Ryzen 3600 is a nice upgrade, especially if you aren't planning OCing.

I mainly just use it for work and stuff or thinkorswim..I'll game on it too hop on pubg whatevs, but I don't really overclock it..I like not having blue screens lol just keep it stable..I have a gtx 1070, 32gb ram, 2 tb ssq, b450 gigabyte pro wifi board..it looked like I would get a nice little increase in performance in games and stuff just by getting the 3600..yeah I was just curious really if there would be a big difference in performance between the different chips..if not I was prob gunna go with the 3600 or 3600x..unless you guys had a better recommendation lol, but I wasn't really going for overclocking or anything like that, nothing too fancy..
 

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I was prob gunna go with the 3600 or 3600x..unless you guys had a better recommendation lol
If you are upgrading mainly out of just having a case of upgrade itch instead of any sort of apparent need, then my personal recommendation would be to sit it out another year. Then you'll have your pick of either a Ryzen 4600 or heavily discounted 3700-3950 in the subsequent months from 4th-gen's launch.
 

mcr1324

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If you are upgrading mainly out of just having a case of upgrade itch instead of any sort of apparent need, then my personal recommendation would be to sit it out another year. Then you'll have your pick of either a Ryzen 4600 or heavily discounted 3700-3950 in the subsequent months from 4th-gen's launch.

Yeah I guess that is a possibility too..I don't necessarily need to, just kind of want to..it's really the last thing I haven't upgraded from my original build..that's not a bad idea either though we'll see..I was kinda leaning towards getting the 3600 just to pick up a few more frames in pubg lol, it seemed pretty reasonable at like 190..yeah we'll see, they make new ones so often maybe I'll get a cheap 4th gen when the 5s come out lol..
 

mcr1324

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well if I saw like a 20% boost in performance by getting the 3600 I would be happy with that..I think you were saying something along those lines..if that was the case I would prob go for the 36 while they were on sale why not..
 

Karadjgne

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The 3600 isn't really an upgrade as such, more like a sideways move for better IPC. Same cores, same threads, few more fps that's probably higher than your current monitor refresh anyways.

Might help out a little on some time saving, but nothing worth spending that kind of cash on.

A 3700x/3900x/3950x and appropriate cooling would be an upgrade.

If you want to do something with that itch, learn about OC, what you'd get out of the 1600 would roughly equal out to the gains you'd see with a 3600, and cost you nothing but some spare time. You can save your current bios profile as is and always reload it, play around with different settings, see what that gets you.
 
Unless you have a top of the line graphics card or plan on getting one and also a greater than 60hz monitor I'd just wait until I actually needed the upgrade. The 1600x is still decent enough for 60hz. It's got enough cores/threads to last a while. People overthink this a lot. Why not just enjoy the PC and forget about wanting something shiny and new for a while? I know how it is though. I wanna upgrade every time something new (PC related) comes out. It won't make a bit of difference to your overall experience to upgrade now as far as the CPU goes. Would the 3600 be faster? Yes. It would give you a better experience for high refresh rate gaming but that doesn't matter at 60hz. If you're at 60hz it would be the same thing as wasting the money on lottery tickets and losing on every ticket. It would be exciting until you saw that you just lost $200 and have nothing to really show for it. You might think the PC would at least be more future proof right? Wrong. The CPU's aren't really so far off from each other that one would significantly outlast the other.
 

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20+ years ago, I used to get the upgrade itch every other year because performance per dollar doubled every other year but could only afford upgrading every four years since parts were ludicrously expensive compared to today. Today, I could afford to upgrade every year but at the ~10%/year average performance increase over the past ~10 years, getting to my itch threshold is taking a while.
 
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Tigerhawk30

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This whole thing is worth it/not worth it from a perspective standpoint, basically.

If you're looking at sheer numbers, probably not.

If you're looking at if you'll be satisfied with an upgrade and want an upgrade because it'll help with productivity, better gaming and better speed...probably so.

Initially, I recently built a system that had an R5 1600 and thoroughly enjoyed its performance over the FX 8350 it replaced. I later built my dad a system to supercede his aged-out A4-centered system (the dust that resided in the case makes me wonder how a dust bunny colony didn't attack me on sight when I opened the case up to scavenge his 500GB HDD out of it to put into the new system as a secondary storage option) and dropped my 1600 into it. In turn, I used that to justify upgrading myself to a 2700X and dropped it into my current build...I probably didn't need it, but POWER, BABY!!!! I'm also dabbling with streaming, and the extra two cores help a lot with that. Otherwise, I would have just stayed with my 1600, as it's still a lovely gaming CPU.

If you do decide to upgrade, I'd go with the 3600 over the 3600X; everything I've seen says you're paying the extra $50 for the Wraith Spire cooler over the Stealth with barely noticeable variances in Hz/IPC. I'm assuming, since you have a 1600X, you have your own aftermarket cooler since it didn't come with one...continue to use that one and perhaps sell the Stealth.

Also, make sure to upgrade the BIOS to whatever the newest one is that will support the 3000 series with the most modern tweaks to it that keep the voltage draw a little less crazy. Depending on what motherboard you have, it may or may not have been posted to your manufacturer's support page...I believe it's AGESA 1.0.0.4...the 570 chipset motherboards will likely have it available while the older chipsets are coming slower.

For my personal use case, I found the 2700X a useful upgrade...it even makes Windows boot and shut down faster, and the Wraith Prism is both extremely pretty and a much beefier cooler where temps are noticeably better...but that's just me. Do what makes YOU happy, and if that includes dropping ~$190 for a 3600 upgrade for better speeds that you'll notice while getting personal satisfaction that you've gotten said upgrade, go for it. If you want to wait for the 4000s, however, then wait. You know your desires and use case. Apply them into the equation and decide accordingly. :)
 
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mcr1324

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Aug 15, 2017
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ty so much btw for the responses, I really appreciate the insights..I would give u guys all best answer if I could lol..I like to ask questions on here, I always learn a lot of random cool stuff, ty for the responses..I'm gunna prob wait then and either get the 3700x or just go for the new series..I'll wait or go for more cores either way..I'm gunna learn more about overclocking and just find something stable..I was running with the xmp settings and it worked great for a while until I bought 2 more sticks of ram and upgraded to 32 gb, then I started getting blue screens lol..so I can't run the xmp but I guess I'll just learn how to do that, maybe I squeeze out a little more performance..
 

Karadjgne

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You have 4 sticks of ram? That explains the issues. Ryzen doesn't like 4 sticks much at all, and with 1st gen you'll be looking at 2133 to 2667 max depending on if the ram is single or dual rank or mixed and what order. You'll be able to get 2933 to 3200 only with 2x sticks in dual channel, 2933 if dual rank, 3200 if single rank.

Dual/single rank is not the same thing as dual/single channel.
 

mcr1324

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Aug 15, 2017
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You have 4 sticks of ram? That explains the issues. Ryzen doesn't like 4 sticks much at all, and with 1st gen you'll be looking at 2133 to 2667 max depending on if the ram is single or dual rank or mixed and what order. You'll be able to get 2933 to 3200 only with 2x sticks in dual channel, 2933 if dual rank, 3200 if single rank.

Dual/single rank is not the same thing as dual/single channel.

yeah the 4 sticks caused a lot of headaches for me lol..took me a while to realize it was the xmp that was causing the blue screens..so it's better to usually run two sticks then if you're using a ryzen chip, is that the idea..? the four sticks is stable but I'm not running it at full speed just 2400..yeah I might try and crank it up a bit see what more I could get..