[SOLVED] Upgrade path for MSI X370 Gaming Plus mobo?

[dingo_pup]

Three years ago, I put together this system, meant mostly for flight simulators:

Mobo: MSI X370 Gaming Plus
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1500X (quad core), 3.5 GHz, air cooler
GPU: MSI Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5
RAM: 32GB DDR4 Corsair Vengeance
PSU: 750W

Would it be worthwhile to upgrade the CPU to a Ryzen 7, or even Ryzen 9? Would one of these modern Ryzen CPUs be bottlenecked by my motherboard? Would there be bottleneck issues with a more powerful GPU, such as a GeForce RTX 3080?

The current system can run my flight sims such as DCS and Rise of Flight, though not at the highest settings. And I'd like to get Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, which is very hardware-intensive, though I don't know if that means CPU, GPU or both.

Thanks

 

[tennis2]

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/X370-GAMING-PLUS#support-cpu

I see something like a 3700X being a reasonable upgrade. If you're going bigger than that (do you know how much an RTX3080 costs?) then maybe it's better to get a Ryzen 5000 capable mobo.

 

[mitch074]

It's quite possible, yes - even a second-hand 2700X would be a big upgrade, and I think you can go up to a 12-core 3900X without much trouble - provided you get a cooler.

 

[dingo_pup]

Thanks for your comments. For the CPU, I decided on the Ryzen 7 3700X. It looks like the mobo will handle it after a BIOS update, and I like the low (65W) TDP. I'll see how things go with the new processor and then decide on a GPU.