Intel i5-8400 Upgrade

SpinyNorman

SpinyNorman

SpinyNorman

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Joined
20 Feb 2003
Posts
88
Hi Forumites

Thoughts on upograding to 5600x from i5-8400?

Use case is gaming at 1440p current titles at 60fps and some virtualisation. Looking for value, not overclocking & aiming to keep costs down by upgrading memory later.

Have a feeling that Alder lake will be expensive, waiting to see. Did consider an i5-11400 but AMD looks better value.

Current Build

CPU
Intel Core i5-8400
Cooler
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Motherboard
Asus ROG Strix H370-F
Memory
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB 2666MHz (2 x 8 GB)
Storage
NVME Western Digital Black 512GB
SATA SSD Samsung 840 EVO 250GB
SATA SSD SanDisk X400 1TB
SATA SSD Western Digital Blue 1TB
Western Digital Blue 3 TB 3.5" 5400RPM
Video
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB Founders Edition
Case
Fractal Design Define C
PSU
SeaSonic FOCUS GX 750 W 80+ Gold


Upgrade

CPU
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

Motherboard
Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE

RAM (Later on, 32Gb for VMs and 3200 for speed)
Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB 3200MHz
 
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Intel Alderlake cpu to be released in approx 2 weeks i would wait see what it brings and may push prices down on other tech.

Where is your pc struggling ?
 
Thnanks for the reply, that was my thinking too. I'm hoping that AMD may respond with price cuts at least to spoil the intel launch.

It's generally just about OK, but I'm seeing very high usage in some titles. Most notably in Ghost Recon Wildlands/ Breakpoint where I get occasional spikes of 100% across all cores accompanied by 5-10s of freezing up.

I’m not sure that game engine in particular copes well with an unbalanced system. I mitigated it somewhat by turning up graphics and turning on vsync which has helped lower the CPU load in general. Battlefield 2042 beta was pegged very high as well at 97-99% usage, that's the main new title I'll be playing in the shorter term. That may be optimised by the launch of the full title I guess.

More grunt for virtualisation for development work would always be welcome too, though AMD doesn't support nested virtualisation.

My main doubt about the 5600x build is if the Coolermaster 212 EVO would have enough TDP headroom. I'd be looking at a beQuiet DarkRock Slim to replace that if so I guess.
 
What speed is you RAM? If it's quite slow it could hold back some performance on a potential Ryzen upgrade so you would need to include the cost of upgrading that to.
 
It would be a decent upgrade. I’d go with faster RAM though. I’d also consider a 5800X and Zalman CNPS17X. They work really well with AM4.
 
Yeah current RAM is 2666MHz so would definitely look to upgrade that down the line. (Missed the speed off the original post). Thanks for the reminder on the bracket and tip on the Zalman gents.
 
Honestly value for money it's hard to look passed something like an i7-9700 that will just drop into your system.

Spending all this money now into AM4 and faster DDR4 at the end of its cycle with new sockets and DDR5 just round the corner.

And this is coming from someone who a couple of months ago upgraded from a 8700k to 5900x. Although originally I wanted to use a b450 board I already had but ended up grabbing an b550 board which wasn't originally part of my plan.
 
Finners said:
Honestly value for money it's hard to look passed something like an i7-9700 that will just drop into your system.
Click to expand...

Funny you should say that but I was put off that route as I heard VRMs on the Strix H370 may not be up to the power draw requirements of i7-9700/i9-9900. Anywhere I can verify that?
 
SpinyNorman said:
Funny you should say that but I was put off that route as I heard VRMs on the Strix H370 may not be up to the power draw requirements of i7-9700/i9-9900. Anywhere I can verify that?
Click to expand...

Can't find anything concrete but it's on the supported CPU list on the manufacturer's website and going from this list of 1151 bards yours is rated as "high-end" if I've got your model right.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IY6W6YhyjnzSvi8BqEqiK1xykSiTDF2Lt1FO8cNhI6I/htmlview
 
Thanks again all, these are the kind of decision loops I've been around but it helps to have all your input. I think my most likely build will be founded on Joxeon's suggestion of an 11400F (which I'd already had as an alternative to the 5600x, but looking at benchmarks there's not masses of difference to the AMD) paired with the following:

  • Vengeance RGB Pro 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz
  • Asus TUF Gaming Z590-Plus WIFI
    • ocuk doesn't have the non wifi, but I like the sounds of the audio on this board
  • beQuiet Shadow Rock 3
    • 190TDP so enough for maxing out the 11400F
    • Asymetric design so doesn't foul on the second set of RAM slots
I may as well wait till at least next week to see what pricing is like on Alder Lake/DDR5, but this seems pretty good value at around the £500 mark.
 
SpinyNorman said:
Asus TUF Gaming Z590-Plus WIFI
ocuk doesn't have the non wifi, but I like the sounds of the audio on this board


beQuiet Shadow Rock 3
Click to expand...
If you care about sound, just get separate sound card.
Lot less risk for EMI than in ones integrated onto mobos and lot better features for gaming.
Also you get longevity over PC upgrades for your money compared to expensive board, which doesn't make CPU any faster/longer good lasting.
Especially when platform has really no update path to actually high core count CPUs there's no sense to pay lot for board.


That BeQuiet is brand overpriced.
Alpenfohn Brocken 3 is beefier cooler for £1 less
Alpenfohn Brocken 3 CPU Cooler - 140mm= £42.95
And then there's still slightly heavier Scythe Mugen 5 with Intel optimized convex base. (and clearance even for quad channel boards)
Scythe SCMG-5100 Mugen 5 Rev.B CPU Cooler= £43.99
 
Yeah definitely EsaT. I run an X-Fi USB at the moment which has been much better than the onboard audio with the H370.

Good point about the update path too. I took another look at B560 boards and the Asus TUF looks reasonable there, especially as overclocking is generally poor on 11th gen. The Mugen 5 looks good too, thanks.
 
i7 8700 can be had for £150 with 2 years warranty from a high street store..offer very similar performance at 1440p to a 11400f but saves you having to change board, cost wise doubt you'll beat that tbf and the sheer ease of it, I imagine your limitation is having only 6 threads, I had this issue with an 8500, when I swapped to a 10600 it made a big difference in terms of cpu usage.

Bet you could sell that 8400 for about £60-£70 then your net cost is only around £90 tops.
 
If you don't want to spend loads of money and just looking for a fast and economic upgrade I would get just an i7 9700 to replace the 8400 as mentioned before.
 
SpinyNorman said:
Yeah current RAM is 2666MHz so would definitely look to upgrade that down the line. (Missed the speed off the original post). Thanks for the reminder on the bracket and tip on the Zalman gents.
Click to expand...

I have overclocked ram rated at 2400 and 2666 to 3200 and 3400Mhz without much effort using ram calculator for Ryzen to get the correct timings at the higher speed as a reference.

Just make a post in the memory section if you need help overclocking your ram.
 
SpinyNorman said:
Yeah definitely EsaT. I run an X-Fi USB at the moment which has been much better than the onboard audio with the H370.
Click to expand...
And that's just mid level model.
Headphone amplifier isn't even at that level by any recent standards.
For headphone use Sound BlasterX G6 available for £75 from B-stock would be far more capable.
 
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