• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Upgrading Ryzen 5 1600 - can I keep my motherboard?

Associate
Joined
27 Mar 2007
Posts
693
Hey all and thank you in advance for the advice,

I currently have the following set-up:

MSI GeForce GTX 1080 ARMOR OC 8192MB GDDR5X
AMD Ryzen 5 Six Core 1600 3.60GHz (Socket AM4) Processor
Gigabyte GA-AB350-Gaming 3 AMD B350 (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C15 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit

I recently built a new PC for a friend which has the following set-up:

Crucial Ballistix RGB 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C16 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core 4.6GHz (Socket AM4) Processor
MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk Wifi Arsenal Motherboard
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Ti OC 6G

I have tested the one game I play at the moment (Escape from Tarkov) and he gets literally 50% more FPS (60 vs. 35-40) than me, even though my graphics card is supposed to be a lot better, so I am guessing my CPU is the bottleneck.

What would be a good CPU for me to upgrade to that is compatible with my current set-up so I can just swap out the CPU without having to do anything else? Is that feasible?
 
Soldato
Joined
25 Nov 2020
Posts
2,506
A quick Google search suggests a 3000 series ryzen would work with your mobo. May need to update the BIOS.

OCUK do 3600X for £260 or 3800X for £320
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2012
Posts
4,139
Location
Oxfordshire
You can get a 5800x and b550 motherboard for £382 shopping about at min which yeah is more work in that you need to switch stuff over and reinstall as clean but honestly would be a better option if you already looking to upgrade.

The 3000 series are way overpriced generally although you can shop about and get a 3800x for £250 new which should be drop and go but need to do the bios update first.
 
Soldato
Joined
14 Aug 2018
Posts
3,370
...I have tested the one game I play at the moment (Escape from Tarkov) and he gets literally 50% more FPS (60 vs. 35-40) than me, even though my graphics card is supposed to be a lot better, so I am guessing my CPU is the bottleneck.

What would be a good CPU for me to upgrade to that is compatible with my current set-up so I can just swap out the CPU without having to do anything else? Is that feasible?
If that game is one of your main motives for upgrading then I would first check to see how mulit-threaded it is; does it only use 1 or 2 cores or can it leverage much more. (Simplest way is probably to go to Task Manager, select CPU, right click and 'Change graph to' 'Logical Processors'. Then play the game in some demanding scene then Alt-Tab out and check the graph)

If it is only a couple cores it is maxing out then I would be inclined to save a little cash and just get the 3600/X. If it is using all cores and threads then I'd be more inclined to get the 3700X. (You might also want to get your friend to check how many cores/threads it is using on his 5600X)

If you're wanting to spend as little as possible to get a decent improvement and close the gap on your friend then I suspect these are your best options.
 
Soldato
Joined
16 May 2007
Posts
3,220
I went from a 1700 to a 3800xt which as a useful improvement especially with 2 cores boosting to 4.7 for older games which rely more on a few cores. Also all core went from 3.8 on the 1700 to about 4.4 if high CPU usage on air cooling.
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Jul 2005
Posts
19,358
Location
Midlands
i went from 1700 to 5600x. massive boost to single thread ment even general usage stuff like web browsing is more snappy. video encoding speed is considerably faster too which was a surprise since i had lost 2 cores going 8 to 6. dunno why it bothers me so much since the 5600x is faster in everything compared to the 1700.
 
Back
Top Bottom