Upgrade CPU B350 TOMAHAWK Motherboard

bigmaz2000 · 20 Feb 2021 at 17:49

I want to start upgrading. I have an MSI AMD B350 TOMAHAWK AM4 Socket ATX Motherboard. I’d like to keep it, and upgrade everything else, is this a good idea? Any suggestions for a CPU upgrade? I have an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 6 Core AM4 CPU/Processor.

i am a very Heavy Autodesk user, Civil 3D, Revit, 3Ds Max etc.

thanks in advance

MissChief · 20 Feb 2021 at 18:09

Ryzen 3000 is as high as you can go, 3600 or 3700 would be good choices. At the moment you can get a 3800X for £300 which would be a huge upgrade.

bigmaz2000 · 20 Feb 2021 at 18:35

MissChief said:
Ryzen 3000 is as high as you can go, 3600 or 3700 would be good choices. At the moment you can get a 3800X for £300 which would be a huge upgrade.

thank you what about future proofing? Worth it keeping the motherboard another few years if I upgrade to 3800x?

dfour · 20 Feb 2021 at 18:46

the 3*** series is the best your likely to get on the old b350 unless for some unknown reason MSI decide to do a bios update for it to allow the use of 5*** series cpus but its highly doubtful.

Future proffing would involve buying a b550 motherboard and there is no guarentee that the next generation of ryzen will support that if AMD go to ddr5 on the next gen.

bigmaz2000 · 20 Feb 2021 at 18:52

Hmmmm, might go for the 3800x, should keep me sorted for another few years.

MissChief · 20 Feb 2021 at 18:54

AMD have said the 5000 series will be their last on the AM4 chipset and your board can’t take a 5000 series chip anyway. I’d go for a 3700 or 3800 and then skip a generation or two.

bigmaz2000 · 20 Feb 2021 at 19:07

MissChief said:
AMD have said the 5000 series will be their last on the AM4 chipset and your board can’t take a 5000 series chip anyway. I’d go for a 3700 or 3800 and then skip a generation or two.

thank you, just ordered the 3800x for delivery tomorrow

mickyflinn · 20 Feb 2021 at 19:21

bigmaz2000 said:
thank you, just ordered the 3800x for delivery tomorrow

You may need update the bios on your motherboard for the 3800x to work, check on the motherboard website and your bios version

EViLHomer48 · 20 Feb 2021 at 23:01

Ive got the GA-AB350-Gaming 3 board with the same Ryzen 31600 on it for now. I would do the same thing. It is still DDR4 RAM (which will be around for a while).