5950x on X370 motherboard (already upgraded, just sharing results!)

[TrojanWhore]

Hi all!

With the recent addition of support for Zen 3 on certain x370 (and b350) boards, I thought I'd make the jump, in the hope it will last me for the next few years.
I picked up a 5950x from the MM and figured I'd post the results here for anyone who is considering doing a similar upgrade, hopefully it's helpful!
(I realised after buying the CPU that my other AM4 board - a Gigabyte AB350 Gaming - has also had support added, but I'm not sure the VRMs on that would handle 16 cores)

Overall the process was relatively painless, I flashed my board up to the required BIOS version, installed the chip and booted up.
BIOS flashing took about half an hour (as I had to upgrade to the bridge BIOS and then the final required version and ran some brief tests in between).

Before committing to the upgrade, I was concerned that my now ancient x370 board may not have been capable of running the CPU to it's full potential, but after running some benches I'm very happy with the result. 3dmark CPU score is a bit on the low side, but everything else seems in line with expectation.

Temps aren't much worse than my 3700x, multi-threaded loads seem a bit lower (around 55 degrees down from low 60s), but single threaded loads have gone up a fair bit, from around 60 to mid 70s (watercooled with a 60mm thick 240 and 80mm 'Monsta' 280).
ST boost is up from around 4.35 > 5.0GHz
Fully loaded up it's around the same (4.0-4.1GHz), hopefully I can get this up a bit with further tweaking!

I can post more screenshots for anyone who wants more detail, but the overall scores and improvement are shown in the below charts. (btw, RAM was 3200c14 before, now 3600c16....I think these are about equal, but the IMC seems a bit happier on this chip!)

 

[Fire_fly]

Interesting results, thanks for posting them.

I am tempted to try and source a 5950x for my Crosshair VI as it would certainly help with video transcoding in handbrake. But given Zen 4 is so close I may just leave it. These BIOSs should have been released 12 months ago.

 

[subbytna]

Look at the blender time difference lol. Class

 

[TrojanWhore]

@Fire_fly no problem!
Yeah I think if I already had a 3900x I would have just left it until AM5 (unless your handbrake use is very high volume and it's keeping you from using your computer for other things).
A big driver for me was that it might dissuade me from dropping so much on a whole new platform on launch also I really like the aesthetic of this motherboard and love the fact that after 5 years it's still providing an upgrade path!

@subbytna - haha yeah, 2x cores = 2x perf, more or less!
Glad it scaled so well though and hoping it translates to Vegas exports as well as maybe allowing me to capture at a higher quality in OBS

 

[Fire_fly]

@Fire_fly no problem!
Yeah I think if I already had a 3900x I would have just left it until AM5 (unless your handbrake use is very high volume and it's keeping you from using your computer for other things).
A big driver for me was that it might dissuade me from dropping so much on a whole new platform on launch also I really like the aesthetic of this motherboard and love the fact that after 5 years it's still providing an upgrade path!

The 3900x is surprising capable ay multitasking in handbrake. When transcoding a 1080p video to h.265 I can game without too much of a performance hit. 4K video however causes frames to nosedive.

Like you like the idea of being able to keep the same motherboard, apart form PCIE gen 4, the Crosshair is not lacking in features and still has plenty of life left in it. Swapping the CPU also just keeps everything simple and no need to reinstall the OS.

 

[tommoT.Striker]

This is great to see for X370 owners.

I still have Asus Strix X370-F board that can now be repurposed into a powerful rig if needed.

Not sure how much effort it took to get updates developed for X370-F boards but I reckon in hindsight AMD wished they did this earlier.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Im interested in a 5950x too but gonna wait and see what sort of cpu i will get for 350 quid on am5 platform