B450 - Thinking of upgrading CPU

opethian · 17 Jul 2022 at 21:20

I've got an MSI B450 Tomahawk motherboard and recently I've been doing a lot of video editing. I'm currently sporting a Ryzen 3600, GTX 1070, and 16GB of DDR4 3200.

I'm planning to upgrade as soon as I can. I'm thinking of getting a Ryzen 5950X (or even at least a 5900X), doubling my RAM to 32GB (purchasing the same sticks), last but not the least, see if I can score a decent GPU upgrade as well at some point.

For video editing, I am thinking that having more memory and a decent CPU with enough cores will be the best upgrade I can do.

My question is how much of a factor is upgrading the motherboard for performance?

I've done some basic reading and it looks like my motherboard can support the 5950X. I've also read that it won't be a factor at all, only if I needed specific features.

The way this is going, it's looking like getting a CPU and memory upgrade will be most beneficial for me, and will be cheaper than getting a GPU.

Journey · 17 Jul 2022 at 21:21

opethian said:
My question is how much of a factor is upgrading the motherboard for performance?

Zero.

SonicSW20 · 17 Jul 2022 at 21:54

Journey said:
Zero.

Absolutely not true, especially when dealing with low end to mid range boards paired with top end processors like a 5950X. It'll work, but you may find that boost clocks are limited due to the boards (lack of) ability to deliver enough power without cooking itself. There are various benchmarks / tests available that show this.

In OP's specific case, they also will not benefit from PCIe 4.0 due to the B450 board not supporting it.

Journey · 17 Jul 2022 at 22:15

SonicSW20 said:
Absolutely not true, especially when dealing with low end to mid range boards paired with top end processors like a 5950X. It'll work, but you may find that boost clocks are limited due to the boards (lack of) ability to deliver enough power without cooking itself. There are various benchmarks / tests available that show this.

In OP's specific case, they also will not benefit from PCIe 4.0 due to the B450 board not supporting it.

I took into account the fact they are using a B450 Tomahawk which will run a 59050X no problem at all as the VRM is very good, for a B450 board, as long as the case has good airflow the CPU will still boost correctly.

Also what relevance is PCI-E 4.0, can you advise why they will need 7000MB/s vs 3500MB/s on an M.2 drive for video editing, and it makes literally zero difference for the GPU.