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Interim Upgrade to my 3900X CPU

Cooners

Cooners

Cooners

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Joined
15 Dec 2003
Posts
400
So after fitting my shiny new 5080 I've just sold my old GPU and a bunch of old tech to a certain place and have a voucher to spend on upgrading my 3900X.
I'm a little stuck as I've come up with situation where I've got to compromise one way or other so I'm trying to make the best choice.
Firstly this is a temporary upgrade whilst I save and look at moving to AM5 (although I'm going to have this issue again at that point) but it I already plan to move the AM4 stuff into my unraid server once I've upgraded my main machine so this is absolutely worth the money to do now.
I've got three choices Either a 5700X3D or a 5900X which the voucher will cover with change or throw £40 on top and get a 3950X (I'll sell the 3900X and make that back anyway).
I know for gaming that the 5700X3D is the best but I don't just game.
I also design things for my 3D printer in Fusion 360, edit videos in Davinci Resolve, spend a lot of time mucking about with virtual machines (most of this is done on my servers but I do sometimes run stuff on my PC) and I'm also planning to learn to code finally this year.

My gut feeling is that despite the hype around the X3D chips, the fact I do a lot of other things other than game suggests I'd be better off with the 5900X or the 5950X and given the price difference and my long term plan to throw it in the server I might as well grab the 5950X. Yes I'd lose some frame in games but I game in 4K and with the 5080 I'd imgaine there won't be a lot and the lesser of two down sides compared to losing the cores for the other things. Does this sound about right?

Also what cooler can I get that would fit in my Phanteks eclipse p400a case (Up to 160MM) and also then fit in my 4U server case afterwards. I'm assuming the one that came with the 3900X won't do the job.
 
Makes mor sense to go 5900x or 5950x

Thermalright phantom spirit or peerless assasin around £30 to £40 are the best for the money CPU coolers.. the phantom being slightly newer with one extra heatpipe resulting in a couple of degrees cooler but either are super.
 
With a 5080 GPU ideally you need a more modern CPU to pair it with.

5900x would be the better choice given your criteria but again from the perspective of getting the most from the GPU I'd suggest a more modern CPU.

If it's 75% work and 25% game then the 5900x will be fine.

But for me I'd not pair a 5080 with nothing less than 7800x3d. (For gaming)
 
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Cooners said:
My gut feeling is that despite the hype around the X3D chips, the fact I do a lot of other things other than game suggests I'd be better off with the 5900X or the 5950X and given the price difference and my long term plan to throw it in the server I might as well grab the 5950X. Yes I'd lose some frame in games but I game in 4K and with the 5080 I'd imgaine there won't be a lot and the lesser of two down sides compared to losing the cores for the other things. Does this sound about right?
Click to expand...
Yes, not only that, but the 5700X3D is actually slower than your existing CPU for many productivity tasks, but if you were gaming it would still be the CPU to own.
 
opethdisciple said:
With a 5080 GPU ideally you need a more modern CPU to pair it with.
Click to expand...
Eventually that will happen and this one will be slapped in my server to replace the old as hell 7700 that's currently running unraid on that.
I had a choice of either going for sonwthing like a 5070 (maybe even 5060) and upgrading everything else too or breaking the bank on the 5080 and I still went £20 over budget as I couldn't find any in stock under £1200 (I barely found any in stock at all!!!).
This is purely because I can get one second hand with a voucher and it will still be used when I do get the cash together to upgrade the system later in the year
 
Cooners said:
I'm assuming the one that came with the 3900X won't do the job.
Click to expand...
all 5000 series CPUs do not exceed 105W TDP, same as 3900X. So whatever cooler you have should be sufficient. Mind you, most 5000 series CPUs will run hot as a norm, whatever the cooler.
Out of your choices I would go with 5950X. Fast enough for 4K, powerful and efficient for productivity
 
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IvanDobskey said:
Is the 5900X that much better than a 3900X? I'm wondering if it's worth picking up a second hand one for a cheap ish upgrade.
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For productivity, the difference in long-run multithreaded tasks can be pretty big, e.g.
On average, the Ryzen 9 5900X is 18% faster than the Ryzen 9 3900X in our mix of single, low, and multi-threaded applications.
Click to expand...
www.techpowerup.com

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X Review

The Ryzen 9 5900X dominates Intel's Core i9-10900K in our testing because of AMD's massive IPC improvements. At $550, this processor is certainly not cheap, but it offers so much more performance, especially single-threaded, that AMD has a clear winner on their hands.
www.techpowerup.com www.techpowerup.com

For gaming, it would depend on your graphics card and the resolution, but if you play at 1440p or 4K with a modest card, not something I would prioritise. The 5700X3D is a better choice, though it can actually be slower than the 3900X in productivity.
 
Cooners said:
So do you think it's not worth the extra for the 5950x then?
Just wondering as its extra cores but could spend the cash elsewhere (fans, new case etc)
Click to expand...
How much time do you spend waiting for long-run tasks (e.g. 20+ minutes) to complete with the CPU pegged at 100%?
 
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