Ryzen 5 3600... Upgrade?

[Hawk Tuah]

I've just upgraded to a 5800x. I had a bit of spare cash last month, and it's about time I upgraded. But that was from a 4770k, and I needed a full platform refresh. I can't imagine bothering to upgrade from a 3600 unless my workloads were massively CPU critical.

Realistically, I'm yet to 'really' notice much of a difference in the majority of my day to day PC experience.

 

[heartburnron]

I've just upgraded to a 5800x. I had a bit of spare cash last month, and it's about time I upgraded. But that was from a 4770k, and I needed a full platform refresh. I can't imagine bothering to upgrade from a 3600 unless my workloads were massively CPU critical.

Realistically, I'm yet to 'really' notice much of a difference in the majority of my day to day PC experience.

Yeah I agree with that. I probably wouldn't have upgraded either had it not been for my son's PC desperately needing his 2 core CPU upgraded. A fine excuse it was!

 

[Cooler running]

I actually downgraded from a 3700x recently, primarily because I didn't notice enough of a difference with my 3440x1440 setup.

 

[SurfXombie]

Yeah I had a look at some new RAM this morning, but it looks like a costly upgrade for quite a small improvement I guess.

I could always get another X2 8GB RAM sticks I guess, the same model as mine, but I assume x2 16GB modules is more the ideal setup anyway.

Out of interest is there anything in particular that would be good

You can get the same sticks, though they may not be the same memory underneath. Generally they will work fine and run at the lower settings of the ram you have in the slots.

For ne ram generally two sticks tend to OC better than four. But there is a thing called "Rank" and "dual rank" (not dual channel) is considered better, but that's a whole rabbit hole of stuff.

In the end it depends if you are trying to find the lowest cost option (add extra sticks of the same) or play it safe (get two 3600 C16 sticks) or eeek out the max performance (don't).

So if getting new sticks 3200 C14 or 3600 C16 would be great. Even 3200 C16 or 3600 C18 would be fine.

 

[dunno]

You can get the same sticks, though they may not be the same memory underneath. Generally they will work fine and run at the lower settings of the ram you have in the slots.

For ne ram generally two sticks tend to OC better than four. But there is a thing called "Rank" and "dual rank" (not dual channel) is considered better, but that's a whole rabbit hole of stuff.

In the end it depends if you are trying to find the lowest cost option (add extra sticks of the same) or play it safe (get two 3600 C16 sticks) or eeek out the max performance (don't).

So if getting new sticks 3200 C14 or 3600 C16 would be great. Even 3200 C16 or 3600 C18 would be fine.

Its 'single rank' and 'dual rank' - at the same speeds and timings dual rank is quicker, but single rank memory usually clocks higher / can handle tighter timings.

edit:
if you go for 2 sticks of ram only - go for dual rank ram
if you plan to get 4 sticks of ram - get single rank as together all 4 end up running like the 2 dual rank sticks.

 

[R3v4n]

I upgraded from the 3600 to the 5800x and saw double digit percentage increases in almost all games. For games particularly CPU bound, such as Shadow of The Tomb Raider, the performance increase was considerably more. It depends at what point your GPU becomes fully utilised, which in turn depends on how powerful your GPU is. I have the 6900XT so for the majority of games, it isn't being fully utilised at 3440x1440 so the CPU does then come in to play a bit more. Perhaps with 3070 is being fully utilised so the CPU becomes less of a factor. You should find that your 1% lows improve a good bit with such an upgrade though.

Well articulated above by @R3v4n

You can get the same sticks, though they may not be the same memory underneath. Generally they will work fine and run at the lower settings of the ram you have in the slots.

For ne ram generally two sticks tend to OC better than four. But there is a thing called "Rank" and "dual rank" (not dual channel) is considered better, but that's a whole rabbit hole of stuff.

In the end it depends if you are trying to find the lowest cost option (add extra sticks of the same) or play it safe (get two 3600 C16 sticks) or eeek out the max performance (don't).

So if getting new sticks 3200 C14 or 3600 C16 would be great. Even 3200 C16 or 3600 C18 would be fine.

One thing I'm not sure about - if I did upgrade the RAM to 32GB 3600, or even just got another 2 8gb modules the same as mine; what type of performance increase would I see?

An upgrade to another 2 8gb modules will set me back £70 or so, but 32gb of 3600 C16 is very expensive seems like £200+.

edit:

I guess this is the 32gb version of my ram ▷ Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR… | OcUK (overclockers.co.uk)

so £150 not 200+ lol.

 

[humbug]

One thing I'm not sure about - if I did upgrade the RAM to 32GB 3600, or even just got another 2 8gb modules the same as mine; what type of performance increase would I see?

An upgrade to another 2 8gb modules will set me back £70 or so, but 32gb of 3600 C16 is very expensive seems like £200+.

edit:

I guess this is the 32gb version of my ram ▷ Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR… | OcUK (overclockers.co.uk)

so £150 not 200+ lol.

I have that set, they are single rank.

My favourite game uses a lot of RAM, it's why i upgraded to 32GB, its made the difference i wanted but other than that 32GB is just future profing, unless you actually have a game that is trying to fill more than 16GB its not going to make any difference.

 

[dunno]

One thing I'm not sure about - if I did upgrade the RAM to 32GB 3600, or even just got another 2 8gb modules the same as mine; what type of performance increase would I see?

An upgrade to another 2 8gb modules will set me back £70 or so, but 32gb of 3600 C16 is very expensive seems like £200+.

edit:

I guess this is the 32gb version of my ram ▷ Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR… | OcUK (overclockers.co.uk)

so £150 not 200+ lol.

Single rank to dual rank can make a fair bit of difference but it is resolution and game dependant.

below is my post taken from a thread in the Ram section:https://www.overclockers.co.uk/foru...0-bl2k16g36c16u4b-single-rank.18905926/page-7

'i got the bl2k16g32c16u4b (3200 mhz) variety delivered the other day and its dual rank m16fe. perfect for me as i have an itx board with only two ram slots. im coming from bls8g4d32aesbk.m8fe (single rank stuff).

at the same timings the dual rank stuff is faster than the single rank stuff. i did some basic aida tests and ran the graphics benchmark tool in read dead redemption. i left all timings and voltages at stock (xmp) initially to get the below:

rank type / speed / latency / copy / write / read / max fps / average fps

single / 3200mhz / 74.1ms / 43173 / 25591 / 45545 / 107fps / 78fps
dual--/ 3200mhz / 78.8ms / 46119 / 25592 / 45471 / 118fps / 85fps

single / 3600mhz / 69.4ms / 47432 / 28788 / 51010 / 109fps / 85fps
dual--/ 3600mhz / 70.2ms / 51637 / 28951 / 51048 / crash to desktop

so people saying dual rank is heavier on the memory controller makes sense, upping the ram voltage didnt help, i still got a ctd when trying to run the graphics benchmark. i didn't bother upping the memory controller voltage and have left the ram @3200mhz, but i may have a tinker later to see what the fps is like with the dual rank stuff @3600mhz.'

edit: good youtube vid here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ywu4she7a
edit2: good guru3d overview https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_ram_scaling_effect_in_games,1.html

 

[Psycho Sonny]

I just spent some cash and upgraded to a 3070 FE and to a 1440p monitor. Is my 3600 going to bottleneck my GPU when I'm trying to get the best out of games at 1440p? Currently RDR2 is my hungriest game for resources, and it does not hit 144 fps when playing, although that us at the high settings graphically. Should I get better fps or is my 3600 holding me back?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

3600 is a beast and CPU haven't really gotten any faster by much just more cores which do nothing but share the load when it comes to gaming.

As always you should be putting all your budget into the GPU.

I'd argue that 3600 is fine for the next 5 years easy. It will always be better to spend more on gpu than CPU in your situation

 

[The_Arbiter]

if you're watching Hardware Unboxes you're thinking there is no reason to get anything faster than a 3600, and then you upgrade your GPU too and wonder why you're not getting any more performance. You were spoon feed an agenda, hard luck now you have to buy another CPU and spend more this time anyway. good show!

From the video you posted it's clearly represented that this was a test based on more common user builds. The top comment shows this has some merit too. But regardless they have done their own videos using a 3090 to bench the same CPUs, and make this statement at the beginning of the video. So there's a wealth of information available if people are using HUB as research for their PC parts.

 

[Game]

This. A 3600 is considered best VFM for gaming. watch this vid.

the I5-10400f outperforms the 3600 in games for a fraction of the cost not by a massive amount but still

but back to the topic it shouldn't bottleneck at all

 

[DublinDude]

The Ryzen 3600 can be got for £150 since yesterday elsewhere.

 

[Game]

The Ryzen 3600 can be got for £150 since yesterday elsewhere.

Good price

 

[Alex h]

Good price

Yeh is a good price
Hows your new rig going mate

 

[Game]

Yeh is a good price
Hows your new rig going mate

its working really well its like night and day compared to the i5-6600 which was really showing its age in multy player games

happy with the cooling the h60 in the nzxt510 and the cpu has never gone over 61 even after a 3 hour stress test and 5-6 hours solid warzone or bfv


might upgrade the cpu if I see a cheap one later in the year but to be fair that will be breaking my own rules

 

[Alex h]

its working really well its like night and day compared to the i5-6600 which was really showing its age in multy player games

happy with the cooling the h60 in the nzxt510 and the cpu has never gone over 61 even after a 3 hour stress test and 5-6 hours solid warzone or bfv


might upgrade the cpu if I see a cheap one later in the year but to be fair that will be breaking my own rules

Glad your happy mate reason i ask is i got to build my daughter a pc and thinking intel myself with this build am looking at 10700k or 10600k

 

[Game]

this one has a i5-10400f more than does the job really like the b560 board as well for the fast memory and multiple m2 slots

but its always tempting to get a 10700

but for under £120 the 10400 just makes sense manged to get this one for £100

 

[Game]

maybe even a rocket lake if they turn out to be ok down the line

 

[SurfXombie]

One thing I'm not sure about - if I did upgrade the RAM to 32GB 3600, or even just got another 2 8gb modules the same as mine; what type of performance increase would I see?

An upgrade to another 2 8gb modules will set me back £70 or so, but 32gb of 3600 C16 is very expensive seems like £200+.

edit:

I guess this is the 32gb version of my ram ▷ Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR… | OcUK (overclockers.co.uk)

so £150 not 200+ lol.

Depends on the game, and the benefit is more in smoothness than FPS. Most modern games + windows will easily make use of over 16Gb as windows likes to do cashing and other things. With 16Gb widows will be releasing and reusing memory with whatever is left like a few Gb.

So not dramatic or essential, just nice,

 

[SurfXombie]

Its 'single rank' and 'dual rank' - at the same speeds and timings dual rank is quicker, but single rank memory usually clocks higher / can handle tighter timings.

edit:
if you go for 2 sticks of ram only - go for dual rank ram
if you plan to get 4 sticks of ram - get single rank as together all 4 end up running like the 2 dual rank sticks.

Complicated but yes your edited options are correct. Though some ram does not specify and you only find out when you plug it in. Better to get (1) Dual Channel, (2) Ram Speed/CL .. then worry about rank and tuning