Upgrade to make use of Geforce RTX 3060

hungry · 27 Aug 2021 at 16:24

I have a Zotac Geforece RTX 3060 12gb GDDR6 and I will need to upgrade motherboard and CPU to go with it, in a water-cooled machine.

I'm trying to keep to a £350 budget and I've found I do that with:

AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 3.9GHz 8 Core
B450 TOMAHAWK MAX II (SOCKET AM4) DDR4 ATX MOTHERBOARD

I have very little knowledge on this, can someone confirm this is a compatible setup?
I have compatible RAM, but opinions on this is useful too.

Opinions on how much I'm losing out by not going for Ryzen 7 5800x? It's another £100 at least and would be a big stretch.

Joxeon · 27 Aug 2021 at 16:27

I'd be more inclined to go with a 5600X at £250 over either the more pricey 5800X or 3800X but that said you wouldn't really notice any performance difference even going with a 3600 or 11400F for around £150 with a GPU at the level of a 3060.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x **B Grade** AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - MPK= £139.99
1 x MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard= £119.99

Total: £270.48 (includes shipping: £10.50)

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard= £99.95
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core 4.6GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £250.99

Total: £361.44 (includes shipping: £10.50)

hungry said:
Opinions on how much I'm losing out by not going for Ryzen 7 5800x

I actually found the increase was quite minor even with a card as powerful as an RTX 3080 when moving from a 3600 to a 5800X

hungry · 30 Aug 2021 at 13:35

This was useful thanks, I've done a lot of reading into your recommendations

jigger · 30 Aug 2021 at 14:42

You might be better off selling the RTX and buying a RX6600XT. RDNA2 has a 20-30% head start on Nvidia cards.

TBH selling the RTX card might allow you move to a RX6700XT.