Build or wait

thenightrider

With the new Ryzen 5000 series coming out I was thinking of upgrading my ageing rig.


I7 2600k
16gb ram
Ssd
R9 390

But I want to get the most bang for my euro. I was thinking as the Ryzen 5000 series is the last of the AM4 socket. Would I be best to just wait until the next socket comes out so I would then be able to upgrade the CPU.

If I plan to keep my next rig for as long as the last one I have the chance to upgrade the CPU along the way.

What would you do is my pc still does everything I need it to it just crashed a couple of times playing resident evil 3 the other day but runs all other games fine. I also do 90% if my gaming on my Xbox and will most likely upgrade to the next Xbox.

Homelander

I wouldn't worry too much about Ryzen 5. As long as you invest in a good, solid CPU now, there's no reason for it not to last the same run as the 2600K did.

The current equivalent is the 3700X more or less. Ryzen 5800X will be better, but in the same way that the 3770K is better than the 2600K. Ultimately, it's not going to make or break the longevity of your build.

You're OK to buy a 3700X now in my opinion. Not saying don't buy a Ryzen 5, just that the 3700X remains a perfectly viable choice as it's significantly cheaper, but will last the distance.

Especially if your Xbox is your main gaming machine anyway.

Overheal

I would go for the Ryzen 5000 personally on a slimmed down X570 board with an NVMe. New socket is still over a year away and Zen3 has some performance lifts that will be nice over the Zen2, like smart access memory for Radeon GPUs.

Plus IDK how they will handle the new socket but going by traditions they will launch an AM4+ socket, so there’s not much to wait on. Besides their socket+ launches are usually just okay and not something I would await with anticipation, to support DDR5 they will undoubtedly go for a full AM5 socket design anyway (probably more than 2 years away), and even then, new wave RAM is always expensive. So I wouldn’t sweat future upgrading here, get a nice Zen3 CPU and don’t worry about it again.

Inquitus

I concur with Overheal, if building a budget(ish) gaming PC I would wait for the 5600X to reach market shortly and pair it with an RX 6800 or an RX 6800 XT depending on budgetary constraints.

MidlanderMan

Even if you don't buy a new 5000 series CPU the price of the 3000 series will drop after the launch, the price of last generation cards like the 5700xt will also drop so you'll make savings all around if you wait 2 weeks.

You could start by buying a b450/b550 board, ram, NVMe SSD, case, PSU, and other sundry parts now and then get a discounted 3700x and RX 5700 when the new parts drop.

Homelander

I'm not sure the price of Ryzen 2 will drop. Ryzen 5 is considerably more expensive, so there will still be a viable market for the lower priced parts. EG 3600 and 3700X will be £100 cheaper than 5600X and 5800X.

SeanW

You should definitely wait, but the question (this will be determined by your needs/wants) is whether to wait:
1) weeks
2) months
3) years.

Most who would be looking to build a new high end system will be waiting weeks. I probably don't need to recap for you all the AMD announcements of Zen 3, Radeon RX6000 graphics cards, and the ongoing shambles of nVidia's "paper launch" of its Ampere high end graphics card lineup. Suffice it to say that if you want the latest and greatest from nVidia, the current mess with limited supply of Ampere cards will probably be resolved in the next month or so. AMD has also announced some major upgrades in the CPU and Graphics card spaces, new high end parts will be hitting shelves/warehouses in November - hopefully with more actual hardware to sell than nVidia had . In the high end space, you should absolutely wait until 3rd party benchmarks are done for the new AMD hardware, including real-world comparisons between the Zen 2 and Zen 3 CPUs, and the Radeon RX6000s vs. nVidia Ampere, most likely that will all be happening soon.

If you're looking for mid-range system, it's likely (at least, we can hope that both AMD and nVidia will announce some more budget oriented hardware in the same ranges. But that's going to be a little down the road, hopefully early next year.

If you don't really need to upgrade any time in the near future and are solely/primarily concerned with not buying a "dead end" socket, the next socket upgrade for AMD will probably be AM5, but when that becomes a thing cannot be said with any certainty AFAIK. Suffice it to say I don't expect it any time in the near future

MidlanderMan

SeanW wrote: »

You should definitely wait, but the question (this will be determined by your needs/wants) is whether to wait:
1) weeks
2) months
3) years.

Most who would be looking to build a new high end system will be waiting weeks. I probably don't need to recap for you all the AMD announcements of Zen 3, Radeon RX6000 graphics cards, and the ongoing shambles of nVidia's "paper launch" of its Ampere high end graphics card lineup. Suffice it to say that if you want the latest and greatest from nVidia, the current mess with limited supply of Ampere cards will probably be resolved in the next month or so. AMD has also announced some major upgrades in the CPU and Graphics card spaces, new high end parts will be hitting shelves/warehouses in November - hopefully with more actual hardware to sell than nVidia had . In the high end space, you should absolutely wait until 3rd party benchmarks are done for the new AMD hardware, including real-world comparisons between the Zen 2 and Zen 3 CPUs, and the Radeon RX6000s vs. nVidia Ampere, most likely that will all be happening soon.

If you're looking for mid-range system, it's likely (at least, we can hope that both AMD and nVidia will announce some more budget oriented hardware in the same ranges. But that's going to be a little down the road, hopefully early next year.

If you don't really need to upgrade any time in the near future and are solely/primarily concerned with not buying a "dead end" socket, the next socket upgrade for AMD will probably be AM5, but when that becomes a thing cannot be said with any certainty AFAIK. Suffice it to say I don't expect it any time in the near future

AM5 wilomhappen with the next generation of AMD CPUs. This is the last generation of AM4 chips. So most likely late 2021 or early 2022.

jenneyk19

video cards will be in short supply

also the video card problems will come out in first 6 months like the NVidia 3080 crashing as some card makers used cheap capacitors

and msi company was caught selling cards at double
mrsp prices

also will have problems with its video drivers

as for gaming you only need single core or 2 cores for gaming that's why intel cpu does better than ryzen but amd might be cheaper
than intel

Inquitus

jenneyk19 wrote: »

as for gaming you only need single core or 2 cores for gaming that's why intel cpu does better than ryzen but amd might be cheaper
than intel

The new Ryzen 3 CPU's are better at single threaded gaming than anything intel currently has to offer, while this used to be true it no longer is.

Homelander

jenneyk19 wrote: »

video cards will be in short supply

also the video card problems will come out in first 6 months like the NVidia 3080 crashing as some card makers used cheap capacitors

and msi company was caught selling cards at double
mrsp prices

also will have problems with its video drivers

as for gaming you only need single core or 2 cores for gaming that's why intel cpu does better than ryzen but amd might be cheaper
than intel

Can mods please ip ban this person

MidlanderMan

jenneyk19 wrote: »

video cards will be in short supply

also the video card problems will come out in first 6 months like the NVidia 3080 crashing as some card makers used cheap capacitors

and msi company was caught selling cards at double
mrsp prices

also will have problems with its video drivers

as for gaming you only need single core or 2 cores for gaming that's why intel cpu does better than ryzen but amd might be cheaper
than intel

The R3 3300x beats the i3-10320 in almost all games and is better for single and multi-threaded workloads.

It's significantly cheaper (+/- €60) and you can buy compatible AMD motherboards for far cheaper than the price of a Z490 needed to run the intel offering.

Homelander

Actually on average the 10320 is s little faster in games. It's a solid CPU but a little overpriced and as you say the biggest problem is the board.

You can pair a 3300X with a A320M.

Personally I would argue for a Ryzen 2600 over a 3300X if you want more longevity really. Those extra cores and threads are really going to be important over the next while as games will be designed around 8/16 processors for the next cycle.

I don't know what planet or year that poster is living in to claim that only one or two cores are important for gaming. I would say about 2006-2008 at a guess.

K.O.Kiki

3300X hasn't been available for a few months.

thenightrider

Thanks for all the feedback.

I maybe should have added to the opening post that I have a good laptop 10th gen core i5 can't think of the model at the moment with 32gb ram and gtx1650 ( could have gotten the gtx1660 for the same price with a smaller screen) thinking maybe I should have

I'm not in a mad rush to upgrade it's just that now I'm sitting at home a lot more due to covid I've more time on my hands

I feel that the R9 390 was a waste of money as it's only in the last few weeks I've got to use it and I must have it 5 years.

I think my next setup will have to be able to be connected to the TV so I can sit back and relax playing games not just at my desk. But running at 4k would be hard without spending mad money I would think?

Squidgy Black

thenightrider wrote: »

Thanks for all the feedback.

I maybe should have added to the opening post that I have a good laptop 10th gen core i5 can't think of the model at the moment with 32gb ram and gtx1650 ( could have gotten the gtx1660 for the same price with a smaller screen) thinking maybe I should have

I'm not in a mad rush to upgrade it's just that now I'm sitting at home a lot more due to covid I've more time on my hands

I feel that the R9 390 was a waste of money as it's only in the last few weeks I've got to use it and I must have it 5 years.

I think my next setup will have to be able to be connected to the TV so I can sit back and relax playing games not just at my desk. But running at 4k would be hard without spending mad money I would think?

RTX 3080 can do 4k on most titles 60fps, combined with the likes of a 3700x or one of the newer Zen 3 CPUs when they come out you should be able to do it, or possibly the AMD 6800XT depending on how the benchmarks turn out. But will be a while before stocks and prices stabilise for the cards unless you get lucky.

But at that price point, you're talking minimum 1k if not more for a card, cpu, motherboard and RAM. So depends if you think you'd get your money's worth out of it vs the likes of an xbox series x

The one truth in pc building is that price and spec will always be better if you wait.

So you need decide where you are happy, and not look back

Homelander

Deleted User wrote: »

The one truth in pc building is that price and spec will always be better if you wait.

So you need decide where you are happy, and not look back

While that normally is true enough, it would seem particularly silly when new GPU's and CPU's are literally 2 weeks away.