Coachdude

It's just where the pads of the cpu are making contact with the pins of the motherboard socket, nothing to worry about. Think of it as a "witness mark", more or less.

To add to what the others here have said, it looks like your motherboard isn't quite mounted properly, judging by the angle of the audio jacks on the bottom, they look askew to me, and that's probably what lead to the damage to that specific USB port in the first place. So if you feel comfortable remounting it, I'd definitely go ahead and do so...

Bro you've got such a good system there already, why waste money on anything right now? You paid good money for your system as is, get your money's worth out of it. I'm still using a 3900X which is already a good bit slower than your Zen 3 counterpart, and it's still getting the job done fine. As long as your PC does what you want it to, why worry about the new things? Don't get caught up in the FOMO, IMO.

I'm wondering if the latest bios agesa has something to do with it now. IIRC Zen 2 was vulnerable to a recent security vulnerability dubbed "Zenbleed", so I wonder if the latest bios potentially has the security fixes applied and is lowering performance. If that's the case there's not much to be done unfortunately. I've a Crosshair 8 Hero with the second to latest AGESA and I've not noticed any degradation in performance so far. So it could be that. I'm not sure what if anything else it could be at this time. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. If I get around to installing the latest bios and thus agesa on my board I'll let you know if I notice any performance drop off.

Those scores definitely look a bit low to me given the clock speeds to be honest. Would you mind listing the rest of your system specifications? Your motherboard and ram especially. It could be something as simple as a bloated Windows install. It could be an out of date bios, using an ancient AGESA version or something along those lines. Have you made sure to enable your RAM's XMP profile in bios? I'm not going to lie to you it's kind of difficult to assess these kinds of things through text, without having a hands on with the system in question I'm kind of just spitballing here. All that being said. Make sure your motherboard's bios is up to date. Make sure you've installed the latest chipset drivers from AMD's website. Check task manager and make sure there isn't anything hogging up the cpu. And make sure your RAM's XMP profile is enabled in bios. Beyond that I really can't think of why it'd be scoring so low. I mean it's not like those scores are bad necessarily, but they do look low to me given the clock speeds you're running at. Again it's difficult to assess these kinds of things through text. But hopefully one of these things points you in the right direction. I know I've had some wonkiness with some of my past systems before as well, and you really just have to go through the motions to try and figure everything out.

Alright, that seemed odd to me so I wanted to make sure. That being said, at 4.4, I would expect a bit higher in both R15 and R20. I would still test things at stock and see what you get. As the scores you posted from what I recall should be around stock levels. It's possible the 4.4GHz overclock isn't entirely stable, and thus is leading to lower scores potentially. Reset back to stock and test, and post back here what scores you get at stock, and go from there. Zen 2 wasn't really all that favorable to manual overclocking from what I remember, I have a 3900X myself and just enabled PBO as a set it and forget option. I would test what 8 cores on this chip does in R15 and R20 for you, but due to the CCX configuration I don't think it would be entirely comparable, as each CCX on this chip has only 3 cores spread across 4 CCXs. As opposed to two 4 core CCXs on your 3700X. So yeah, reset to stock, test. And then maybe try enabling just PBO and see what that gets you. I haven't much experience with manual overclocking so perhaps someone with more experience can guide you further in that area.

Those scores seem about right, but for Cinebench R15. Are you sure that isn't the version you're testing? R20 the 3700X should be around 5000 give or take a few hundred points. I'd double check which version you're running as 2000 seems to be about what a Zen 2 8 core scores in R15, more or less equivalent to a 9900K in that same benchmark... If you're actually getting 2000 in R20, it would seem to be you have a CCX disabled, and I would make sure game mode in Ryzen master is turned off, and reset bios settings to default. Make sure you see all cores enabled in task manager.

It's possible the two new ram sticks you bought aren't actually exactly the same, they could be totally different even if they're listed as being the same on whichever website you bought it from. I actually dealt with a similar issue a while back, using similar Corsair Vengeance 3200 stuff as well. Turns out when I went to upgrade from 16 gigs ( 2x8 ) to 32 ( 4x8 ), the new kit of ram I bought was actually a different revision from what I had previously, and whilst my system was able to post, I did have some memory stability problems. All this was solved by buying one certified ( 4x8 ) kit of G.Skill ram. I'm not saying this is what your problem is, but speaking from past experience it's definitely possible. Now, if you're saying none of the ram works and it did before, I'd tear everything down and double check everything. But if you're trying to go from 16 gigs to 32 and you're having problems, it could be what I described above. It's really hard to diagnose things like this without being hands on with the hardware.

12th gen is superior to Zen 3 bar the X3D variant. Between the 12700 and 5900x, the 12700kf will be faster in gaming and likewise VR, and even in multithreaded workloads. You really can't compare cache amounts between different architectures like that, with the X3D being the exception just because it has so much of it, and even then only in some titles some of the time. So again, if those are your two options the 12700KF will indeed be faster. All that being said, you may be able to find a better deal on something like a 13th gen i5 or the likes, which may end up being faster than even the 12700 given the additional clocks and L2 cache that 13th gen provided. Just make sure you're getting the most for your money is all.

Honestly, if you're wanting to stick with DDR4 and aren't planning on moving higher than a 6700XT, I'd just stick with the 9700K for now. Wait for the next releases from both AMD and Intel and see what your options are then. The 9700K is a bit dated sure, but it's still a decent performer if your main use is just gaming. Personally I probably wouldn't have gone with this particular i7 in the first place due to the lack of hyperthreading, but it does have 8 cores and can usually clock up to 5GHz+ or so, and with a modern mid-range card like the 6700XT, you should have a perfectly respectable experience in the vast majority of titles out there. I'd say hold off until you decide to make the leap to a DDR5 powered platform. Going from LGA 1151 to AM4 just doesn't make sense to me. It would be faster sure, but not an insane difference in my opinion. The X3D would be significantly faster in some titles yes, but you'd be going from one dead platform to another dead platform, and you'd probably be in the same boat in a few years down the line that you're in now. So again, unless you're willing to move to AM5 or DDR5 13th gen/14th gen, an upgrade for strictly gaming performance just isn't warranted given the money you'd spend to do so in my opinion. Just my two cents.

I would expect a bit higher than 3.6 in Cinebench honestly, but I do believe R23 and 2024 are a bit heavier than older versions, so perhaps that's just your cpus limit in those workloads. What kinds of temps are you getting? You can try enabling PBO in bios to see if the higher power limits allow it to boost further, but you're probably going to max out around ~4GHz or so with default PBO. As a 3900x owner, I can tell you I see around ~4.15 GHz in Cinebench 2024 with PBO enabled, so I wouldn't expect a 3600 to hit much higher than that without manual overclocking. 3000 series just didn't clock that high to be honest. But you are hitting at least 3.6GHz which is the 3600's base clock, so it is running within spec. So as far as I know everything seems to be working as it should. Definitely check your temps and try enabling PBO though, if you want a quick and easy way to get a bit of a boost that's where I'd start. I wouldn't bother overclocking with Zen 2 though to be quite frank. Any gains you may get would be negligible. Zen 2's biggest weakness was the split CCX design, and really no amount of realistic clock speed gain you'd get is going to offset that. That's where RAM and FLCK tuning comes into play, but that's a whole other thing entirely.

Which stress test are you using to test with? If you're running at the default power limits in something like Prime95 for example it will run into those limits and more than likely run at or close to base clock. 4.2 is the rated single core boost clock, and it will not hit that when you're maxing out all cores in a stress test like Prime.

Check task manager. Could be a program, driver, etc. There's just not much to go on with a monitoring graph alone. If you're playing a game or something that'd be normal but if you're just sitting on the desktop it could be something as simple as windows update doing something in the background... So check task manager and see what's using the most cpu time.

For what it's worth, I've been running a 4x8 kit of G.Skill 3600 with my Ryzen 9 3900x for about two years now, and I've yet to have any stability problems. XMP runs at around 1.35 for DRAM voltage, and soc voltage is around ~1.080. Granted this will obviously vary between cpus, motherboards, ram kits etc. This kit was on the QVL for my motherboard as well. As long as voltages are within safe limits, I doubt any noticeable degradation or instability will occur during the useful life of the system. "Silicon lottery" will always be a part of that though. That being said, Ryzen 3000 officially supports up to 3200 only, so it isn't a guarantee that higher speeds will work, but I'd say most 3000 and later cpus should handle at least 3600 with 1800 FCLK just fine. It was really only Zen 1 and Zen+ where obtaining higher speeds could be a bit of a chore iirc.

Yeah don't do that. Especially with an older gen Ryzen, either stick with what you've got, or try and get the same kit with the same revision and go all the way to 32 gigs in a 4x8 configuration. Try and make sure the revisions are the same between them if you can. I've had trouble in the past mixing even the same models of ram bought at different times, because ram is usually sold and guaranteed to run as a kit. But I've also had it work just fine in a different computer, so your mileage may vary... But definitely don't run your system without dual channel, the capacity increase isn't worth the performance hit that will incur with the config you're suggesting.