Ryzen 5 1600 to 3600 build upgrade

EricX2 · July 31, 2020

Back in 2017 I built my Ryzen 5 1600 with an MSI B350M Gaming board, a Zotac GTX 1070 FE and 16gb of Corsair 2666 RAM, along with a 256gb intel m.2 NVME drive and a 1tb Samsung sata ssd all wrapped up in a rather outdated looking even at the time NZXT S340 case. After using that with some minor changes such as replacing the stock wraith cooler with a noctua cooler, I have finally upgraded. I kept the motherboard, GPU, but upgraded the CPU to a Ryzen 5 3600, RAM to Corsair 3600 and replaced my 256gb NVME SSD with a 1tb WD Black. Still in the same case. Still with the same cooler. Just popped out the old CPU, cleaned up the thermal paste and reapplied, then upgraded the RAM and SSD. I don't play games at all, so I have no interest in upgrading the GPU. The only reason I even have the 1070 is I bought it back when they were new and unless it stops working I can't imagine needing to replace it.

I still am impressed that it was just a drop in CPU upgrade (plus UEFI upgrade) and everything worked perfect (minus having to reactivate MS Office over the phone because it's a neW cOmPutER). The last time I had a motherboard and did a CPU upgrade was the Core 2 duo generation where I went from a E6300 to a E8400 in 2009. And by golly is it fast! I never felt like it was slow. I just knew from looking at benchmarks that it wasn't keeping up anymore. Honestly I think the 2666 RAM should have been upgraded a long time ago. No clue how much of a bottlenck that was. The RAM is now at 3600 and everything is so fast. Booting, launching apps, running scripts that took minutes before are instant or near. Just such a good upgrade for a few hundred bucks.

Anyway, I know from looking at other build logs this isn't too unique or anything but I have nobody else to share with. It's been even a few years since I was on these forums.