Upgrading Intel Nuc to AMD 3600X/5600X build

[parrotperil]

Budget (including currency): $600 USD. I'm selling some stuff I have laying around to finance this so the more I sell on eBay the more I can spend but I'd like to stay as close to $600 as possible. An example of something I would spend a bit more for: $90 32GB GEIL RAM vs $60 16GB corsair RAM. An example of something I probably wouldn't spend a bit more for: Asrock B550 Taichi ($250) over the MSI B550-A PRO ($125).

 

Country: US

 

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for:

• Heavy Gaming (COD Warzone, Black Ops Cold War, Wasteland 3, War Thunder, etc.
• I wanna be able to run new games at 100+ FPS high (not necessarily max) settings for at least a year or two post build
• Film Editing and SFX (Premiere, Davinci 16)
• Photo Editing
• Streaming/Recording/Voice+Video Calls
• Would like to be able to upgrade to multiple monitors in the future.
• I would like this build to be as futureproof/upgradeable as possible within the budget restrictions.
• A USB flashable mobo is a must.
• I'm not really big into overclocking.
• Will eventually upgrade to 32 or 64 GB of RAM depending on what I start with.

Current Build:

• Intel Nuc 7i7BnB
• Sonnet eGPU box housing the Sapphire card
• 16GB DDR3 SODIMM
• plus every carryover part listed below (with the exception of the currently unused Intel 760p M.2).

Existing/Carryover Parts:

• Intel 760p Series 256 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
• Crucial MX500 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
• Sapphire Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB PULSE Video Card
• Rosewill TYRFING ATX Mid Tower Case
• Keyboard, Mouse, USB headset, USB Wifi Antenna (BrosTrend 1200Mbps Long Range USB WiFi Adapter)
• 1080p 24" 60 Hz AOC monitor, got it from a friend (circa 2016) so I have no idea what the model # is. Has 2x HDMI and 1x VGA ports.
• Windows 10? It's booting from an M.2 SSD and from what I've heard tit's possible for the OS to be lifted from one machine and placed into another. This is complicated by the fact that my current build has the windows activation tied to the mobo (no activation code) so I'm not sure if putting the drive in another PC would prompt it to ask for a new activation code.

 

Parts I'm planning on getting:

• I originally planned this build for the 3600X AMD CPU, but with the 5600X dropping in two weeks I'm willing to spend the extra $100. Maybe this is a bad move? let me know.
• I'm considering this  32GB GEIL RAM over the 16GB Corsair RAM.

 

Why am I upgrading?

• I attached a picture of my current build below. Look at it. It craves the sweet release of death. Yes that is string.
• I can't game well on 2 cores. Can't edit film well on 2 cores. Can't multitask well on 2 cores.
• The eGPU TB3 connection fails frequently, causing bluescreens or hard freezes if I leave the system on for more than a day/under heavy load. Most things I do 100% the CPU usage which might also be contributing to the crashes.

 

Burning Questions:

• Will windows 10 transfer over? (see above)
• Will I be able to use the NVME drive as a boot drive? I've seen some mobos specifically list this as a feature and the MSI A PRO does not, but I'm not sure if that's because it is such a common feature they don't need to advertise it.
• I've seen some reports of people having trouble booting from M.2 drives on B550 series boards. What's up with that? Note that I have one SATA and one PCIe NVME drive and I'd like to make sure they're both usable on the new build.
• If there's a similar board with more than 2 m.2 slots that I missed in my searches I'd like that.
• Am I doing anything staggeringly dumb that I missed?
• Hit me with all your suggestions, critiques, questions, insults, etc.
• Should I attempt to buy on black friday/cyber monday? Are sales on PC parts actually good on those days, or is it the standard fare "raise prices for two months beforehand > drop prices in November down to what they were in July and call it a sale" tactic that many retailers pull?

 

[Senzelian]

5 minutes ago, parrotperil said:

Will windows 10 transfer over? (see above)

Sorta. Maybe. Sometimes. Depends on Microsoft's mood at that specific time.

 

Technically it should, if your current Windows 10 install is registered to your account. Then you can log in with your account into your new PC and set it up as one of your devices. Sometimes this works really well, and sometimes it doesn't. But I wouldn't worry about that too much yet. If it doesn't work, then you can simply run Windows 10 without activating it.

 

7 minutes ago, parrotperil said:

Will I be able to use the NVME drive as a boot drive? I've seen some mobos specifically list this as a feature and the MSI A PRO does not, but I'm not sure if that's because it is such a common feature they don't need to advertise it.

Yes, that will work.

 

9 minutes ago, parrotperil said:

I've seen some reports of people having trouble booting from M.2 drives on B550 series boards. What's up with that? Note that I have one SATA and one PCIe NVME drive and I'd like to make sure they're both usable on the new build.

It might be that certain SATA or M.2 ports are deactivated when either a M.2 or SATA drive are installed in a certain slot. You can find out by reading through the motherboard manual, which you can find online. I haven't heard about a specific issue regarding B550 tho.

 

11 minutes ago, parrotperil said:

If there's a similar board with more than 2 m.2 slots that I missed in my searches I'd like that.

There are boards with more than two M.2 slot, but those are also quite expensive.

 

 

 

13 minutes ago, parrotperil said:

Am I doing anything staggeringly dumb that I missed?

Yeah, where's your RGB? You're missing out on FPS here...  

 

But to be honest I don't think so.

I'm not too sure about the graphics card tho, as I have no idea how AMD cards currently stack up and when the lower end 30-series cards will be released.