Upgrade Motherboard or Processor?

[jcrig71]

Budget (including currency): $300 USD

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Productivity and light gaming

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

Current build:

 

AsRock B450M mobo
Ryzen 3600 processor
16GB Dual Channel G Skill Ripjaws DDR4-3200
Inland Premium 512GB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4
Nvidia GTX 970 (I know...I'm waiting for used 2070 Supers to flood the market)

 

Would I benefit from upgrading to a B550 mobo for PCIe 4.0, or would my money be better spent just upgrading my processor to a 5000 series Ryzen once my mobo supports them?

 

Thanks!
 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 minute ago, jcrig71 said:

Would I benefit from upgrading to a B550 mobo for PCIe 4.0

No.

1 minute ago, jcrig71 said:

or would my money be better spent just upgrading my processor to a 5000 series Ryzen once my mobo supports them?

Yes. I mean, I'm not sure it's worth upgrading anything, once you have your new GPU. But it's still better than changing the motherboard.

 

[Eigenvektor]

An upgrade of your motherboard specifically for PCIe 4.0 is only worth it, if you need the extra bandwidth. If you transfer files from one PCIe 4.0 capable SSD to another all day long, you might get some benefit out of it (faster file transfer). For GPUs it is hardly noticeable (RTX 3080, RX 5700).

 

In any other case, you'll get far more use out of a faster CPU.