What should I upgrade: RAM or CPU

pattle_bass · November 28, 2020

Hi! I'm looking forward to upgrading my PC but I'm not sure which one to buy.

Motherboard: A320M pro-vd/s

Current CPU: Ryzen 1300x

Current RAM: 1x8gb 2133mhz

GPU: Radeon 5600XT 6gb (I bought it because I wanted to build a decent rig piece by piece)

PSU: 550W (I don't know the model)

I have an SSD.

Alright, this holiday season I can buy one of two things: 2x8gb @ ~3000mhz memory OR a Ryzen 3600.

Which one do you think would be the better option in my case. At the moment I can't play some games. COD Warzone runs decently but my voice on Discord is laggy. In Fortnite I have around 100 fps but the micro-stuttering makes it impossible to play. From what I've seen CPU percentage is pretty high.

Other issues that are not a big deal but I would like resolved:

-when I start Minecraft or a Minecraft server, for the first few minutes I can't use Discord (same voice lag like in Warzone)

-the same happens in a lot of other programs (Teams, Rocket League)

Just so you know I will get the other part in about half a year anyway, but I want to know which one is the best pick for now.

Marre77 · November 28, 2020

Ideally, you would need the ram. Since the amd processors uses ram as an advantage and gets better performance with faster and more ram. In that case you would get a little more performance in cpu requiring games and a lot more in high ram usage games. But either way i think ram is the way to go, even if you play cpu demanding games atm. If you get the cpu before ram it would be a bottleneck and you wouldn't get the same performance.

bowrilla · November 28, 2020

You cripple the performance of your current CPU with single channel slow memory. It's also only 8GB which will result in heavy use of page files. 2x8GB (ideally 3600 for Zen2 but you will not sacrifice that much by going down to 3200-3000) will give you noticeably better performance.

I'm not sure, that a 3600X is a good match for your A320 board. It only is a 3+2 VRM board with only 3x50A Mosfets. That's really low end. You should upgrade this as well. Bear in mind B550 is not compatible with Zen or Zen+ chips! X570 however is. You could go for a cheaper B450 board - not as good, but okay.