Z97 to B550 Upgrade finally finished

[Hans Power]

Alright, just got the last part of my upgrade installed and properly tested. Original system was an Intel i5 4690k (oced to 4.3Ghz), Gigabyte Ga-Z97MX-Gaming 5, 16GB DDR HyperX Fury 2133, MSI RTX 2070 Armor (well actually originally it was an AMD K6-200 but it changed just a little bit since I bought it ).

So, I kept the RTX 2070, obviously, as well as the case and my Corsair RM650i as well as my SSDs and HDDs and casefans. New Hardware is a Ryzen 5 5600x, MSI B550m Mortar Wifi, 32GB Crucial Ballistix 3200 (2x 16GB Rev E, so luckily it's Dual Rank). First thing I did was undervolting the CPU which worked fantastically for two weeks, now giving not only lower temps but also higher performance.

I tried to reuse the old Bequiet Dark Rock 3 with an AM4 Adapter but with that I unfortunately couldn't mount it in airflow direction which is especially bad in my case. I could make it work, just so, with CPU and GPU reaching ~80°C under full fan speeds without throttling but it wasn't a fantastic experience and no wiggle room for high temps during summer (I live in germany, so no AC for me). So, I swapped it with a Scythe Fuma 2 which did hold it's promise - whisper quiet and not exceeding 72°C during combined CPU/GPU stresstesting with realbench. Also helped with GPU temps which now don't exceed 75°C anymore with maxed out power limits.

Performance is great - almost every game I had performance issues with was CPU limited like Cyberpunk 2077 or Assassins Creed Odyssee. Now I can get pretty much everything I play easily over 60FPS at Ultra settings albeit without RTX, mostly. Also helps a lot with DOS Emulation via Dosbox - even 1024x768 games run smoothly now without audio hitches. And, well, there's some other more... modern emulation stuff you can do now which was previously impossible. I won't go into detail but I was pretty blown away by what the new system can do.

Overall I'm very pleased - especially the new MSI motherboard is a quantum leap compared to the old Gigabyte one - I had trouble getting it stable at stock just with XMP - had to manually set the values which should have been set by XMP and then it suddenly became stable. And Offset voltage didn't work either - I had to use static voltage when I tried to get my CPU overclock stable and that's not even the end of it! On the MSI B550 Board - no issues whatsoever. Everything works like a charm - I'm very pleased with it. Only drawback is the now missing audio amplifier which was the best feature about the old board. Also the new "dragon center" software is pretty awful - I tried to get the network bandwidth manager to work and it just doesn't. Believe it or not, the Killer Control Center for the onboard Killer ethernet worked much better and was an actual value add.

Anyway, very pleased with how things turned out. The whole shabang wasn't too expensive either considering the current situation - 330€ for the CPU (30€ over MSRP), 154€ for the Motherboard, 143€ for the RAM (both at around MSRP) and 54€ for the Scythe Fuma 2. One could argue that I was unlucky that I only got an original RTX 2070 and not a super but with what's going on right now I think I'm lucky enough to even have a somewhat recent and powerful GPU at all.

 

 

 

 

[Chris Greene]

Thats quite the jump ahead! glad your build turned out and hey, count yourself lucky. I would do stupid things to get my paws on even a 2060 haha

[Hans Power]

12 minutes ago, Chris Greene said:

Thats quite the jump ahead! glad your build turned out and hey, count yourself lucky. I would do stupid things to get my paws on even a 2060 haha

Yeah, but luckily, the old system held up just long enough to play all modern games at least above 30FPS - usually around 40-60FPS so I had some leeway. When Ryzen 5000 was released I immediately started saving up for it cause it was exactly what I wanted - as much single core performance as I possibly can get for a decent price. So, as soon as I had the cash ready I looked for sales and about 3 days later I found the 5600x on sale for 330€ which since has gone up again to it's usual 355€. Granted that sale was for the tray version (which was only available at that time, btw) but the boxed cooler would have been a complete waste of material for me anyway.

[Chris Greene]

2 minutes ago, Hans Power said:

Yeah, but luckily, the old system held up just long enough to play all modern games at least above 30FPS - usually around 40-60FPS so I had some leeway. When Ryzen 5000 was released I immediately started saving up for it cause it was exactly what I wanted - as much single core performance as I possibly can get for a decent price. So, as soon as I had the cash ready I looked for sales and about 3 days later I found the 5600x on sale for 330€ which since has gone up again to it's usual 355€. Granted that sale was for the tray version (which was only available at that time, btw) but the boxed cooler would have been a complete waste of material for me anyway.

I personally went from a Intel Core 2 Duo e8500 4gb ddr2 800mhz and a gt650 to a Ryzen 3300x 16gb ddr4 3200mhz a rx580 and im blown away at how strong this is! and then to learn that my rig is on the lower end of the scale. What a time to be alive!

[Hans Power]

8 minutes ago, Chris Greene said:

I personally went from a Intel Core 2 Duo e8500 4gb ddr2 800mhz and a gt650 to a Ryzen 3300x 16gb ddr4 3200mhz a rx580 and im blown away at how strong this is! and then to learn that my rig is on the lower end of the scale. What a time to be alive!

Yeah, man I was actually looking at the 3300x as well and it's a monster for that price - It should be about twice as fast already as my old i5 4690k and should give you a very good experience in most modern games. I just needed the extra umph for my emulation endeavours.

[Chris Greene]

3 minutes ago, Hans Power said:

Yeah, man I was actually looking at the 3300x as well and it's a monster for that price - It should be about twice as fast already as my old i5 4690k and should give you a very good experience in most modern games. I just needed the extra umph for my emulation endeavours.

I'm emulating my old dolphin platform and must say this I'm BLOWN away by how far AMD has come over these past 8Qs and was torn between the 26,36 and 3300x and chose the 3300x luckily enough got it preordered and was 1 of 9 people in line for its limited ship to that store. It truly is a great chip and the 3600 edges it out but just barely and that wasn't justifiable for the extra cash and since I play older titles didn't need the beefy cache the 3600 offered.

 

[Hans Power]

2 minutes ago, Chris Greene said:

I'm emulating my old dolphin platform and must say this I'm BLOWN away by how far AMD has come over these past 8Qs and was torn between the 26,36 and 3300x and chose the 3300x luckily enough got it preordered and was 1 of 9 people in line for its limited ship to that store. It truly is a great chip and the 3600 edges it out but just barely and that wasn't justifiable for the extra cash and since I play older titles didn't need the beefy cache the 3600 offered.

 

Dolphin actually ran fine for me even with the old system - now I'm up to PS3 and WiiU/Switch. And not just a little bit - I'm talking 4k60 + enhancements without any drops!

[Chris Greene]

1 minute ago, Hans Power said:

Dolphin actually ran fine for me even with the old system - now I'm up to PS3 and WiiU/Switch. And not just a little bit - I'm talking 4k60 + enhancements without any drops!

to quote Gordon Ramsay "wow wow wow"