R3 3100 - Thoughts?

[derpkotacasper]

As some of you may have been annoyed with by now, I'm doing some budget upgrades to my PC. My new board shows up tomorrow and I will be just shy of being able to afford a 3600, but I did find a used 3100 - photos of pins, it looks great, the Wraith cooler is included and clearly has never been used. Now obviously, there is 2 missing cores, 4 missing threads and a lower core clock, but let's talk about necessity, do I really NEED to go for what seems to be everyone's favorite 3rd gen mid range? I know it's great, yeah.

1. I run a GTX 1050 Ti. If you need to ask me why this won't be changing any time soon, I'll let you know as soon as I'm done crying.
2. I game, but I don't have the capacity to game at 144Hz or above 1080p, nor will I for quite some time. The whole point of my CPU upgrade is that while my current build will "run" anything, as soon as it becomes a CPU intensive scenario I may as well be playing on a flip by page book. (See also: I wanna play Warzone with my friends.)

Are there any important caveats to the 3100 I'm missing here? It seems to be by all accounts a great CPU at the price. Or as we say in the car community, a great horsepower per dollar bargain.

[WhitetailAni]

What CPU do you currently have?
Depending on what it is right now, it may not be a worthwhile upgrade.

[Action_Johnson]

Nothing wrong with a 3100. I ran one for a while, it's a solid 4-core 8-thread CPU that runs nice and cool. 

[derpkotacasper]

2 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

What CPU do you currently have?
Depending on what it is right now, it may not be a worthwhile upgrade.

It's an FX6300, my friend. It is my system's bottleneck. The eventual goal is to go Ryzen 5000 series and 3060 Ti, which was my purchasing decision for this board.

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, derpkotacasper said:

It's an FX6300, my friend. It is my system's bottleneck. The eventual goal is to go Ryzen 5000 series and 3060 Ti, which was my purchasing decision for this board.

Ah, then yes, a 3100 would be a big upgrade.

How close are you to having enough for a 3600? If it's not too far off (1-2 months or so) I'd recommend waiting. 6C/12T is a definite difference from 4C/8T.

[CT854]

So, I'm just curious...

 

I can't really find a R3 3100 at MSRP from a casual Google search. I've heard whispers that they aren't making new 3100/3300s, but I could be wrong. Are you getting them for MSRP? What's the price difference between them and how much long would you need to save up for a 3600?

[SteveGrabowski0]

3100 will be enough for most games now. Only thing I can think of that a 3100 will really struggle on is Cyberpunk, but you'll be wanting to put a 30 fps cap on that anyways with a 1050 Ti. If you absolutely cannot swing the money for the 3600 the 3100 will still be an enormous upgrade over an FX 6300, eg Firestrike physics score is about 2.35x higher with the 3100 vs the FX 6300. Don't expect the 3100 to hold up that great as this console gen rolls on though since all Playstation and XBox consoles this gen are 8C/16T cpus somewhat like the Ryzen 7 3700x.

 

Some of the more ambitious games of last console gen like Red Dead Redemption 2 or AC Odyssey and AC Origins push a 4C/8T cpu pretty hard. I run a 4C/8T Xeon E3-1231v3 (pretty much a Haswell i7-4770) and it was just barely enough for RDR2 at 60 fps with some moderate settings tweaks. Though a 3100 is about 27% higher than my Xeon in Firestrike physics score, so it's definitely going to have quite more breathing room to hold on a bit longer at 60 fps.

 

If you can get one for a good deal it's a pretty good 60 fps gaming cpu today and I imagine it'll still be pretty solid the next year or two. Night and day upgrade over an FX 6300.

[derpkotacasper]

2 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

Ah, then yes, a 3100 would be a big upgrade.

How close are you to having enough for a 3600? If it's not too far off (1-2 months or so) I'd recommend waiting. 6C/12T is a definite difference from 4C/8T.

Wise men say "only fools rush in," I suppose. I am gonna be low on funding for quite some time now. If I REALLY wanted to, I could spend every red dime I have on just a CPU this weekend. I am also operating out of an old Raidmax case that my ex girlfriend stole the side glass panel off of and I'm running a 128GB Sata 6 boot drive. I have support for NVMe now and I'd like to take advantage of that. So I was thinking I may actually just go ahead and use what I can on a Lian Li this weekend and then at my next available chance, I was gonna grab an NVMe instead of putting all the build budget into CPU (which don't get me wrong, WOULD work)

[derpkotacasper]

Just now, SteveGrabowski0 said:

3100 will be enough for most games now. Only thing I can think of that a 3100 will really struggle on is Cyberpunk, but you'll be wanting to put a 30 fps cap on that anyways with a 1050 Ti. If you absolutely cannot swing the money for the 3600 the 3100 will still be an enormous upgrade over an FX 6300, eg Firestrike physics score is about 2.35x higher with the 3100. Don't expect the 3100 to hold up that great as this console gen rolls on though since all Playstation and XBox consoles this gen are 8C/16T cpus somewhat like the Ryzen 7 3700x.

 

Some of the more ambitious games of last console gen like Red Dead Redemption 2 or AC Odyssey and AC Origins push a 4C/8T cpu pretty hard. I run a 4C/8T Xeon E3-1231v3 (pretty much a Haswell i7-4770) and it was just barely enough for RDR2 at 60 fps with some moderate settings tweaks. Though a 3100 is about 27% higher than my Xeon in Firestrike physics score, so it's definitely going to have quite more breathing room to hold on a bit longer at 60 fps.

 

If you can get one for a good deal it's a pretty good 60 fps gaming cpu today and I imagine it'll still be pretty solid the next year or two. Night and day upgrade over an FX 6300.

You have no idea how hardcore of a selling point running Red Dead 2 at 60 FPS for me is. I played through the entire campaign at 22 FPS. It was a labor of love, it's my favorite game.

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, derpkotacasper said:

Wise men say "only fools rush in," I suppose. I am gonna be low on funding for quite some time now. If I REALLY wanted to, I could spend every red dime I have on just a CPU this weekend. I am also operating out of an old Raidmax case that my ex girlfriend stole the side glass panel off of and I'm running a 128GB Sata 6 boot drive. I have support for NVMe now and I'd like to take advantage of that. So I was thinking I may actually just go ahead and use what I can on a Lian Li this weekend and then at my next available chance, I was gonna grab an NVMe instead of putting all the build budget into CPU (which don't get me wrong, WOULD work)

NVMe isn't too different from SATA. I boot off of a Crucial M4 128GB and I've tried booting NVMe (my dad has an HP Pavilion 15 with an NVMe boot drive) and there's really no difference. I'd go for a more powerful CPU instead of a faster boot drive, since the faster boot drive won't change as much as a 3600 vs. a 3100 will.

 

[derpkotacasper]

4 minutes ago, CT854 said:

So, I'm just curious...

 

I can't really find a R3 3100 at MSRP from a casual Google search. I've heard whispers that they aren't making new 3100/3300s, but I could be wrong. Are you getting them for MSRP? What's the price difference between them and how much long would you need to save up for a 3600?

I found one on Facebook marketplace, he was asking 120, reduced his asking price to 100 and because I will be driving over an hour to go pick it up, he is giving me a deal. It has been liquid cooled its entire lifespan and includes the still plasticed Wraith (which is important to me, as it'll be a while before I can make my eventual move to an AIO.)

[SteveGrabowski0]

4 minutes ago, derpkotacasper said:

I found one on Facebook marketplace, he was asking 120, reduced his asking price to 100 and because I will be driving over an hour to go pick it up, he is giving me a deal. It has been liquid cooled its entire lifespan and includes the still plasticed Wraith (which is important to me, as it'll be a while before I can make my eventual move to an AIO.)

$100 with a Wraith cooler is definitely a deal if it's not damaged. I'd take that over paying $230 for a new R5 3600, especially since you're might have wanted to replace the 3600 in say 3-4 years when developers have gotten used to tuning their games for 8C/16T cpus. Though I have no idea what used 3600 sell for.

[derpkotacasper]

3 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

NVMe isn't too different from SATA. I boot off of a Crucial M4 128GB and I've tried booting NVMe (my dad has an HP Pavilion 15 with an NVMe boot drive) and there's really no difference. I'd go for a more powerful CPU instead of a faster boot drive, since the faster boot drive won't change as much as a 3600 vs. a 3100 will.

 

I also want the option to put literally anything else on an SSD. In games like WoW, I noticed there was a substantial load time difference. Even on my FX, I was loading faster than my friend was and he was running a 10th gen i5. So there's something to be said for me wanting to be able to pick a couple games to have on my SSD as well, albeit I do understand that in terms of actual performance, actual gains are nominal in moving from a platter. I just like the reduced load times.

[derpkotacasper]

2 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

$100 with a Wraith cooler is definitely a deal if it's not damaged. I'd take that over paying $230 for a new R5 3600, especially since you're might have wanted to replace the 3600 in say 3-4 years when developers have gotten used to tuning their games for 8C/16T cpus. Though I have no idea what used 3600 sell for.

200 retail for a new 3600, and then used - 240ish for a 3600X and 255 for a 3600XT.

[SteveGrabowski0]

12 minutes ago, derpkotacasper said:

I found one on Facebook marketplace, he was asking 120, reduced his asking price to 100 and because I will be driving over an hour to go pick it up, he is giving me a deal. It has been liquid cooled its entire lifespan and includes the still plasticed Wraith (which is important to me, as it'll be a while before I can make my eventual move to an AIO.)

I really don't even see the point of an AIO these days unless you're running a pretty high end cpu that produces a lot of heat, considering how piss poor everything is at overclocking these days. This isn't like 2011 when you'd take a 3.4 GHz i7-2600k and OC it to 4.8 GHz with massive gains in performance on liquid cooling. Don't bother with liquid cooling in 2021 unless you're just doing it for aesthetics.

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, derpkotacasper said:

I also want the option to put literally anything else on an SSD. In games like WoW, I noticed there was a substantial load time difference. Even on my FX, I was loading faster than my friend was and he was running a 10th gen i5. So there's something to be said for me wanting to be able to pick a couple games to have on my SSD as well, albeit I do understand that in terms of actual performance, actual gains are nominal in moving from a platter. I just like the reduced load times.

Ahh, I forgot about game loading times.

I play ~10 "big" games - Minecraft, Civ 6, Among Us, Portal, Portal 2, Trine, Trine 2, and Cargo! The Quest for Gravity.

None of them are really affected by HDD loading times, and I've always used HDD for game loading, so I didn't even think about that.

 

I can understand your want for NVMe, though. So I'd just wait and get a 3600. Games will be optimized for more cores, and having a 6C/12T CPU will improve performance over a 4C/8T CPU.

[SteveGrabowski0]

7 minutes ago, derpkotacasper said:

I also want the option to put literally anything else on an SSD. In games like WoW, I noticed there was a substantial load time difference. Even on my FX, I was loading faster than my friend was and he was running a 10th gen i5. So there's something to be said for me wanting to be able to pick a couple games to have on my SSD as well, albeit I do understand that in terms of actual performance, actual gains are nominal in moving from a platter. I just like the reduced load times.

SSD will be pretty noticeable for load times, though I do admit I actually played RDR2 off a platter drive since I didn't want to clear 110GB for it on my SSD. I don't think NVME vs SATA SSD will be that noticeable unless you're spending for a PCIE-3.0 or even better PCIE-4.0 NVME SSD. As a PS5 owner I will say that NVME PCIE-4.0 SSD in it is ridiculously fast loading shit, much faster than the SATA SSD I have on my PC.

[Fatih19]

1 minute ago, FakeKGB said:

Ahh, I forgot about game loading times.

I play ~10 "big" games - Minecraft, Civ 6, Among Us, Portal, Portal 2, Trine, Trine 2, and Cargo! The Quest for Gravity.

None of them are really affected by HDD loading times, and I've always used HDD for game loading, so I didn't even think about that.

 

I can understand your want for NVMe, though. So I'd just wait and get a 3600. Games will be optimized for more cores, and having a 6C/12T CPU will improve performance over a 4C/8T CPU.

It doesn't have to be NVMe though. Didn't Linus do a blind taste test with Sata and NVMe and found that the difference is too low to be perceivable?

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, Fatih19 said:

It doesn't have to be NVMe though. Didn't Linus do a blind taste test with Sata and NVMe and found that the difference is too low to be perceivable?

There's little to no price difference now, and it makes no sense to go SATA over NVMe if you have the option.

[derpkotacasper]

I stand corrected - he was running an i5-9600k and had WoW installed on a platter, I was running an FX6300 and had it installed on a mind, you very old Toshiba (linked) SSD that had been maxed in capacity with Windows and WoW alone. We would zone into instances at the same time, same network and all variables except our systems the same. I was STILL managing to load faster by use of an SSD, and so I do really want that use out of my system - I feel like I haven't gotten to experience true, balls out SSD performance yet and even the limited experience I have, has been great for load screens.

There is however, a recent video Anthony putting out explaining that actual performance gains will be nil beyond maybe micro-stuttering so I am not deluded to think that the SSD will improve actual performance. It just does seem like a good place to put the extra money when I am considering that this will eventually be a 5600XT powered system anyway. Round out in the mid range so to speak.

[derpkotacasper]

It does seem to be unanimous amongst this thread though that the 3100 is a good idea in my situation and I appreciate the input!

[derpkotacasper]

1 hour ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

I really don't even see the point of an AIO these days unless you're running a pretty high end cpu that produces a lot of heat, considering how piss poor everything is at overclocking these days. This isn't like 2011 when you'd take a 3.4 GHz i7-2600k and OC it to 4.8 GHz with massive gains in performance on liquid cooling. Don't bother with liquid cooling in 2021 unless you're just doing it for aesthetics.

I definitely want it for aesthetic purposes. This newegg review photo of the case I'm buying is my build inspiration, although I do agree that I could probably get buy with a ridiculous amount of sick RGB 120 fans and a HyperMaster 212 RGB - the build would even still be overclockable, although I don't typically like to overclock.

EDIT: Ultimately, I want something like this but shifting through purple, blue and teal colors. I think that'd be just neat.