Buying the right CPU for me

shuka · October 27, 2022

Hey! I'm building a new PC, and I'm a bit torn on which CPU I should buy. The short story is I have until Sunday to figure it out, so I need your help.

My GPU is Radeon 6650xt (already bought) and 16gb ddr4 3200mhz ram. I've narrowed down the CPU options to these (I'm not shopping in the US, so the prices are a bit different):

Ryzen 5600x 167$ + Asus PRIME B550M-A AM4 106$ = 276$
Intel 12th gen 12600k 270$ + ASRock B660M Steel Legend 150$ = 420$
Intel 13th gen 13600k 346$ + ASRock B660M Steel Legend 150$ = 496$

A quick few notes before you lash out in the comments:

These are the prices in my country, so whatever price you see might be different
For some reason, 5600x is cheaper than 5600 (??)
I'm not interested in overclocking
MSI PRO B660M-A is more expensive and does not support bios flashback - and thus gen 13

What do you say?

Would your answer change if I said I'm planning on upgrading the GPU in 4-5 years and want the CPU to still be viable then?

dizmo · October 27, 2022

I'd only buy a motherboard that supports USB flashing for AMD.

It really comes down to your long term plans. If you plan on upgrading the GPU and keeping the rest, get the Intel chips. If not, the AMD isn't as strong but will do just fine.

It also helps if you tell us what resolution you're using, refresh rate, and what you do with your system.

ZetZet · October 27, 2022

Unfortunately we can't predict the future or what your budget is going to be like in 4-5 years. 5600X+6650 is a very healthy combination now. So I would say you buy that now, put 200 dollars into a sock and buy a new CPU in 4-5 years if GPUs move too far forward. For example the 4090 is already fast enough to not be fully utilized by current CPUs in lower resolutions.

EDIT: Agreed on the USB bios flash thing. For some reason some motherboard manufacturers still don't ship BIOS that's compatible with Zen3 out of the box.

RONOTHAN## · October 27, 2022

The 12th gen option doesn't really make a ton of sense in comparison to the other options, the 5600X isn't that much slower but significantly cheaper, and the 13th gen CPU is a fair bit faster for not much more money. Basically, I'd just be looking at the 5600X and the 13600K.

As for which to go for, that's a bit complicated. The B660M Steel Legend is not a great motherboard, and if you actually take full advantage of the 13600K (I.E. multi core workloads) it has the possibility of power throttling. The B660(M) Gaming X does have BIOS Flashback and is usually not that much more expensive than the Steel Legend, and is well worth the extra $20-30 for it. With the current board choice, I'd probably be going for the 5600X machine instead, though if you swap out the board for something with a better VRM it's a bit less cut and dry.

The 13600K is still pretty hard to recommend over the 5600X, though. You do say that you want your CPU to be viable in 4-5 years, which we don't know whether they will or won't be in that amount of time (my money's on they'll both be viable then, but then again CPUs have been moving very fast and newer games may start moving just as fast when it comes to CPU requirements). The 13600K is faster and has a higher possibility of being viable then, but it's also double the price, so you could just pocket the difference and in 4-5 years when you do another GPU upgrade, use the money saved today to buy a newer, faster CPU then if your current one isn't enough, you'll get something that's faster in the long run for effectively the same amount of money.

The 5600X and a CPU upgrade in 5 years if necessary is likely the best play, it's the least risk and will get you the fastest system on average over ~8-10 years, though if you really don't want to swap the board, CPU, and RAM in 4-5 years, 13600K makes a little more sense.