Ryzen 7 5800X3D and Radeon RX6950 XT Build Review, Recommendations, and Opinions

[WhiteWolf_Kevin]

Good evening, folks.

 

I'm putting together a 5800X3D/RX6950 XT build (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zbL8sL) and am looking for opinions, recommendations, and critiques.

 

Budget is around $2,000 USD and I'm located in the United States. Willing to go $100-200 more if it means a fairly significant performance uplift, but I'm mainly looking for price-to-performance efficiency. I have dual 1440p 144Hz monitors and won't need peripherals or an OS. I'm upgrading because I built my current system in January of 2015. It's an Intel i7-5820k/EVGA GTX 970 build that has served me well over the years, but I figured now would be a good time to upgrade so I can get better performance in games (currently playing Cyberpunk 2077 on medium settings at around 35fps).

 

It's going to be used for 1440p gaming with a combination of single player games (Cyberpunk 2077, The Callisto Protocol, Dead Island 2) and multi-player games (Call of Duty Warzone 2, Escape from Tarkov). I like to stream games occasionally as well (I know NVIDIA NVENC is preferred for that, but I'm going Radeon in an effort to support their competition in the GPU space and fight against NVIDIA's business practices). I also do some light 3D editing/modeling (FreeCAD design for 3D printing type stuff).

 

I picked up the 5800X3D and Radeon RX6950 XT as a combo deal from AMD for $1,028 USD before taxes. I'm curious to hear if you all think that was a good price or if the money would have been better spent on different hardware.

 

For motherboard, I'm still debating on X570 vs B550. I currently have the Asus TUF GAMING X570-PRO WIFI II selected as I like the features it offers along with the fact that it doesn't have a chipset fan (one less thing to fail). I'm open to considering B550 so I'd like to hear opinions/recommendations on that.

 

For memory, I read that memory timing doesn't really affect the 5800X3D. Assuming I keep with a DDR4-3600 CL16 kit, does the brand matter? Would it be worth going for a DDR4-4000 kit? I'm also interested in hearing opinions regarding 32GB vs 64GB of memory for my use case.

 

For the boot drive, I went with a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro. Figured 1TB is plenty to hold my OS and applications. Is that overkill or is the DRAM cache and Samsung name worth the premium price? I also already have a 1TB WD Black SN750 I'm going to reuse as a game storage drive.

 

For the power supply, I'm going to reuse my trusty EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 P2, 80+ PLATINUM that I purchased back in 2015. It's been going strong in my i7-5820k/GTX 970 build so I figured I would let it live on in the new machine.

 

For the CPU cooler, I originally wanted to go with a Noctua NH-D15, but their compatibility tool reports that "Front fan overhangs RAM slots. If there is sufficient space inside the case, the front fan can be installed in a higher position to clear the RAM modules (see linked FAQ)." That's making me think that a 240mm or 360mm AIO might be a better option. Thoughts/recommendations for that? Would the NH-D15 be sufficient for the 5800X3D or should I go with an AIO for better cooling and less compatibility issues?

 

For the case, I'm open to suggestions for a mid or full tower. My only real considerations for a case are a good balance between airflow and dust prevention.

 

I welcome any and all thoughts, comments, suggestions, or concerns. Please let me know if I can clarify anything or if there are any questions. Thanks in advance!

 

-Kevin

 

[RONOTHAN##]

24 minutes ago, WhiteWolf_Kevin said:

I picked up the 5800X3D and Radeon RX6950 XT as a combo deal from AMD for $1,028 USD before taxes. I'm curious to hear if you all think that was a good price or if the money would have been better spent on different hardware.

It's not terrible, but it's not great. For that price you could pick up a non-reference 6900 XT (this will be faster than a reference 6950 XT, especially if you unlock the power limits) and an i5 13600K, ending up with a better overall combo. If it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to return it, you could get a better overall system for the price, but if you don't want to go through the effort I wouldn't blame you. 

 

24 minutes ago, WhiteWolf_Kevin said:

For motherboard, I'm still debating on X570 vs B550. I currently have the Asus TUF GAMING X570-PRO WIFI II selected as I like the features it offers along with the fact that it doesn't have a chipset fan (one less thing to fail). I'm open to considering B550 so I'd like to hear opinions/recommendations on that.

With X570, it pretty much comes down to 3 things: Do you need VFIO support (GPU passthrough in Linux), do you need a ton of Gen 4 SSDs, and if there's a feature that you want that's only available on an X570 board (proper dual BIOS, for instance, is only available on a couple of high end X570 boards)? If the answer to all of those questions is no, you might as well save money with a B550 board. Something like the B550 TUF-Plus, B550-A Pro, and B550 Steel Legend would do the trick for significantly less with the same performance. 

 

24 minutes ago, WhiteWolf_Kevin said:

For memory, I read that memory timing doesn't really affect the 5800X3D. Assuming I keep with a DDR4-3600 CL16 kit, does the brand matter? Would it be worth going for a DDR4-4000 kit? I'm also interested in hearing opinions regarding 32GB vs 64GB of memory for my use case.

Brand does not matter, a DDR4 4000 kit will likely be worse since the infinity fabric would be desynced with 95% of CPUs (assuming you just enable XMP), and 32GB of RAM should do OK if you're just doing light CAD work. Honestly, there isn't much point to go above 3200 CL16 with a 5800X3D, it's pretty much immune to memory performance in everything but a couple workloads where you really should be on a 13600K with DDR5 instead.

 

24 minutes ago, WhiteWolf_Kevin said:

For the boot drive, I went with a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro. Figured 1TB is plenty to hold my OS and applications. Is that overkill or is the DRAM cache and Samsung name worth the premium price? I also already have a 1TB WD Black SN750 I'm going to reuse as a game storage drive.

Coming from someone with a 980 Pro, it's complete overkill as a boot drive. I personally switched it to a higher capacity 970 Evo I had because I genuinely couldn't tell the difference, and the extra space was more useful than the 7GB per second that doesn't matter for 98% of consumers. If you already have a SN750, I'd use that as your boot drive, and spend the money you'd spend on the 980 Pro on a 2TB SATA drive instead to use as your game drive. 

 

24 minutes ago, WhiteWolf_Kevin said:

For the CPU cooler, I originally wanted to go with a Noctua NH-D15, but their compatibility tool reports that "Front fan overhangs RAM slots. If there is sufficient space inside the case, the front fan can be installed in a higher position to clear the RAM modules (see linked FAQ)." That's making me think that a 240mm or 360mm AIO might be a better option. Thoughts/recommendations for that? Would the NH-D15 be sufficient for the 5800X3D or should I go with an AIO for better cooling and less compatibility issues?

An NH-D15 would cool the 5800X3D, though there are cheaper coolers like the Scythe Fuma 2 and Deepcool AK620 that perform very similarly (the AK620 actually outperforms the NH-D15) but have better RAM compatibility and cost significantly less. You're better off with one of those instead. 

 

24 minutes ago, WhiteWolf_Kevin said:

For the case, I'm open to suggestions for a mid or full tower. My only real considerations for a case are a good balance between airflow and dust prevention.

 

There are a lot of good options, Gamers Nexus did just do a run down of all the cases they liked this year, so it's probably worth looking at that and see if there's any cases there that you like the look of. Some more notable ones off the top of my head are the Corsair 4000D Airflow, Phanteks G360A, Fractal Torrent, be quiet! Silent Base 802, and be quiet! 500DX, but there are a lot of other good options as well. 

[WhiteWolf_Kevin]

18 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

It's not terrible, but it's not great. For that price you could pick up a non-reference 6900 XT (this will be faster than a reference 6950 XT, especially if you unlock the power limits) and an i5 13600K, ending up with a better overall combo. If it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to return it, you could get a better overall system for the price, but if you don't want to go through the effort I wouldn't blame you. 

Good points. I hadn't considered the performance boost of non-reference cards. If I went with the i5-13600K and non-reference 6900 XT, what chipset would you recommend?

 

Thanks for the notes about everything else!

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, WhiteWolf_Kevin said:

If I went with the i5-13600K and non-reference 6900 XT, what chipset would you recommend?

Do you want to overclock (the 13600K does have a fair amount of headroom in it, most people get them up to 5.6GHz on the P cores easily)? If yes, go for either a Z690 or Z790 board. Z790 boards have better DDR5 support if you want to go for high speed DDR5, as in 6400MT/s+, while Z690 boards will require you get a board with BIOS flashback to make sure that you can update the BIOS to work with 13th gen as most Z690 boards do not come with a BIOS update recent enough for 13th gen CPUs. If you go DDR4 to save money with a 3200MT/s Cl16 kit, the Z690-A Pro DDR4 is a really solid board. It's probably a good idea to stay away from ASUS's Z690 lineup though (their Z790 lineup is fine), since they've had some BIOS issues causing severe performance issues with the 13th gen chips. 

 

If you don't want to overclock, go for a B660 Gaming X or another B660 board with a good VRM and BIOS flashback, though some of them get dangerously close to Z690 prices, so it might be a good idea to go Z690 no matter what. 

[WhiteWolf_Kevin]

5 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Do you want to overclock (the 13600K does have a fair amount of headroom in it, most people get them up to 5.6GHz on the P cores easily)? If yes, go for either a Z690 or Z790 board. Z790 boards have better DDR5 support if you want to go for high speed DDR5, as in 6400MT/s+, while Z690 boards will require you get a board with BIOS flashback to make sure that you can update the BIOS to work with 13th gen as most Z690 boards do not come with a BIOS update recent enough for 13th gen CPUs. If you go DDR4 to save money with a 3200MT/s Cl16 kit, the Z690-A Pro DDR4 is a really solid board. It's probably a good idea to stay away from ASUS's Z690 lineup though (their Z790 lineup is fine), since they've had some BIOS issues causing severe performance issues with the 13th gen chips. 

 

If you don't want to overclock, go for a B660 Gaming X or another B660 board with a good VRM and BIOS flashback, though some of them get dangerously close to Z690 prices, so it might be a good idea to go Z690 no matter what. 

Thanks very much! I think I'm going to return the 5800X3D and 6950XT in favor of the i5-13600K and non-reference 6900 XT. In your opinion, is the price-to-performance of a non-reference 6900 XT worth it compared to something like an RTX 3070 TI? I'd like to avoid supporting NVIDIA's crappy business practices, but only if I'm not sacrificing too much in the way of savings or performance

[RONOTHAN##]

3 minutes ago, WhiteWolf_Kevin said:

In your opinion, is the price-to-performance of a non-reference 6900 XT worth it compared to something like an RTX 3070 TI?

For gaming the 6900 XT is faster than the 3070 Ti in everything but CUDA workloads. As long as you don't do a ton of Blender or something that uses Nvidia specific features the 6900 XT is the better buy.