Should I upgrade my CPU from a Ryzen 7 3800x to a AMD Ryzen 9 5900x?

toasty99 · December 8, 2022

31 minutes ago, DriedSponge said:

Alright this is good information to know, I really appreciate it!

After reviewing my options, I think I'm going to go for a MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK with either a 5900 or a 5950x. I'm not an expert but either CPU should be an upgrade over my 3800x.

You don't want to upgrade your motherboard unless you are looking to waste money. There's no reason to. Pci-e 4.0 is not a useful feature. Go ahead and find a use other than benchmarks where 4.0 matters, you won't find one.

The B450 Tomahawk is considered the best B450 board. It can easily handle a Ryzen 5950x without issue. The VRMs on the b450 Tomahawk are better than most x570 boards.

There would be zero real world performance reasons for a motherboard upgrade here. You can see that with a 3950x the Tomahawk Max runs right with a x570 Aorus Extreme. There's not any good testing with a 5950x, but it's not gonna be much more than a 3950x and you can see that with the 3950x there's plenty of headroom.

Keep the motherboard you have, take the money saved and make sure you get a 5950x over the 5900x lol

https://youtu.be/J69aiJJEHzQ

https://youtu.be/BUBhGSZEaQg

Bombastinator · December 8, 2022

59 minutes ago, DriedSponge said:

Alright this is good information to know, I really appreciate it!

After reviewing my options, I think I'm going to go for a MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK with either a 5900 or a 5950x. I'm not an expert but either CPU should be an upgrade over my 3800x.

Oh it’s definitely an upgrade. More faster threads. It won’t matter much at all for games but very well might for things besides games. I have a MSI mortar b660m ddr4 which is a very similar board. There isn’t much in the way of USB2 or any USB3 (usb5g) there’s a ton of usb3.1(usb10g) and only one usb3.2(usb20g) there is no thunderbolt but there is one of those Jwhatsit ports so IF (big if) you can find one of the NEW MSI thunderbolt cards you can have thunderbolt4. They’re supposed to sell for $70 but the ones I’ve seen are $120-160. You wind up using the 10g ports for 5g. I’ve got two hubs (a 5g in my monitor which I use for keyboard/mouse/backup drive toaster thing) and a 3.1 which currently has my blu-ray burner that takes up a lot of space on my desk and I don’t use that often and a little goose neck LED light which I do, (they’re actually really handy. I got it in a Christmas stocking mayn’t many years ago) so 2 or 3 ports left on the 3.1 hub and 1 left on the back of the machine. Doesn’t include front panel i/o.

Edited December 8, 2022 by Bombastinator

DriedSponge · December 9, 2022

17 hours ago, toasty99 said:

You don't want to upgrade your motherboard unless you are looking to waste money. There's no reason to. Pci-e 4.0 is not a useful feature. Go ahead and find a use other than benchmarks where 4.0 matters, you won't find one.

The B450 Tomahawk is considered the best B450 board. It can easily handle a Ryzen 5950x without issue. The VRMs on the b450 Tomahawk are better than most x570 boards.

There would be zero real world performance reasons for a motherboard upgrade here. You can see that with a 3950x the Tomahawk Max runs right with a x570 Aorus Extreme. There's not any good testing with a 5950x, but it's not gonna be much more than a 3950x and you can see that with the 3950x there's plenty of headroom.

Keep the motherboard you have, take the money saved and make sure you get a 5950x over the 5900x lol

https://youtu.be/J69aiJJEHzQ

https://youtu.be/BUBhGSZEaQg

Thank you very much! I am all down for saving money. I'll probably wait until I get a CPU that requires a different socket before upgrading my motherboard.

16 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Oh it’s definitely an upgrade. More faster threads. It won’t matter much at all for games but very well might for things besides games. I have a MSI mortar b660m ddr4 which is a very similar board. There isn’t much in the way of USB2 or any USB3 (usb5g) there’s a ton of usb3.1(usb10g) and only one usb3.2(usb20g) there is no thunderbolt but there is one of those Jwhatsit ports so IF (big if) you can find one of the NEW MSI thunderbolt cards you can have thunderbolt4. They’re supposed to sell for $70 but the ones I’ve seen are $120-160. You wind up using the 10g ports for 5g. I’ve got two hubs (a 5g in my monitor which I use for keyboard/mouse/backup drive toaster thing) and a 3.1 which currently has my blu-ray burner that takes up a lot of space on my desk and I don’t use that often and a little goose neck LED light which I do, (they’re actually really handy. I got it in a Christmas stocking mayn’t many years ago) so 2 or 3 ports left on the 3.1 hub and 1 left on the back of the machine. Doesn’t include front panel i/o.

This is good to know. No more buyers remorse :). Those thunderbolt cards sound interesting, I'll probably get one if I need one.

Bombastinator · December 9, 2022

2 minutes ago, DriedSponge said:

Thank you very much! I am all down for saving money. I'll probably wait until I get a CPU that requires a different socket before upgrading my motherboard.

This is good to know. No more buyers remorse :). Those thunderbolt carts sound interesting, I'll probably get one if I need one.

The thunderbolt card seems to be hard to find for some reason. Given it’s immense cost there are other boards with built in thunderbolt that could be better.