Platform upgrade

Hmeh · December 26, 2022

Budget (including currency): 1000-ish euros, flexible in both directions.

Country: EU

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: WoW, TW W2/3, mainly gaming and some light programming and office/general workload.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Only need cpu+mb and ram, maybe psu.

My trusty r7 1700 is starting to feel sluggish and I've decided to upgrade in the next 2 months. I know that AMD is going to announce their new x3d models soon, but with how their latest series launched I wanted to check for alternatives and ask few questions.

How is DDR 5 price/performance at the moment? I would prefer to upgrade to it but i wonder if the initial issues have been ironed out and if the price is coming down.
What would be the alternative from Intel side? Do they still support both ddr4 and 5 or did they move fully to ddr5?
I have a 650w corasir rmi psu. WIth current setup (rig in profile with 2 additional hdds) it's working well, but i was wondering if new cpus from amd and intel would fit in or should I plan for a new psu as well. It's about 6 years old now.

Queen Chrysalis · December 26, 2022

1 hour ago, Hmeh said:

How is DDR 5 price/performance at the moment? I would prefer to upgrade to it but i wonder if the initial issues have been ironed out and if the price is coming down.

1 hour ago, Hmeh said:

What would be the alternative from Intel side? Do they still support both ddr4 and 5 or did they move fully to ddr5?

If you have an AM$ motherboard and DDR4 RAM, there is no reason not to get either a 5600 or 5700x with how cheap they are and how big of a performance boost they are. The 5600 is WAY faster than the 1700 on single core workloads (pretty much everything you do, IDK why you bought a 1700 back in 2017 when the 1400 and 1600 were so cheap) and is still slightly faster on all core workloads, despite having 2 fewer cores. The 5700x blows it away in everything. The x3d is not worth the price premium, the difference is minimal in almost everything, if perceivable at all (you'd probably never be able to tell the difference if it even showed up).

I'd lean toward the 5600 because nothing you do is gonna use 8 hyperthreaded cores, but the 5700x would be a good choice too.

DDR5 is not worth it, especially for gaming, consiiderring the RAM is expensive, and you'd need a new motherboard and a new, much more expensive CPU that won;t justify the cost premium over zen 3.

1 hour ago, Hmeh said:

I have a 650w corasir rmi psu. WIth current setup (rig in profile with 2 additional hdds) it's working well, but i was wondering if new cpus from amd and intel would fit in or should I plan for a new psu as well. It's about 6 years old now.

I'd say it's still good. The 2015 RM is is still a great PSU. If it fails you still have 4 more years of warranty, no reason to throw those away. FYI, anyothing other than your CPU and GPU will have a power draw that barely registers, so I wouldn't really taker that stuff into consideration when deciding wattage.

Hmeh · December 26, 2022

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If you have an AM$ motherboard and DDR4 RAM, there is no reason not to get either a 5600 or 5700x with how cheap they are and how big of a performance boost they are

That's the thing the board I have is x370 gaming k5, I'm not certain it supports cpus higher than 3000 series.

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IDK why you bought a 1700 back in 2017

It was a good and recommended cpu with 8 cores after years and years of 4 core 8 threads from intel. And I had Core2 at that time so I wanted to try something else, it has worked great so far but the time is coming to upgrade it. That's why I considered looking at am5/intel couterpart, but i can also invest in 5600/5700x and additional 16 gigs with a new motherboard.