CPU upgrade choices

[IllDoItLater]

Hello yall,

 

I currently run an ITX build with an X470 motherboard, a Ryzen 2600x, 32gb of ddr4 in 2 sticks, and an evga xc3 RTX 3070 that I won in a giveaway.  I'm aware its a bottleneck but my games run fine so I didn't care.  For school, I use Autodesk Inventor and some music software like Musescore, Finale, and NotePerformer.  They are all chugging on my cpu, so its time to upgrade.  My options as I see them is chuck a Ryzen 5000 processor in there, or platform upgrade to 7000 and get like a 7600 or something.  Those two options aren't cost equivalent because I would need a new motherboard and ram, and I'm not sure if its worth spending the extra to get DDR5 and the 3+ year upgrade path or spend less money to kick the problem down the road.  Any thoughts?

[RONOTHAN##]

I think it would depend on what the motherboard you currently have is, since X470 boards can range from quite good to horrifically bad. If it's towards the bad end of the spectrum, I'd spend the extra and do a platform upgrade instead. If it's towards the good end though and can actually handle it, getting something like a used 5900X or maybe the new 5900XT would be a massive upgrade. 

 

What's the cooling situation though? ITX builds aren't exactly known for how well their cooled, and so if you're going to be using a low profile cooler it might not make sense to go for a higher power CPU. 

[IllDoItLater]

I have a AsRock Fatality ITX X470, and a 240mm AIO on the CPU with stock GPU cooling.

[Tetras]

The 2600X is pretty slow by modern standards, even against a 5600 non-X or 5700X, so that's what I'd be looking at, depending on how multithreaded your apps are.

[IllDoItLater]

I've noticed they use the threads I have but I think IPC and clock is a bigger difference with my performance issues, considering they don't make CPUs with less threads than the one I'm using lol.

[RONOTHAN##]

10 minutes ago, IllDoItLater said:

I have a AsRock Fatality ITX X470, and a 240mm AIO on the CPU with stock GPU cooling.

That's definitely on the bad side of the spectrum, so if it's an option I probably would just go to AM5. That said, if you really want to stick with AM4 and not upgrade the motherboard, a 5600 would still be a pretty big upgrade that should get you by for a bit longer. 

[IllDoItLater]

Based on what I've seen so far, I think I'll save the money and get a 5700x or 5800x, as they are going for about 160 and 170 respectively.  The 5800x seems like a better deal out of those two.  I'm on ITX for ease of transport/storage as I move cross county regularly for school, so I'll get something to hold the system over till I grad then switch back to ATX when I platform upgrade to AM5.  By that time I'll probably need nearly a new system anyway.

[RONOTHAN##]

1 hour ago, IllDoItLater said:

The 5800x seems like a better deal out of those two.

It's not. The 5700X and 5800X are the exact same CPU, the only difference between them is the stock power limit. Save the $10 and get the 5700X.