Upgraded my Processor and RAM

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Dec 7, 2012
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I posted about a week ago on upgrading my case and desk area. I recently saw on Amazon a 5th generation Ryzen 7 for $194, and figured it'd be as good of a time as any to upgrade my processor.


Figured do it now before new AM4 stuff stars fading out, max out (in my eyes) this system and run it into the ground. Next build of mine would definitely be a new socket/platform at that point.

Updated the BIOS of my MSI B450M Mortar Titanium motherboard, pulled the 6-core Ryzen 5 2600x and upgraded to an 8-core Ryzen 7 5700x. Also, I wanted to adequately pair the new Ryzen 7's Infinity Fabric with RAM to keep it happy. So, I upgraded from 16GB (2x8GB) of DDR4-3000 Patriot VIPER RGB to 32GB (2x16GB) of DDR4-3600 G.SKILL Trident Z Neo RGB memory. Has a Cas Latency of 16. My motherboard doesn't officially support DDR4-3600, "supports up to DDR4-3200". But I figured it probably would be OK considering the memory controller is on the CPU.

Upgraded the processor and RAM, and it posted first time -- always a good sign. Then I configured to run at the 3600 XMP profile, worked flawlessly. Gave it a good run through and it performed flawlessly.

Ran a UserBenchmark and was very pleased with the results. Not bad for a not-so high-end rig. https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/58462997

Games are way smoother now, and the system is phenomenally snappy. Super pleased. Now time to just use this rig and NO more spending $$$ on it :).
 
AM4 is still very capable for even the newest AAA games, when paired with an appropriate GPU... the upgrade from DDR4-3000 to DDR4-3600 RAM was a good call.
 
I posted about a week ago on upgrading my case and desk area. I recently saw on Amazon a 5th generation Ryzen 7 for $194, and figured it'd be as good of a time as any to upgrade my processor.


Figured do it now before new AM4 stuff stars fading out, max out (in my eyes) this system and run it into the ground. Next build of mine would definitely be a new socket/platform at that point.

Updated the BIOS of my MSI B450M Mortar Titanium motherboard, pulled the 6-core Ryzen 5 2600x and upgraded to an 8-core Ryzen 7 5700x. Also, I wanted to adequately pair the new Ryzen 7's Infinity Fabric with RAM to keep it happy. So, I upgraded from 16GB (2x8GB) of DDR4-3000 Patriot VIPER RGB to 32GB (2x16GB) of DDR4-3600 G.SKILL Trident Z Neo RGB memory. Has a Cas Latency of 16. My motherboard doesn't officially support DDR4-3600, "supports up to DDR4-3200". But I figured it probably would be OK considering the memory controller is on the CPU.

Upgraded the processor and RAM, and it posted first time -- always a good sign. Then I configured to run at the 3600 XMP profile, worked flawlessly. Gave it a good run through and it performed flawlessly.

Ran a UserBenchmark and was very pleased with the results. Not bad for a not-so high-end rig. https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/58462997

Games are way smoother now, and the system is phenomenally snappy. Super pleased. Now time to just use this rig and NO more spending $$$ on it :).
I have a 5800X and 32gb ram. Works great. With the omen software I can run at 3733 if needed but usually just run at 3200.
 
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The mileage you can get out of a good B450 motherboard is pretty great. Glad AMD included support for the older chipsets with the 5xxx processors.

Crazy how powerful a midrange CPU like a 5700X or a 12600K is for the price, especially when you look not so far back at what a 9900K cost at launch.
 
I used to enjoy doing that years ago but it became too much of a pain to keep track of what CPUs were compatible with which sockets and chipsets and whatnot. It seems like Intel releases a new socket with every new Core iX generation, and they do that once a year nowadays. Hopefully AMD has been a little more DIY- and enthusiast-friendly in that regard.
 
The mileage you can get out of a good B450 motherboard is pretty great. Glad AMD included support for the older chipsets with the 5xxx processors.

Crazy how powerful a midrange CPU like a 5700X or a 12600K is for the price, especially when you look not so far back at what a 9900K cost at launch.
Yes it is, love this little B450 motherboard. Fun fact, back when I built this system, I knew I wanted this exact motherboard. I loved the white PCB. Everywhere I looked it was sold out. I ordered on on Amazon, but it was on back order. I ended up finding them instock on Amazon Japan. I ordered it off of Amazon Japan, the currency conversion wasn't bad and had it shipped here.

So my motherboard has a unique story. JDM Board lol! The original Amazon one ended up showing up so I re-sold it to someone else who also had their heart set on that particular board.
 
I used to love upgrading my system as well, but haven't seen the need to in the last 10-ish years. I have an "old" intel i7 "sandy bridge" system and a much newer amd ryzen 5 system. Both have the same SSD and same amount of Ram and I literally cannot tell the difference in day to day use. Contrived benchmarks, yes there is a difference. I don't play games. So that just leaves software development and a bunch of office tasks but both systems are just idling around.

I imagine if I started something heavy like compiling the kernel it might show some differences as well. But the nice thing about Java, where I spend the bulk of my time, code compiles very, very fast. I hit "save" and it compiles just the changes instantly in the background within a second.

I miss the days of 90's where you could feel those improvements from chip to chip. Somewhere along the line I discovered that disk access was the massive bottleneck in most cases for me, and I got some really good gains by setting up a 4 disk Raid 0 array (yes that was not the smartest, but no data was lost lol) and later just replacing all spinning disks with the fastest SSD I can find. Works for me!
 
Very nice. That was truly the value of AM4 platform, just drop in a new cpu and it’s like having a new PC. Hopefully the AM5 platform will stay on similar road.

You have a decent motherboard, but I’m not sure if B450 has PBO, but basically you can turn that 5700X into a 5800X for free by simply enabling PBO in bios. You have to have a decent cooler though as it will remove the 65w limit and go to over 100w on that CPU.
 
Very nice. That was truly the value of AM4 platform, just drop in a new cpu and it’s like having a new PC. Hopefully the AM5 platform will stay on similar road.

You have a decent motherboard, but I’m not sure if B450 has PBO, but basically you can turn that 5700X into a 5800X for free by simply enabling PBO in bios. You have to have a decent cooler though as it will remove the 65w limit and go to over 100w on that CPU.
I have never heard of PBO and I am going to research that now! I am very pleased with the platform. It is interesting that for AM5 they have moved to LGA. No complaints though, Intel has been doing it for ages.

To think through all the sockets and systems I've had... sheesh.
 
I used to love upgrading my system as well, but haven't seen the need to in the last 10-ish years. I have an "old" intel i7 "sandy bridge" system and a much newer amd ryzen 5 system. Both have the same SSD and same amount of Ram and I literally cannot tell the difference in day to day use. Contrived benchmarks, yes there is a difference. I don't play games. So that just leaves software development and a bunch of office tasks but both systems are just idling around.

I imagine if I started something heavy like compiling the kernel it might show some differences as well. But the nice thing about Java, where I spend the bulk of my time, code compiles very, very fast. I hit "save" and it compiles just the changes instantly in the background within a second.

I miss the days of 90's where you could feel those improvements from chip to chip. Somewhere along the line I discovered that disk access was the massive bottleneck in most cases for me, and I got some really good gains by setting up a 4 disk Raid 0 array (yes that was not the smartest, but no data was lost lol) and later just replacing all spinning disks with the fastest SSD I can find. Works for me!
I had an i5-2400 Sandy Bridge for ages. Those Intel Core systems were excellent units. Much better than the comparable AMD Ahtlon or FX's of the day.
 
Do you have anything to sell that might work for me?
Gigabyte B450M - Ryzen3 2200G
4gb DDR4-2666 (1 module)
Unfortunately, I do not... my old processor and memory are going to a friend. Your system has some good bones. All you'd need is a memory upgrade.
 
I have never heard of PBO and I am going to research that now! I am very pleased with the platform. It is interesting that for AM5 they have moved to LGA. No complaints though, Intel has been doing it for ages.

To think through all the sockets and systems I've had... sheesh.

Yeah, I think LGA is the way to go, I just hope they don’t change it every CPU or every other CPU generation like Intel.
Remember socket 1150 and 1151? I mean come on, one extra freaking pin? Talk about planned obsolescence. But Intel was the king of the hill back then so they could do practically whatever they wanted.
Now look at them, their 13th gen improvements are truly impressive over the 12th gen and what do you know? Same socket. Competition truly is a great thing for the consumer.
 
am5 is meant live at minimum 2025 or more. likely it go greybeard like other am- sockets.
definitely watching how 7000 x3d will look like.
 
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