I need to build a 5600x system, MB & Ram advice

HeadRusch

[H]ard|Gawd
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I'm an intel guy but one of my intel parts died and now its time for an upgrade. I'm seeing Ryzen 5600x in the $270 to $280 range and I'm thinking that's the smart move, but what motherboard? Ideally I'd like to be budget friendly but one thing I need is Wifi, AC works but AX would be better.

Oh, yeah, is the Wraith a good enough cooler or should I go aftermarket (again, on a budget). From memory Ryzens overclocking is always limited to 100 to 200mhz for mere mortals and the gains are usually not that much in gaming.

Suggestions appreciated fellas.....
 
I have been a fan of the Asus X570-E Strix motherboard. I have built three systems with those boards so far.
 
I have been a fan of the Asus X570-E Strix motherboard. I have built three systems with those boards so far.
Hmmmm, it's a little pricy, any motherboards worth their weight under $200? With MB's you start to get into features you, or rather I, won't use........I hadn't planned on this upgrade so I haven't done my homework for weeks and weeks. Also worth the argument, for gaming....is there any reason to lean towards the 5800 or 5900 parts? The 5600 part seems like a sweet spot unless we feel that 8 cores as a minimum is the new frontier due to consoles...

Thanks for your input, appreciate it...
 
I have a 5900 and am enjoying it. My understanding is that the 5800x runs much hotter than the other chips. My suggestion would be to go with X570 board for the PCI 4.0 lanes, but you could probably get away with just B550 since this is just a replacement. I think 3600 RAM is the sweet spot, so just pick whichever brand you prefer.
 
FWIW, I'm going with the ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming (WiFi 6) board for my 5600X build. It is currently $195 at NewEgg. After spending countless hours reading reviews, it seems to be the best bang for the buck at the moment.
 
a B550, like mentioned above, should be fine. my b450/5600x works fine. the stock cooler will work fine, within amds limits. no it wont be as cool, but it will work.
 
Cool, thank you all for the advice......I spent the night catching-up on my "oh shit I'd better deep dive into Ryzen news from the past year!" on youtube and the web........the 2 sticks versus 4 sticks.

HEY, question: Are the MB's shipping today pre-loaded for use with Zen 3/ Ryzen 5600's?? All I see is "may require bios update" and "you need an older CPU to do that"...which I ain't got. Keep me honest, is that a thing of the past or is that..well, still a *thing*...?

Thanky

Now my big problem is: Do I give him my 4.7ghz (all cores on stock voltage so I know it has headroom to move up to 5ghz) 8700k......or do I keep it and give him the 5600, by most accounts its a lateral move unless you get into productivity where the Ryzen will do some curb-stomping, but not by massive leaps and bounds.
 
Cool, thank you all for the advice......I spent the night catching-up on my "oh shit I'd better deep dive into Ryzen news from the past year!" on youtube and the web........the 2 sticks versus 4 sticks.

HEY, question: Are the MB's shipping today pre-loaded for use with Zen 3/ Ryzen 5600's?? All I see is "may require bios update" and "you need an older CPU to do that"...which I ain't got. Keep me honest, is that a thing of the past or is that..well, still a *thing*...?

Thanky

Now my big problem is: Do I give him my 4.7ghz (all cores on stock voltage so I know it has headroom to move up to 5ghz) 8700k......or do I keep it and give him the 5600, by most accounts its a lateral move unless you get into productivity where the Ryzen will do some curb-stomping, but not by massive leaps and bounds.

I think most of the motherboards you'd buy today will be fine. 5XXX CPUs have been out for 9 months or so and motherboard stock probably rotated enough to get the older bios boards out. Worst case, just look to see if the board you're buying supports bios flashback without a CPU. You don't need an old CPU to flash it then.

I think even in gaming the 5600x is somewhat better than a Coffee Lake gen CPU, but it kind of depends on the resolution. The higher you go, the less noticeable. I would think you'd see some decent gains at 1080p.
 
Eh I thought this chip only supported 3200......I get buying headroom but I thought Ryzens like wouldn't even boot if they didn't like your ram brand/speed etc.............you're going for overclocks then or just plug and play (?).

5XXX Ryzen's have a much better memory controller than the older ones. 3733Mhz is supposedly the sweet spot in terms of infinity fabric and memory speed, but if you are on the higher end of the silicon lottery, you might get up to 1900Mhz (3800 DDR4) with 1:1 with the Infinity fabric.

In fairness, a lot of high end Intel CPUs only officially support up to 2666/2933Mhz and everything other than that is considered an "overclock" also (up to 10th gen anyway...11th gen might be 3200 official).
 
Noted......and, because I'm down in the weeds on this research, is an x570 motherboard a smarter move than a B550 at this point?
 
Noted......and, because I'm down in the weeds on this research, is an x570 motherboard a smarter move than a B550 at this point?

It really depends on if you're going to use multiple video cards and/or multiple PCIe 4.0 storage devices.

If you're just using 1 of each, B550 is fine. Basically, X570 chipset supports PCIe 4.0 to all lanes, B550 is PCIe 3.0, but 4.0 to the 1st x16 slot and one m.2 slot via the CPU. I've used multiple of both chipsets and you don't notice a difference in real world usage. I'm on a X570 board right now because I got it for ~$150 from Amazon warehouse otherwise, I'd probably still be with B550.
 
Oh, yeah, is the Wraith a good enough cooler or should I go aftermarket (again, on a budget). From memory Ryzens overclocking is always limited to 100 to 200mhz for mere mortals and the gains are usually not that much in gaming.

Suggestions appreciated fellas.....
I use the AMD Wraith on my 5900X, as long as your ambient temps are reasonable it will be just fine.
 
I bought the MSI B550 Mortar in June 2020 when they first hit the market , It has a flash switch and just needs a USB drive with the right bios and no need of cpu or ram to flash it .. they make the board in Wifi so I would buy it or a x570 Tomahawk for the money and from what I have noticed is the newer x570 boards don't have a chipset fan and more like B550 board ..

I don't remember the power plan other the auto overclock 200+ but it's doing 4.8Ghz boost when needed .

 
Just an update: I went with a 5600x and an Asus B550 board, it's all black, no RGB or anything..Wifi 6....I went with some basic Corsair 3200 Vengence RAM and the stealth wraith cooler that came with it, boom, posted on the first try and has been stable since then. Routine temps are in the 30's to low 40'c, and when CPU Z stresses the CPU's it doesn't go much higher than 72...and it appears to be boosting to 4.4 or 4.5, didn't spend a long time watching it.

So at this point, without making things unstable, I think my next move is to enable that XMP..errr...whatever AMD calls it, the other initials...DOCS or whatever that is...and see how that fares. I believe its just a one-stop setting in the ASUS bios to enable it.......see how that runs. I am not the one gaming on it so I haven't seen if it boosts any higher than 4.4 or 4.6ghz sustained.......
Note that the heaviest workload this PC is going to do will be Beam NG, Warzone and so forth......no rendering, etc.
 
Just an update: I went with a 5600x and an Asus B550 board, it's all black, no RGB or anything..Wifi 6....I went with some basic Corsair 3200 Vengence RAM and the stealth wraith cooler that came with it, boom, posted on the first try and has been stable since then. Routine temps are in the 30's to low 40'c, and when CPU Z stresses the CPU's it doesn't go much higher than 72...and it appears to be boosting to 4.4 or 4.5, didn't spend a long time watching it.

So at this point, without making things unstable, I think my next move is to enable that XMP..errr...whatever AMD calls it, the other initials...DOCS or whatever that is...and see how that fares. I believe its just a one-stop setting in the ASUS bios to enable it.......see how that runs. I am not the one gaming on it so I haven't seen if it boosts any higher than 4.4 or 4.6ghz sustained.......
Note that the heaviest workload this PC is going to do will be Beam NG, Warzone and so forth......no rendering, etc.
if you enable DOCP in bios and have any stability issues, up your ram voltage to 1.4v. every set of corsair ram, in all versions, that i have ever used needed a bit more voltage to be fully stable.
 
I had to go check some older video footage (June) and look at the 5600x in default playing Fortnite .. it kept the cpu main tread at 4650Mhz petty much the whole match I played and at times it looked like an all core overclock at 4650Mhz but I used the first gen Ryzen 5 1600 AB cooler which has the copper core just because I never used it .

Glad you found enough parts in these hard times of supply and demand ..
 
In the real world we're talking about single digit frame differences even on the best of GPU hardware usually, and that really only matters if you're just close to hitting a stable 60, 90 or 120+ FPS...which this PC isn't...so I think for now I'll leave it be and not worry about it too much. The 5600x, MB and RAM were all easily available. I didn't even consider a new GPU, it's running a 1080Ti and that's what its going to keep running
for a very long time since spending $700 to $800 today means making, basically, a lateral move away from the 1080 Ti to something like a low-end 30 series card getting "slightly better but not $800 better" performance IMHO......
 
In the real world we're talking about single digit frame differences even on the best of GPU hardware usually, and that really only matters if you're just close to hitting a stable 60, 90 or 120+ FPS...which this PC isn't...so I think for now I'll leave it be and not worry about it too much. The 5600x, MB and RAM were all easily available. I didn't even consider a new GPU, it's running a 1080Ti and that's what its going to keep running
for a very long time since spending $700 to $800 today means making, basically, a lateral move away from the 1080 Ti to something like a low-end 30 series card getting "slightly better but not $800 better" performance IMHO......
Unless your playing Warzone... the games the biggest memory latency hog of all time. Tight bdie timings got me more frames at 1080p than upgrading from 1080ti to 3080
 
Good to know, TY.

I enabled DOCP and the system is humming along just fine at stock, the 1080Ti driving a 1080p monitor is already outperforming its abilities to display moar frames.........
 
Unless your playing Warzone... the games the biggest memory latency hog of all time. Tight bdie timings got me more frames at 1080p than upgrading from 1080ti to 3080
If that's the case something is very wrong there.
 
PBO and core optimizing could net 4.8 to 4.85Ghz for gaming clocks depending on the cpu's silicon with just a bit of fuss.
 
If that's the case something is very wrong there.
Warzone is just an extremely cpu demanding game because there's so many players and the draw distance is huge. I get over 200 fps but I really want 280 because I have a 280hz monitor
 
Warzone is just an extremely cpu demanding game because there's so many players and the draw distance is huge. I get over 200 fps but I really want 280 because I have a 280hz monitor
Indeed, but I highly doubt you got more fps from tighter memory timings than going from a 1080 ti -> 3080.
 
Indeed, but I highly doubt you got more fps from tighter memory timings than going from a 1080 ti -> 3080.
I actually did, my 1080ti was already much more than what Warzone needs. It's the odd case where cpu limitations in a game are so severe that the GPU isn't the limiting factor
 
I actually did, my 1080ti was already much more than what Warzone needs. It's the odd case where cpu limitations in a game are so severe that the GPU isn't the limiting factor
If that is true you might want to get an 8 core cpu if you haven't already.
 
If that is true you might want to get an 8 core cpu if you haven't already.
More cores [than the 5600x's 6] won't help in games currently unless they're also streaming; the native +100MHz boost the 5800x gets over the 5600x is the only direct upgrade I can see here. Running 1080p with a 1080Ti on an e-sport title isn't going to see many gains with a GPU upgrade outside of maxing out some ultra settings, but optimizing CPU and RAM frequencies and timings could do much for FPS lows which is much more important in competitive play.
 
More cores [than the 5600x's 6] won't help in games currently unless they're also streaming; the native +100MHz boost the 5800x gets over the 5600x is the only direct upgrade I can see here. Running 1080p with a 1080Ti on an e-sport title isn't going to see many gains with a GPU upgrade outside of maxing out some ultra settings, but optimizing CPU and RAM frequencies and timings could do much for FPS lows which is much more important in competitive play.
I dunno, I watched a YT where the 8 core did much better on 1% and .1% lows. Also had better avg. FPS.
 
I dunno, I watched a YT where the 8 core did much better on 1% and .1% lows. Also had better avg. FPS.
Games don't scale linearly with core count and don't see any benefit past a certain point, dependent on game engine/+modifications. The last I heard for more current games was up to around 10 worker threads in some titles with a few outliers that could use more, so we're still a way off from core count beyond 6 making any noticeable impact.

Any noticeable difference between 6 and 8 physical core CPUs with HT/SMT during gaming is going to be attributed to other factors such as hardware setup [and lottery] and configuration, frequency, background applications and programs, and unpatched/inherent quirks at time of testing (AMD/Windows still has some CPPC issues, iirc). And, in the case of current generation Zen, even using the same high-end cooler can have noticeable performance differences with poor case cooling or if ambient temperatures vary enough; this can even be compounded by using a GPU with a through-flow cooler and high-tuned Samsung B-die RAM.

Any apples-to-apples testing methodology will show the 5800x beating the 5600x in gaming by a margin that closely follows any frequency difference between them.
 
Games don't scale linearly with core count and don't see any benefit past a certain point, dependent on game engine/+modifications. The last I heard for more current games was up to around 10 worker threads in some titles with a few outliers that could use more, so we're still a way off from core count beyond 6 making any noticeable impact.

Any noticeable difference between 6 and 8 physical core CPUs with HT/SMT during gaming is going to be attributed to other factors such as hardware setup [and lottery] and configuration, frequency, background applications and programs, and unpatched/inherent quirks at time of testing (AMD/Windows still has some CPPC issues, iirc). And, in the case of current generation Zen, even using the same high-end cooler can have noticeable performance differences with poor case cooling or if ambient temperatures vary enough; this can even be compounded by using a GPU with a through-flow cooler and high-tuned Samsung B-die RAM.

Any apples-to-apples testing methodology will show the 5800x beating the 5600x in gaming by a margin that closely follows any frequency difference between them.
I'm just specifically talking about warzone here btw. I would want to check other sources but the guy did a decent job of showing 4C/6C/8C/10C/12C in the game and there were significant differences between 4,6, and 8C but not really beyond that.
 
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