Thinking of upgrading my i7 4790k to Ryzen

guitarguy6

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I haven't upgraded my cpu/mobo/ram in like 5 years and am thinking it's time now. I have an RTX 2070 and 3 x 500gb SSD's for windows and my games. I'm looking for a good price/performance cpu and from the bit of research I've done it looks like the Ryzen 5 3600 or Ryzen 7 2700x are a good choice or perhaps the i5 9600k. All 3 seem to go for around the same price in Canada. All I use my PC for is VR gaming with my Oculus Rift with a bit of light audio and video editing.

If I go the AMD route I'd like a mobo that I can overclock a bit with and have my eye on the MSI B450 Tomahawk Max, Gigabyte B450 Auros Pro or X470 Auros Ultra Gaming, Asus Rog Strix B450. Any recommendations there? Would like to keep it around $150cad


I'll also pick up 16gb (2 x 8gb) of whatever ram will work with the cpu/mobo that's a good price. For around $100cad I can get something like Corsair LPX 2666mhz or 3200mhz.


Curios if anyone has upgraded from an i7 4790k to a Ryzen or current gen i5 and what your thoughts are. I used to keep up with PC hardware but changed careers 5 years ago and haven't paid much attention so any help deciding is much appreciated. Cheers!
 
Gaming? Go for the 3600 among your choices.

Tomahawk Max should be good.

Also, pick the 3200 mhz RAM.

I moved from a lightly overclocked 4770K to a 3700X and I notice that games are slightly more fluid -- FPS averages don't move up a ton but you see less dips and frame hitches. Not a crazy difference but not one you'd regret either.
 
If you want a real upgrade from the 4790K you need a 3900x or 3950x and 32GB RAM. No need for huge speed. 3200Mhz is okay but you can go below that. Better have standard ARM than overclocked one if you want to avoid bit errors in a couple of months.
 
Good to know. The Ryzen 3600 seems to keep up within %10 of an i7 8700k from the benchmarks I've seen. I figure I can upgrade mobo/cpu/ram for about $550cad and get $300cad or so for my current mobo/cpu/ram. Is there a benefit to 32gb ram these days? I've never seen my ram usage go over %50-60 with 16gb.
 
Zen3 won’t have the uplift that Zen2 had compared to previous gen. Plus ddr5 will prob be expensive as hell. The only reason to wait would be cost savings on a Zen2 imo.

Zen3s focus is on improvements on efficiency not ipc. Papermaster is already downplaying the perceived improvement to set expectations properly.

I have 32gb and unless I’m running multiple VMs, it’s not needed. 16gb is good for now in games.

a 3900x will give u nothing in games over a 3600 right now.
 
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So I ended up going with a Ryzen 3600, 16GB GSkill PC-3600, Gigabyte Auros Elite B450, and also decided to add in an Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 512gb M2 drive. All in I spent $600 CAD and this thing is noticeably faster than my i4 4790k build. I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 pro from usb in under 10min. Might just be due to the M2 drive though lol. My more demanding VR games seem to run smoother especially if I push SS. Synthetic benchmarks scores like PC Mark, VR Mark, 3D Mark, Cinebench etc have improved by about %30-50. The only problem I have run into is that when I'm editing videos in Hitfilm Express the preview window that was perfectly smooth on my i7 is now extremely choppy. All in all I think the upgrade was worth $600.
 
Glad you are enjoying the new build. I am thinking of updating my 1600 to a 3600, so this is good feedback for me .
 
If you want a real upgrade from the 4790K you need a 3900x or 3950x and 32GB RAM. No need for huge speed. 3200Mhz is okay but you can go below that. Better have standard ARM than overclocked one if you want to avoid bit errors in a couple of months.

Not sure what the RAM comment at the end is based on. My guess is not much. Plenty of people running >3200MHz sticks for years without issues. I'm right at your 2 month benchmark with my 3600MHz sticks with no errors. One of us is doing something wrong.
 
If you want a real upgrade from the 4790K you need a 3900x or 3950x and 32GB RAM. No need for huge speed. 3200Mhz is okay but you can go below that. Better have standard ARM than overclocked one if you want to avoid bit errors in a couple of months.

You’re fine with 16GB of RAM. Only benefit to going 32GB is bigger e-peen. I haven’t seen any justification for 32GB of RAM if gaming is your focus.
 
For strictly gaming >16GB is probably not of much or any benefit. A lower latency 2x8GB kit will probably be more beneficial. If you're going with a 3900x there's a good chance you're probably doing more than just gaming. And if you're going with a 3900x for strictly gaming, well ePeen is largely what you're after anyway.

When 4c/8t CPUs were the rage, people used to talk about encoding while gaming. Realistically 4c/8t really wasn't powerful enough to do that without a noticeable performance impact. Now with mainstream parts having 12c/24t and soon 16c/32t processors, it really is something you can do, and do effectively. I have 32GB in my system and when color grading a video project in DaVinci Resolve, i can get close to that 16GB mark. Fire up a game alongside that and you're easily past it. These new chips are multi-tasking powerhouses and if you're going to want to take advantage of those capabilities, you'll want 32GB or even 64GB depending on how heavy your multi-tasking will be. I'd argue 32GB is the better option since if you're doing enough to take advantage of 64GB then HEDT with quad channel memory is probably what you should be aiming for since at that point your bottleneck might be memory bandwidth when it comes to mainstream platforms.
 
Second that, if you opt for a 3900x it's begging for 32gb, 4x8 sticks. I can juggle 4-5 big task at the same time on mine w/o a hiccup. If you get moar cores, give it the ram it needs to do its thing. B-die samsungs are a straight driop in with no muss no fuss. If you go with other brand IC, you'll potentially have to mess with timings to find the sweat spot fyi.
 
It means there are better alternatives out there and u may find it hard to find anyways.

Nope, B die is still on the egg, though it does carry a premium especially vs the hynix and micron. What better alts are there??
 
Nope, B die is still on the egg, though it does carry a premium especially vs the hynix and micron. What better alts are there??
You just have to reference the MB mem qvl. Limiting your choices to B-die is a pointless waste of time nowadays. Also go to a reputable memory manufacturer's site and there is usually a web page to find compatible RAM.
 
You just have to reference the MB mem qvl. Limiting your choices to B-die is a pointless waste of time nowadays. Also go to a reputable memory manufacturer's site and there is usually a web page to find compatible RAM.

Geezus is that all you do is be contrarian.? No shit sherlock on the qvl list.
 
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