Mom's PC... buy b450 + 3400G now? or wait for 5000g?

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Kdawg

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I haven't built a pc since 2009.
This is super low budget for mom, and I'm guessing I can't squeeze out much OC from a ryzen 5 3400g with stock cooling.
Wish I could buy the 4400g. Stupid AMD

The only thing she really needs is a quiet pc with 4k60 video to plug into a 4k TV in the future.
But a little future proofing is nice too.

This is the budget system I came up with...
Does ddr 3600 squeeze out more performance from the ryzen?

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Intel i3-10100 trades blows with the 3400G, but cheap intel mobos don't have hdmi 2.0.

So big question is... do you think I can get a cheap system at this price when 5000g comes out? What's the R5 5000g msrp gonna be?

or should I just pull the trigger now.
Mom doesn't need anything fancy.
Her AMD llano A6-3400m laptop just failed, and I decided to move her back to desktop PC since the laptop never moves.
 
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Make sure her RAM is running in dual channel mode. 2x4GB would be faster.
Future proof and just get 2x8GB imo, especially at that price.
As for power supply, I recommend you get either the best of a janky brand, or close to the worst from an established brand.
 
It depends what latency you get. CL16 3200 and CL18 3600 are practically identical in performance. For a budget build I would get a cheap 2 x 8GB CL16 3200 kit and forget about 3600.

I suspect the mainstream Zen 3 CPUs will launch next year. How long can you wait?
 
I just read AMD is gonna increase prices across the board for zen 5000. $50 bump in msrp over the 3000 series.

so the lowest 5000g APU could be closer to $185? ya think?
That's a 32% increase.

AMD getting cocky now.


mom isn't a power user, and doesn't need more than 8gb ram, but I want to leave one channel open in case she might need 16gb in the future.
Doesn't seem like a huge penalty for what she does now. The most she might do is encode a video.
 
3dprophet said:
It depends what latency you get. CL16 3200 and CL18 3600 are practically identical in performance. For a budget build I would get a cheap 2 x 8GB CL16 3200 kit and forget about 3600.

I suspect the mainstream Zen 3 CPUs will launch next year. How long can you wait?
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I can wait a while longer.
I gave mom my oldass Athlon64 desktop with 4gb ram to use for the time being.

That gskill ripjaws has CL19. ewwww.
but all the 8gb ram sticks are about the same in price. Which matters more to Zen in most usage cases? speed or latency?
 
Kdawg said:
I can wait a while longer.
I gave mom my oldass Athlon64 desktop with 4gb ram to use for the time being.

That gskill ripjaws has CL19. ewwww.
but all the 8gb ram sticks are about the same in price. Which matters more to Zen in most usage cases? speed or latency?
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I believe DDR-4 3200 cl 16-18-18 is pretty standard and shouldn't be expensive. There is better out there, but for the price it offers great performance.

For the Zen APUs you will appreciate the boost a 3200mhz kit gives you. Since the 3400G is based on the 2000 series of ryzen processor's (last gen) the memory compatibility wasn't quite as good as the 3000 series. Without looking into it I know 3200mhz would work without issue, but sometimes higher frequencies than that will not be as plug and play (processors based on the 3000 series and above should not have this issue)
 
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Kdawg said:
I just read AMD is gonna increase prices across the board for zen 5000. $50 bump in msrp over the 3000 series.

so the lowest 5000g APU could be closer to $185? ya think?
That's a 32% increase.

AMD getting cocky now.


mom isn't a power user, and doesn't need more than 8gb ram, but I want to leave one channel open in case she might need 16gb in the future.
Doesn't seem like a huge penalty for what she does now. The most she might do is encode a video.
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That was for the 5600x/5800x/5900x/5950x.... Indications are a 5600 will be priced at $220, which is not a $50 increase but around $20 (10%). I wouldn't assume their $100 CPU's would be getting a $50 increase, they will price them according to their performance and target market.

Anyways, dual channel will be faster, but as you said, probably not a deal breaker. If she's not a power user, what is waiting 6 months 5000g series going to give/benefit? Honestly, if she's not gaming, even a 3200g would probably work just fine for her, although you said she does some video encoding? That could be a slight bit slower, but still not horrible.
 
Ready4Dis said:
That was for the 5600x/5800x/5900x/5950x.... Indications are a 5600 will be priced at $220, which is not a $50 increase but around $20 (10%). I wouldn't assume their $100 CPU's would be getting a $50 increase, they will price them according to their performance and target market.

Anyways, dual channel will be faster, but as you said, probably not a deal breaker. If she's not a power user, what is waiting 6 months 5000g series going to give/benefit? Honestly, if she's not gaming, even a 3200g would probably work just fine for her, although you said she does some video encoding? That could be a slight bit slower, but still not horrible.
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it would be nice if they kept the $150 price or less.

I wanna build something that can last 10 years. The only thing I can see becoming standard are true 4k120 TVs, so I'd want a chip that can output that to video.

that would probably require me to wait for b550 + zen 3 apu, since cheap b550 boards come with hdmi 2.1 now, some even with dp 1.4
question is whether these will actually be capable of 120hz 4k
 
Kdawg said:
it would be nice if they kept the $150 price or less.

I wanna build something that can last 10 years. The only thing I can see becoming standard are true 4k120 TVs, so I'd want a chip that can output that to video.

that would probably require me to wait for b550 + zen 3 apu, since cheap b550 boards come with hdmi 2.1 now, some even with dp 1.4
question is whether these will actually be capable of 120hz 4k
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That I couldn't tell you, but I thought the video output was directly tied to the APU, so you should have the same hdmi support from the same APU regardless of which board you're using, but that may be a misunderstanding from me as I don't us APUs often.
 
Kdawg said:
it would be nice if they kept the $150 price or less.

I wanna build something that can last 10 years. The only thing I can see becoming standard are true 4k120 TVs, so I'd want a chip that can output that to video.

that would probably require me to wait for b550 + zen 3 apu, since cheap b550 boards come with hdmi 2.1 now, some even with dp 1.4
question is whether these will actually be capable of 120hz 4k
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even at 4k120hz she's never going to know the difference and movies/tv shows will never be 120fps. if she has been using a llano cpu for this long a 3400g and even 3200g would be an insane upgrade. hell you could probably throw a 2200 or 2400g in there and it would be a night and day difference for her and any one of those cpu's would last 10+ years for her usage. ignore building something based on specs you want and build it based on specs she needs and 4k120hz support is something she'll never need.
 
My guess is 5000g series would be coming out around this time next year, based on their recent performance. First comes desktop, then comes EPYC/TR, then comes laptop, then comes APU. If Zen3 is as good as they say, there's going to be a lot of demand for those chips too.

If your mom is happy with the A64 for now, I'd just wait. Eventually the APUs will make it to market, it's a shame to buy a Zen+ chip when Zen2 APUs are available in asia and Zen3 desktop is coming real soon now.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
even at 4k120hz she's never going to know the difference and movies/tv shows will never be 120fps. if she has been using a llano cpu for this long a 3400g and even 3200g would be an insane upgrade. hell you could probably throw a 2200 or 2400g in there and it would be a night and day difference for her and any one of those cpu's would last 10+ years for her usage. ignore building something based on specs you want and build it based on specs she needs and 4k120hz support is something she'll never need.
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right now 4k60 amateur videos are the norm.

you never know when 4k120 will be the new normal.

My dad tried to play a 4k60 video on her llano, and it failed miserably of course. They travel every year and shoot their own amateur videos.
 
You're expectations vs your budget are not very realistic. It takes a ton of power to work with 4k60 assests let alone 4k120 whenever that will be.
 
I had a very similar use case back in August for my Gran, her PC died during a lightning storm and needed an urgent replacement so she could get back to doing facebook and keeping up with her family / grandchildren. She's not much into video playback just really needed enough to watch her favorite cat videos.

So what I built below is probably more than enough for what a typical light user would need, and certainly enough for your use case as well.

I really wish that we had the 4000 series APU's but I ended up putting this together for her. Cost me about ~400$ and will last I honestly think as long as she will need it to.

When it comes to memory speed, overclocking, ect... I recommend rethinking that and just consider what the use case of the computer is going to be. Is this your mom's machine? then why does it matter what the memory speed is?

Raven Ridge supports ~DDR-3000... get that. Recommend 16gb as chrome eats memory. Remember to set the DDR profile in bios, don't worry about any overclocking on it, stock settings are fine. Stability is what your looking for, not trying to squeeze an extra few FPS out for that twitch game you're playing.

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Seems reasonable but I'd use 16GB ram even if it meant dropping the proc down to a Ryzen 3 due to budget constraints. I'd also cheap out on the ram just a little and not bother with the fast stuff. For this sort of application I'm a fan of the green PCB no heatsink 1.2V stuff as long as it's on the QVL. I have an old quad core laptop with 8GB and it gets laggy if I have too many browser windows open. My work issued laptop has 16GB and pretty much kicks the crap out of it despite only being a dual core. They're both a bit long in the tooth - the 8GB machine is a Sandy Bridge i7 quad and the 16GB work machine is a Haswell i5 dual. At any rate, you can feel the difference between 8 and 16GB ram in everyday use.
 
I can't say I'd bother with trying to wait for 5xxx APUs simply because I doubt they're going to show up anytime soon if past experience is anything to go by. They tend to lag the regular CPU releases by at least six months if memory serves. If you're dead set on an APU the 4xxx series would be a good option if you could get one but 3xxx series is most likely what you'll have to go for.

No matter what I wouldn't go for less than 16 gig of RAM and there's no way in hell I'd use a single stick. Dual channel is what these CPUs need no matter what and you're going to destroy performance by going single channel. Cost saving is just fine but there's a point where it doesn't make sense and using single channel for RAM for any setup designed to use dual channel is past that point and goes double for an APU.

I agree with others to go with cheaper RAM instead of high clocking and low latency. You should be able to get a quality 16 gig set of 3200C16 RAM for $70-$80 if not less (I haven't looked at RAM prices in a while but got my 16 gig 3200C16 set for $75 over a year ago.) That's plenty for the setup and a very good spot for price/performance. Besides if you go with the Zen+ 3xxx series APU you probably won't be able to run higher than 3200 anyway.

I know you're trying to keep the budget down but it might be worth looking into a B550 board instead of B450. You're expecting this system to last for quite a few years and B550 can help with that simply because you'll find better CPU support for B550 for a possible drop in replacement 5xxx series APU down the line or if a discrete graphics card gets dropped in and you'll have access to PCI-e 4 instead of just 3.
 
SmokeRngs said:
I can't say I'd bother with trying to wait for 5xxx APUs simply because I doubt they're going to show up anytime soon if past experience is anything to go by. They tend to lag the regular CPU releases by at least six months if memory serves. If you're dead set on an APU the 4xxx series would be a good option if you could get one but 3xxx series is most likely what you'll have to go for.

.....

I know you're trying to keep the budget down but it might be worth looking into a B550 board instead of B450. You're expecting this system to last for quite a few years and B550 can help with that simply because you'll find better CPU support for B550 for a possible drop in replacement 5xxx series APU down the line or if a discrete graphics card gets dropped in and you'll have access to PCI-e 4 instead of just 3.
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I read somewhere that the 3xxxG APU is Zen+ thus not compatible with B550 mobo, is that not the case?
 
Anh N. said:
I read somewhere that the 3xxxG APU is Zen+ thus not compatible with B550 mobo, is that not the case?
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You would need to check the motherboard maker's website and BIOS revisions to see what CPUs the motherboard supports but as of right now there should be no reason for the B550 boards not to support Zen+. Some of them may have no support for Zen1, especially if they have small BIOS chips on them but since the 5xxx CPUs aren't out every one of them should have support for Zen+ yet. Once the BIOSes start rolling out for Zen3 it could remove support for Zen+ if they don't have room for all the different models. All the motherboards out there have enough room in BIOS to support at least two generations of processors which Zen+ and Zen2 are the two most current and released.

As I said you should doublecheck but Zen+ should work fine for now and if the board does run Zen+ you'll just have to make sure you don't update to a future BIOS that removes Zen+ support until you have a Zen2 or Zen3 CPU to drop in the board.
 
SmokeRngs said:
You would need to check the motherboard maker's website and BIOS revisions to see what CPUs the motherboard supports but as of right now there should be no reason for the B550 boards not to support Zen+.
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A520 and B550 with Zen+ APUs may work, but AMD says it's not supported, and all of the motherboard websites I've seen say it's not supported. I just got an A520 board, and the box says 3200g and 3400g aren't supported. That said, I've seen reports of the Zen+ APUs working fine on a B550 board, so YMMV. X570 supports Zen+ officially, but not sure why you'd get an X570 board for a budget build.
 
You're doing this for your Mom? You know, the woman that carried you in her womb for 9 months? Nurtured you, raised you, gave up so much for you? And you're looking at a...a...a...budget build?

Sigh. C'mon, step up, son. Give her the 128GB 4000MHz Ram-beast, Ryzen 5950x cored, 6900XT Navi2, liquid-fueled monster she deserves.

It'll all be worth it as she uses that mouse to click on the gardening website she browses. The speed with which the page refreshes will put that smile on her face. You know, the same one she had when you gave her that pasta-art project for a Mother's Day gift back in 1st Grade.

You know it's the right thing to do. And, when you visit, you can game...

;)
 
4k playback is done on the AMD videocard asic for the following architectures as well as any modern APU

Getting any decent modern APU will save on complexity and expense also it will be fine for 4k playback by offloading it to the onboard asic decoder. You are overbulding it. 8GB @3200MHz and be done. This is not a 4k Gaming box guys. Its 4k video playback, The best thing you could do for Mom is add in an SSD,
 
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IVe run all matters of APU.

Ram speed doesn't matter past 3200, but timing is everything.

CL16 vs CL 14 is 30FPS or more

So how you arrive at 14ns and very tight timings is up to you but that is my recommendation.
 
3400g has been a great chip for my wife .. It's running on an ASUS B350 Prime with 2 x 16GB 3200 CAS 16 modules .. she has 3 monitors setup on it with 1 watching her tv shows .. one has 4 billion chrome tabs open with facebook as one of them playing whatever facebook games.. and the 3rd one will have a spreadsheet open or sticky notes while she does bills.

I would get 32GB of 3200 speed or better .. CAS 16 at least (generally a bit cheaper than tighter timing stuff) ..just whatever you can find a good deal on .. get decent NVMe SSD drive for OS.. and a larger 2TB or bigger spinner to hold all her stuff on housing her personal files ..ie .. Document, Videos,Downloads ..etc .. and of course a decent 80+ Gold or better PSU .. 500'ish watter..

My wife like the RGB stuff .. so got her a cheaper windowed case with RGB 120mm fans in it
 
Just go with more RAM but slightly slower to save a few bucks. 16GB of 3200 DDR4 will do you just fine. And if all she does is play movies from it the 3400G should be fine for a couple of years at least. There's no rush to upgrade. If you want to upgrade to Zen 3 in the future, get your hands on the cheapest 400 series motherboard, ie b450 etc. and you can just do a bios flash to enable a zen 3 "G" cpu in future when/if the 3400G feels too sluggish for her needs. You can get a 16GB kit for literally $60 or less and the extra memory will make a difference.
 
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