Sad Story (with a happy end)

[Filip Georgievski]

Hello, people of the TechPowerUp community

Recently my Intel Xeon X3460 was retired since the board that i got (Asus P7P55D) went "kaput" and the SouthBridge just quit working, making the board useless and thus far, having to retire the CPU.

But luckly for me, the IT company that i work in now was able to provide me with a payment plan for new parts. So this is what i got:

1. CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 - 180€
2. Mobo: MSI X570A-PRO - 145€
3. RAM: Kingston HyperX 16GB 3200Mhz - 75€
4. SSD: Kingston A400 480GB - 45€

All the parts are brand new, so Chrismas came early for me this year.
Updated my system specs, so you guys let me know what you think about my PC now.

 

[windwhirl]

Quite the jump CPU-wise. Nice!

Single stick RAM? Consider getting another one (same exact model) at some point in the future. Ryzen loves dual channel. Although it should work just fine in single channel, since the IMC has been improved with Zen 2.

That Kingston SSD is not a bad choice for saving games. It's fast enough for the job and it doesn't seem like you paid too much for it.

Can't say anything about the motherboard, since it mostly depends on what features you need or not. X570 mbs are expensive compared to their predecessors, too, but I imagine you plan to upgrade to next gen Ryzen at some point?

 

[biffzinker]

so you guys let me know what you think about my PC now.

It needs a faster video card to match what the 3600 can do.

 

[Tomgang]

Cpu is a good choise and property the best one for games in its price class.

16 GB shut get you going for now with games as well. You don't give information about configuration as is it 2 x 8 GB or 1 x16 GB. Just be in mind that if it's 1 x 16 GB you are going to lose performance as 3600 is dual channel memory support and hence because of that 2 x 8 GB is a way better choise and also wint only single channel you are in a risk of running out of memory bandwidth that can cause lag or lag spikes in games and over all lower fps and also decrease performance in other applications as well. Simply put, running only one stick will not allow you to get everything out of your 3600.

SSD is a nice thing for games and a friend of mine if happy with he's Kingston SSD. Personally I only use Samsung and crucial SSD throw.

Now about your motherboard, it's not the best choice as this board has notorious bad vrm cooling. You might be fine wint a 3600 but if you later let's say in tree years time when 3900X/3950X comes down in price on the used market and want to upgrade. These higher power CPU's pulls more power and put more strain on vrm and because the cooling is frankly insufficient, vrm gets to hot and will throttle these higher power CPU's back and you will lose performance. Just something you might wanna consider if you will upgrade cpu later in the future.

So cpu and SSD is a fine choice, while if you run a single memory stick as in you system profile shows, you are losing performance and the motherboard is not one I personally would recommend, specially if it's for one of the high core count CPU's.

 

[windwhirl]

It needs a faster video card to match what the 3600 can do.

True that! I'd say, a 1660 Ti at least, so that it doesn't feel like a sidegrade... the RX 580 is still usable on 1080p, but depending on the game it may be necessary to dial back settings. And if planning on moving to 1440p or higher or staying at 1080p and not upgrading the GPU for a while, then I'd recommend something even faster.

 

[Filip Georgievski]

Thanks for the comments and opinions on this guys, really apreciate it.

First, i like to adress the motherboard. I know it is not the best choice overall, but i wanted something with PCI G4, and support for more than one M.2 SSD which this board has. Also, the VRM and chipset issue, within a good ventilated case they work well not going more than 50C under load at a stock R5 3600, so id imagine going with an Ryzen 7 in the future wont be an issue with this board since i dont plan on putting a Ryzen 9 in it (dont need that much horse power anyway).

RAM vise, 16GB is a on 1 stick, but i plan on putting another 16GB stick, same brand and model, so that is why i did what i did, i was well aware of the RAM advantage of Dual Channel the Ryzen gives.

GPU vise for now im keeping the RX580 since i only do 1080p gaming, and even at high refresh rate as my monitor, it does a solid job (ex, Battlefield1 MP 1080p Ultra - 110 to 120fps, Witcher 3 1080p Ultra - 80 to 100fps).