I built this system in 2020 and would like to improve it for occasional weekend gaming, especially Cyberpunk 2077. My current setup is a Ryzen 7 3800X, Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE WIFI with BIOS F11, 16GB of DDR4-2666 memory, an RTX 3080, and an AIO cooler. I game on a 60Hz G-SYNC-compatible display. I'm considering a Ryzen 7 5800X3D for $349 and 32GB of G.SKILL Trident Z RGB DDR4 rated up to 3600MT/s for about $260. Are these good investments, or would other upgrades make more sense?
4 Answers
The proposed upgrades are compatible in principle, but check the motherboard’s supported CPU list and flash a current BIOS before installing the 5800X3D. Also enable XMP after installing the new memory so it runs at its advertised speed. The game title is Cyberpunk 2077, so there hasn’t been a separate new Cyberpunk release implied by your build needs.
The 5800X3D is an excellent gaming upgrade and is probably the best gaming CPU you can put into an AM4 system. Your X570 motherboard should support it, but update the BIOS before swapping CPUs. With an RTX 3080, this upgrade can improve minimum frame rates and reduce CPU bottlenecks, although the difference may be less noticeable at only 60Hz.
Your RTX 3080 is still a strong card, so the CPU and memory are the more logical parts to upgrade. For Cyberpunk, 32GB of RAM can help with overall smoothness, while the 5800X3D is most worthwhile if you want better frame pacing or plan to upgrade from a 60Hz monitor later. If you stay at 60Hz and performance already feels fine, you could simply replace the RAM first and wait on the CPU.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with having 16GB of RAM, but your current DDR4-2666 kit is fairly slow. Moving to 32GB makes sense for newer games and general multitasking, though $260 is far too much for DDR4. Look for a 2x16GB kit around 3200 or 3600 MT/s, ideally with reasonable timings such as CL16 or CL18, at a much lower price.
My current memory is OLOy DDR4-2666 CL19. A friend who works in IT suggested getting more RAM, which is why I started looking at a 32GB kit.
I worded that badly—I meant Cyberpunk 2077, which I recently bought on sale.