I built this PC several years ago and have only upgraded the memory from 16GB to 32GB. The current setup is an ASUS B450-F Gaming motherboard, Ryzen 7 2700X, RTX 2080, 32GB DDR4-3200, and a 2TB M.2 SSD with a 1TB external drive. My CPU is struggling in Wardogs, and I'd like to upgrade without moving to AM5 or buying DDR5 while I'm still in school. I'm considering a Ryzen 5 5600X3D for about $180, or spending roughly $310–$330 on a Ryzen 7 5700X3D or 5800X3D. I mainly play World of Warcraft, Wardogs, Battlefield 6, and single-player AAA games. Since I only need the system to last about another year, would the 5600X3D be the best value, or is one of the eight-core chips worth the extra money?
4 Answers
The 5600X3D is probably the best fit here. It offers a major gaming upgrade over the 2700X, and the extra 3D V-Cache should help particularly in CPU-heavy games. For around $180, it’s difficult to justify spending nearly twice as much on the higher-end AM4 chips when you only need the system to carry you through another year.
If you buy the 5600X3D, update the motherboard BIOS while the 2700X is still installed. The B450-F may need a sufficiently recent BIOS version to support the newer processor, so it’s worth checking ASUS’s CPU support list first.
The 5700X3D or 5800X3D would make sense if you wanted to keep the AM4 system for several more years or needed additional cores for work beyond gaming. For your stated budget and one-year plan, though, the 5600X3D is the sensible choice. Expensive CPU-and-platform bundles would also be overkill with an RTX 2080 and your goal of keeping costs down.
The 5600X3D should still be plenty capable with your RTX 2080. Even a regular 5600X would likely handle many of these games well, so the X3D model gives you a strong upgrade without wasting money on a full platform change.
That’s reassuring. I’m mainly trying to solve the CPU bottleneck without turning this into a full rebuild.