I'm planning to upgrade an older gaming PC with an ASRock X470 Taichi motherboard, Ryzen 5 2600X, GTX 1070 Ti, 16GB of RAM, and a Noctua CPU cooler. I can currently run games such as Cyberpunk 2077, Expedition 33, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, The Last of Us, and God of War, but I'm looking for smoother performance overall. A Ryzen 5 5600X3D is available to me for $180, and I'm wondering how much of an improvement it would provide. I'm also trying to figure out what GPU would pair well with it in the future. I'm not in a hurry to replace the 1070 Ti, although rising prices may push me to upgrade sooner. Would it make more sense to take advantage of these AM4 upgrades now, or wait and eventually build a completely new system on a newer platform?
4 Answers
The 5600X3D is an excellent upgrade for AM4 at that price. It should provide a major boost in CPU-limited games and improve frame-time consistency, especially compared with the 2600X. Update the motherboard BIOS before swapping processors, and confirm that your board supports the chip. Once installed, the 1070 Ti will become the main limitation in many newer, GPU-heavy games.
Cyberpunk and similar visually demanding games will benefit more from a GPU upgrade than a CPU upgrade, but the 5600X3D is still a great way to extend the life of the system. A used RTX 3070 or RTX 4070, or a Radeon RX 7800 XT, would be reasonable pairing options depending on local pricing and your power supply. You can upgrade the GPU later without needing to replace the platform immediately.
I’d take advantage of the inexpensive CPU upgrade rather than waiting for a whole new build. The 5600X3D can put your system roughly in line with many newer midrange gaming PCs, and 16GB of RAM is still usable for now. Keep an eye on memory usage, though; moving to 32GB would be worthwhile if newer games begin stuttering or multitasking becomes difficult.
There’s no need to rush into a new socket while your motherboard still has a strong drop-in gaming upgrade available. Buy the 5600X3D if the deal is good, keep the 1070 Ti until it no longer meets your needs, and then choose a GPU based on the games and resolution you actually use. Waiting can make sense if you want a major leap, but replacing everything now would cost more for a smaller improvement than upgrading in stages.
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