Is upgrading from a Ryzen 5 5600X to a 5600X3D worthwhile for 1440p gaming?

At around $180, the 5600X3D can be a worthwhile upgrade, especially in games where your current CPU is the limit. It offers gaming performance roughly in the Ryzen 5 7600X range, and some CPU-limited games can improve by 15–30%.

The improvement will depend heavily on the game and your frame-rate target. At 1440p, the 7900 XT often makes the GPU the bottleneck, so you may see little difference in many titles. The 5600X3D makes the most sense if you play CPU-heavy games or want better minimum FPS and frame-time consistency.

I would keep an eye on the 16 GB of RAM too. It is still usable, but 32 GB is becoming the more comfortable choice for modern games and multitasking. That said, if your memory usage rarely approaches the limit, upgrading RAM probably will not transform performance by itself.

You could also look at the 5800X3D, but it usually costs much more than the 5600X3D. Unless you need its extra cores or find a particularly good deal, the price difference may not be justified for gaming alone.