I’ve been running a Ryzen 5 1500X on a GIGABYTE AB350-Gaming 3 board for 4 years now. I finally got the itch to upgrade. While my system is working perfectly fine there is no need to spend the money to build a new system. Upgrading to right CPU will give a few more years to the system before buying a motherboard on a recent chipset. While the GIGABYTE AB350-Gaming 3 supports a Ryzen 9 5950X, it would be a waste of money for my older motherboard. Here’s why I’m upgrading to a Ryzen 5 5600 in 2022.
Price Drop update!
Ryzen 5 5600 drops $40 to $159.99
Current CPU value for performance
Well since Intel isn’t an option for me the Ryzen 5 5600 wasn’t my first choice, the 5800X was before I dug deep. Since I’m only upgrading my CPU my budget was acceptable up to around $300. The 5800x tripled the PassMark score from my 1500X.
I’m not sure why but I settled on keeping my TDP (which apparently AMD’s TDP values are NOT consistent with other manufacturers). At 65W and that excluded allot of processors from my list. Less power hopefully equals less heat but from what I’ve read the Ryzens come in all about the same temperature when running. The 5800X @ 105W does almost double the cost of electricity though.
The next round of candidates
Well I decided to drop my budget down to around $200. This is a incremental upgrade for me and being on the old 350 chipset I’m stuck at lower RAM and PCI express versions which will handicap the latest CPU’s.
How much does an X cost?
I switched to the 5600X. The X sounds great, I have a 1500X…I have to upgrade to a X right? Maybe not.
As you can see there is not much difference. The “X” will cost about $20 more for a 2% increase in performance.
Conclusion
While I’m still on the 350 chipset which may seam archaic to some of you especially running gaming rigs.I believe upgrading from a 1st generation Ryzen to a 3rd generation AMD CPU on the same motherboard is the economical thing to do. AMD has planned this out in their roadmap for the consumer. Now I have to figure out what to do a unused Ryzen 1500X…I’m thinking a mini PC?
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