Such new parts in my country are a bit of a joke, they are not made available until at least 1 or 2 months after release, mind you they never even got the Ryzen 3100 or 3300X.

I managed to score a 5800X yesterday on Amazon UK, delivery estimates it will be around 14th December but seller reviews show it may arrive earlier. The price is inflated way beyond the RRP though.

So Gamers Nexus made a technical video about it but you should use four ranks of RAM for Ryzen processors and with double sided 8GB modules just about gone from the market, that means at least 4x8GB or 2x16GB. I have also been touting this but now I have something to refer to as to why and some tests.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UkGu6A-6sQ

Also, remember to put the modules in the correct slots!

And what might those correct slots be?

Correct slots only matter with 2 sticks of RAM*, and if you have 4 slots in the MB. To get dual channel RAM working they have to be, well, dual channel so in the correct two slots, if they're mismatched you get single channel RAM.

The correct slots are usually colour coded or labelled in some other way- and are definitely mentioned in a motherboard's manual.

*for consumer systems, quad channel need 4 sticks in the correct slots. But that's HEDT and server level.

1 and 3 or 2 and 4 in case of 2x16 gb's

though to be honest the whole upgrade science is bullocks

2k expenses for 0.1 improvements is what your talking about

average gamers or normal people will never notice any kind of difference between 8, 16 or 32 gb's let stand 2133 or 4000 mhz!

Completely wrong for Ryzen, RAM speed makes a big difference mostly due to Infinity Fabric clock being tied to RAM frequency (up to ~3600Mhz RAM/ 1800Mhz IF). Especially so if the chip involved is an APU. Doesn't make much difference for Intel though, something like 2-3% so may not be worth it.

Supposedly IF speed was going to be decoupled from RAM for 5000 series per some new BIOS entries, but everything I've seen suggests it hasn't been.

After looking at some benches, I determined the 5600X isn't enough of an upgrade in performance over my 3600 to justify the $$$. I'd be better off getting a 3800X on sale in a few more weeks for more of a performance increase.

In the end, the 5000 series ended up being too expensive. Now that AMD is leading, they're increasing their profit margin. Which isn't a bad thing, but kind of negates the entire point of getting AMD hardware, at least for me.

I am riding with what I have for at least another year. It's about as powerful as a PS5 or XBox Series S, so I don't want to be greedy and just keep buying tech when I can use that money elsewhere.

But yes DT, in dual channel, it's best to go 1 + 3 or 2 + 4 in terms of slot #'s to not cripple your RAM.

I'm kind of interested to see how cheap 3800X's become.

Interesting perspective..

I got my R7 1800X for 599 EUR when it launched. Now I paid 589 EUR for the much more powerful R9 5900X.

Ryzen was never a "budget CPU" for me, but a high end one.

Others already said it so well but usually the perfect slots are CPU - empty - RAM - empty - RAM if using two RAM modules in a motherboard with four available slots.


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Nitpicking: First slot or pin or contact tends to be called nought/zero (0). So 0, 1, 2, 3 not 1, 2, 3, 4.

The equivalent of the 3600 is the 5600X, which iirc is ~$50 more expensive than the 3600 was at launch. It's not a huge difference, but it's a difference. I'm willing to wait for technology to advance a little more before upgrading from my 3600, which was my point.

I see what you're saying and absolutely agree it's not a huge difference. However, it is a difference. At least, here in the US. I could get a 3800X/T for around $300 right now, which in theory would give me more of a performance boost than a 5600X. Just stuff to think about and speculate.

Also I have to keep in mind my previous philosophy was getting a system and sporting it for 3-5 years, which I stopped doing when I got the Ryzen 2600 and then this year upgraded to a 3600. The GPU just got replaced this past year from a GTX 1060 I bought in 2016, so that lasted 4 years, and if I want to buy a new one, I'm going against my tenets of system building and maintenance.
-SimTeer

That would be mine, except that I think mine is a year older, and I would need to fix the cooling for it to be worth upgrading. (A CPU running at 1.4GHz would bottleneck any modern discrete GPU, and said GPU would produce more heat, making the cooling problem worse; it would not do to have the system shutting off whenever I'd try to play a game.)

I know nothing about intel cpu's otherwise I'd offer to help system build. Sorry : /

I'm looking to build a new AMD based system with a Ryzen 3400G anyway.

(Note that I got an Intel CPU because, at the time, Intel was better than AMD; my previous computer before that was an AMD Athlon XP (IIRC) because Intel's Pentium 4 was not that good. (Note that the Athlon XP was so old that it lacked long mode, and therefore could not run 64-bit code at all.)

Actually, there is one characteristic of that old AMD computer that I really liked, and would be nice to have on my new computer when I built it; the computer was really quiet while idle. In fact, the fans might not have been running at all while idle, and there was no overheating issue. (The fans would come on when needed, of course.) (I note that this computer was a prebuilt, but I think it actually didn't come with an OS.)

I imagine it will be unlikely we will see new AM4 motherboards. How noticeable are the fans on the X570?

An 8 core 64W 5700 makes sense, so I suppose I'll wait for the AMD response to Rocket Lake. Then I'll consider my options. I suspect that prices will be important now that performance is similar.

As for the graphics card, I'm on the AMD camp (OSS drivers). However, the new cards are expensive and the older cards may be less reliable. Perhaps it will be wiser to wait and see if AMD releases newer mid-tier cards. They are fighting team green on the high ground, and at the same time they have team blue nibbling at their feet on the lower ground. AMD has to act to secure the high volume market and lowering the prices of their older chips may not be enough.
At least I'm really looking for that AV1 hardware support, lower power consumption and higher computing power of their RDNA2. Oh, and gaming performance also, I guess.