Seeking Upgrade Path Advice

NateDZD

For my next upgrade, I'm looking at the B550 TOMAHAWK. There are a few reasons I'd like to upgrade my motherboard, but the one I'll mention here is that I have a case with a front panel USB type-C port, but my current B450 AORUS board doesn't support it. Having front panel USB type-C isn't a big deal for me, but having an unusable port really messes with me.

However, my current CPU is a Ryzen 5 2600X, so if I upgrade to a B550, I'll need to also upgrade the CPU. What is a reasonable upgrade path for me? I have a few options I'm considering, and I'm wondering if anyone can provide some feedback for me. I'd like to keep my upgrade at $500 or below. The cheaper the better, but I also want to get the best bang for the buck, so if the cheapest option doesn't provide the best value, I'm willing to go a little bit higher. Here are the combos I'm considering:
1. Ryzen 5 3600 + B550 TOMAHAWK (~$340)

2. Ryzen 5 3600 + X570 TOMAHAWK (~$500)

3. Ryzen 7 3700X + B550 TOMAHAWK (~$440)

As far as my computer usage goes, I'm an avid gamer who plays a wide variety of games from lightweight platforming side scrollers like Celeste to AAA titles like the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 on a 1440p 144Hz monitor. I also do some video editing about once a week, and I record a podcast on my main system. My current GPU is a Gigabyte RTX 2070 Super, and I have 16GB of DDR4 3600MHz.

How do these combos look? For my usage (also, I'm more likely to overclock my GPU and leave my CPU running at its out-of-the-box speeds), do you think the 3700X is too much of a chip for me, or would it be helpful since I edit video? Or is the 3600 sufficient to handle video editing?

Also, is the X570 board overkill for a 3600? If I choose the 3700X, will I need the X570?

Or... Is this a bad time to think about upgrading, and am I better off waiting for Zen 3?

PowerSpec_MikeW

Main difference is going to be the X570 having full PCIe Gen4 support with general purpose, configurable lanes, versus the B550 having it, but in a more limited factor. It can support x4 PCIe Gen4 for NVME drives and this is probably the most practical application we've seen thus far. So, distant future proofing, or you need a lot of room to expand to add more PCIe devices or plan for multiple GPU's. Otherwise, you're going to be fine with the B550.

As for what to go for, I would get the 3600X, but I think that's good pairing with your 2070 Super. It's going to perform well together, you don't have to worry about a bottleneck. The 3700X will increase your productivity performance in applications that can take advantage of the extra cores. You won't see much of a difference otherwise.

NateDZD

Since my system is mostly for gaming (I mean, to be fair, it's mostly used for email, spreadsheets, Zoom meetings, and website admin for a university's website, but as far as what it's built to handle... let's just say gaming), and my minimal video editing is never gonna be any higher than 1080p, I probably won't reap the benefit of 8 cores over 6 cores, right?

And the 3600X is a better value, you think? In your estimation, the 3600XT isn't worth the price jump, and the 3600 isn't worth the savings?

TSTonyV

NateDZD said:

Since my system is mostly for gaming (I mean, to be fair, it's mostly used for email, spreadsheets, Zoom meetings, and website admin for a university's website, but as far as what it's built to handle... let's just say gaming), and my minimal video editing is never gonna be any higher than 1080p, I probably won't reap the benefit of 8 cores over 6 cores, right?

And the 3600X is a better value, you think? In your estimation, the 3600XT isn't worth the price jump, and the 3600 isn't worth the savings?

You'll still get some benefit from the extra cores, the question is whether you think it's worth it. If you ever do more video editing or multi-threaded work in the future the extra cores would be nice, and as time goes on games are getting better at utilize more cores/threads so the 3700X could have better longevity. That said, we won't know until that actually happens, so I wouldn't base my decision purely around that. I would make my purchase based on what I believe my future use case will be. Either way, you'll get a performance increase over the 2600X. 

The 3600 is the best value. The 3600X and 3600XT do not have enough performance increase to justify the price difference, at least at current pricing. I've seen the 3600X come down to $180 before which is only about $20 more then the normal 3600, in which case I might consider it, but even then it's only a 1-2% increase over the 3600. You'd never really notice. The 3600XT does have a unique place in the fact that it has some reasonable overclocking capabilities that the 3600/X don't have which can see some reasonable performance gains, but at that point you might as well just shell out the little bit of extra cash for an i5-10600k instead which will overclock better. I'd only get the 3600XT if you have a specific reason to really want to overclock on an AMD platform.