X370 w/ 3900x or X570 w/ 5900x?

ItzSteele

The reason I am asking this question is because I currently have the ASRock X370 Killer SLI/ac MoBo with a Ryzen 7 1700x. I am looking to upgrade that Ryzen 7 1700x to either a 3900X (XT) or a 5900X. Only problem with the 5900X is I would probably have to eat the money for a X570 board. Is it worth it to get the X570 board? or wait until AM5 chips are dropped and then upgrade to the next series of CPUs and upgrade the motherboard then and just get the 3900x for now?

Also, any idea when the 3900X or 3900XT will drop in price? I know at one point you could grab the 3900X for like $380-400, but now they are almost as expensive as the 5900X. I know that they were high in price at one point due to miners trying to build rigs.

JS_MC

I'd say that if you're upgrading to 3900X(T) a motherboard upgrade wouldn't be required, but you might see more stability going with a B550 motherboard. The only reason I'd go with an X570 board is if you needed the PCIe 4 speed for your hard drives. Otherwise, a B550 or staying with the X370 would be my recommendation.

Hard to say when there will be a price drop, a lot of the recent releases are very limited in supply right now. Because of that and the already discounted prices on the 2nd Gen Ryzen CPUs, I would not expect the prices to drop very soon. However, I'm not one of our buyers and this is purely speculation and I hope I'm wrong. 😊

I hope this info helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns!

ItzSteele

LandShark said:

I'd say that if you're upgrading to 3900X(T) a motherboard upgrade wouldn't be required, but you might see more stability going with a B550 motherboard. The only reason I'd go with an X570 board is if you needed the PCIe 4 speed for your hard drives. Otherwise, a B550 or staying with the X370 would be my recommendation.

Hard to say when there will be a price drop, a lot of the recent releases are very limited in supply right now. Because of that and the already discounted prices on the 2nd Gen Ryzen CPUs, I would not expect the prices to drop very soon. However, I'm not one of our buyers and this is purely speculation and I hope I'm wrong. 😊

I hope this info helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns!

Thank you for the information. With the PCIe 4 speed for hard drives, I have a M.2 Western digital black SSD that holds my OS system and a 1TB Samsung 2.5 SSD that I put my games and other apps on. and like a 3TB HDD that I have for documents and of the like. I guess id have to see what the x370 is running.

Or if your talking about GPU, I am looking at going for a 3060Ti or 3070. However, I know that the 30 series cards dont necessarily require the PCIe 4 and that they can run on a PCIe 3 board with pretty minimal differences. Any advice on that?

JS_MC

Unless your SSDs are PCIe 4 or you need the additional CPU lanes, I would recommend the B550. It's a great option without all the expense.

The new GPUs don't yet fully use the bandwidth of PCIe 3 and don't yet require PCIe 4. There are some exceptions but specifically for gaming, this rings true. In the future that may change, however, the new GPUs are still compatible with PCIe 3 and again don't require PCIe 4 at this time.

It really depends on your budget and what your goals for this build are in the future!

ItzSteele

LandShark said:

Unless your SSDs are PCIe 4 or you need the additional CPU lanes, I would recommend the B550. It's a great option without all the expense.

The new GPUs don't yet fully use the bandwidth of PCIe 3 and don't yet require PCIe 4. There are some exceptions but specifically for gaming, this rings true. In the future that may change, however, the new GPUs are still compatible with PCIe 3 and again don't require PCIe 4 at this time.

It really depends on your budget and what your goals for this build are in the future!

In all honesty, Im looking to upgrade this PC to something I can use for the current time and into a little bit of the future and then pass it to my wife. I know the 3900x and the 5900x may be overkill for my wife, but I do want to get back to streaming and making videos. My wife on the other hand, would just want to play simple games (overwatch, LoL, WoW, and a few others). Nothing really graphically challenging or CPU pounding.

JS_MC

For streaming, I'd say the 3700X or above would be excellent. Especially with NVidia offering NVENC on cards and the recent increase in performance.

The 5600X is amazing based on the performance I've seen in recent titles. If we're talking about making videos I'd recommend the additional cores, otherwise, I'd say to go with a lower core count in favor of higher GPU performance.  Some video editing software allows for CUDA processing, which would be another thing to consider.

ItzSteele

Streaming is more what im wanting to focus on. The 5900x would be the dream, but of course cost and stock come out as the problem. With the 3900X or XT I feel like would be the best choice as far as cost wise and performance is there too. Plus, my current MoBo can support the 3900X or XT. I feel like having the 12 cores will really come to help with the gaming while streaming aspect. And I dont think it will be too much of an overkill for my wife because I know that she too wants to get into the streaming scene as well.

JS_MC

Yeah, I'd agree, the 3900X seems like the sweet spot here. Unless you're in a situation like I mentioned where you're encoding using NVENC, I'd recommend the 3900X. Even then, I think the 3900X is probably going to be easier to get your hands on at the moment. It's a strong CPU that will last quite a long time! Definitely not a bad choice!

If you're streaming with a supported application, you can enable NVENC encoding which will make the NVidia GPU do all the encoding for your stream. This allows you to put more of the streaming workload on the GPU. It has its perks and its drawbacks but it may be something to consider.

I think your plans for this build are excellent! I'd love to see what this build looks like when it's completed!

ItzSteele

Sure thing! Im really excited to get it built!
Also, even with the 3900X, wouldn't it be good to get something with the NVENC encoding. I know it takes a lot off the CPU, but wouldnt it just be more of a win/win situation with a strong CPU and strong GPU? I know that the 3700x would be a good streaming option with the something like the 3070, but the 3900X or XT would be great aswell, right? Or am I missing something?

JS_MC

Yeah, more GPU performance is typically directly equal to more FPS. As long as you have a powerful enough CPU. Sometimes with much older generation CPUs, you'll see a bottleneck in performance with a much newer CPU. You're not missing anything that I can tell.😁 I was just saying that if you wanted to go with the 5600X that has fewer cores, you might see higher individual core performance and put some of the streaming load on the GPU. Just trying to give you another option. 

I'd say you've got a great idea for how to proceed with your upgrade!