Poll: CPU upgrades on the AMD AM4 platform

[Vattila]

Today I finally put in the order for an interim upgrade of my old desktop PC (based on an Asus PRIME B350-PLUS AM4 motherboard with an 8-core Ryzen 1700 "Zen" 14nm CPU with 8 GB of memory). So I will soon enjoy 16-core Ryzen 5950X "Zen 3" N7 goodness. Thanks to AMD for the amazing AM4 platform support!

The new processor should let me upgrade to Windows 11 and give my programming workloads a pretty boost. To give the massively parallel build jobs I run more breathing room, I also added 16 GB of memory for a total of 24 GB. I had planned to only double my current 8 GB, but the price difference was low (£60 vs £40).



I also ordered a cheap 19 inch monitor to replace my secondary monitor that failed a while ago. This will serve as a stopgap solution until I eventually upgrade to a whole new multi-screen desktop setup based on the upcoming AM5 platform (may even go for Threadripper, if I find a good argument) — next year, perhaps.

The longevity of the AM4 platform has been remarkable. Hopefully, AM5 will follow suit. What do you all think? What are your AM4 experiences? Please vote in the poll, and share your story below.

 

[VirtualLarry]

A year ago in March, my main rig suffered catastrophic death.

"Miner Karma"...

Outside of that, this is hands down the best computer I have built to date. And the quietest. It's like a Ferrari.

That's good news. My AM4 rig runs like an Edsel...

 

[bigboxes]

"Miner Karma"...

The motherboard had been behaving flakey for a while at that point. Not sure what you mean by miner karma. Mining is a bad thing. If anyone has karma coming to them....

 

[FlawleZ]

Based on AMD's market share before AM4, that would be virtually everyone.

I went from 3970X on X79 to my current X570 MSI Unify and 3800X. Been considering a change to 5800X3D or 5950X. Don't really need it except getting the upgrade itch.

 

[Thunder 57]

I went from 3970X on X79 to my current X570 MSI Unify and 3800X. Been considering a change to 5800X3D or 5950X. Don't really need it except getting the upgrade itch.

I'm on a similar boat. I have a 2600X and have been thinking about going to Zen 3, but it's hard to justify the upgrade itch at this point. I think I'll wait to see what the next generation brings performance wise. If nothing else, Zen 3 ought to be cheaper by then anyway. I think a 5700X or 5900X would be a nice upgrade.

 

[UsandThem]

I initially built my oldest son's PC using a 1700X CPU, along with a no frills Asrock X370 motherboard. He used it for 3 plus years with no complaints.

A little while later, I built myself a PC with a 2700X and X470 motherboard combo a blow-price after the 3000 series launched. It was great for about year, and I began getting weird mouse issues that I couldn't figure out what was causing them. I decided I couldn't deal with the lag anymore, so I upgraded my son's PC with the 2700X, and I bought a 3700X along with a B550 motherboard. During that period, the 5000 series were either all sold out or scalped to hell because of Covid supply issues. I later found out the mouse lag issue was due to a bug, and they identified and finally fixed it through a BIOS update.

This latest setup has been my most stable computer of all time. Going on two years, and everything just works as it should. If prices fall enough on a 5900X after the 7000 series hit, I might pick one up. It's not a need by any means as the 3700X is a great CPU, but hey, why not if the price is right?

 

[bigboxes]

I initially built my oldest son's PC using a 1700X CPU, along with a no frills Asrock X370 motherboard. He used it for 3 plus years with no complaints.

A little while later, I built myself a PC with a 2700X and X470 motherboard combo a blow-price after the 3000 series launched. It was great for about year, and I began getting weird mouse issues that I couldn't figure out what was causing them. I decided I couldn't deal with the lag anymore, so I upgraded my son's PC with the 2700X, and I bought a 3700X along with a B550 motherboard. During that period, the 5000 series were either all sold out or scalped to hell because of Covid supply issues. I later found out the mouse lag issue was due to a bug, and they identified and finally fixed it through a BIOS update.

This latest setup has been my most stable computer of all time. Going on two years, and everything just works as it should. If prices fall enough on a 5900X after the 7000 series hit, I might pick one up. It's not a need by any means as the 3700X is a great CPU, but hey, why not if the price is right?

I forgot to mention stability. I can easily reach 100+ days of uptime. Who'd ever thought that when I got into computer building 20+ years ago.

 

[sdifox]

Where is the "No, it has the same CPU I got when I got AM4 mb" option?

 

[igor_kavinski]

I don't know why some people are amazed at stable computers. If it isn't stable, you got unlucky. Good components are supposed to be stable, especially at stock configuration. Yes, if your PC is 100% stable with PBO and high temperatures running 24/7, yeah that would be something worth mentioning. Most PCs I've used have been pretty stable. The only stability issues I've had were tracked down to using Corsair RAM.

 

[Tech Junky]

I don't know why some people are amazed at stable computers.

Stability in components is one thing but, for most it's the OS that's the issue if using Windows. Uptime on Windows is usually short lived due to the various issues with the code. Some of the biggest issues are RAM bloat / leaks and others are how the drivers tie into the system and cause BSOD's. The issue isn't the HW and can be ruled out with using a Linux boot for a couple of days to rule out an actual HW issue.

I had an issue where one laptop was reporting a "kernel-power" in Windows and causing random reboots w/o any BSOD and switching bricks didn't resolve the issue. Booted into linux and it went away. Turned out the driver for something was the issue and yanked it and the issue went away.

The problem with this is that it wasted a couple of days of troubleshooting an issue that shouldn't have been an issue in the first place. Not to mention the expense of the brick to troubleshoot a non-power issue but a driver issue. There's always these little quirks in Windows that piss people off and then MSFT releases a patch that fixes one issue and breaks 5 more things in the process.

 

[Vattila]

will be going to 5950x as soon as I can find one for a good price

Here in the UK, during the shortage a little over a year ago, some sellers were asking over £1000 for the Ryzen 5950X. The MSRP launch price was about £750, I think. Over the recent months, 5950X has fallen below £500 here (I got it for £488 at Amazon). The current pricing trend is good, so check prices where you live.



Price history for AMD Ryzen 9 5950X - Pangoly

[Ryzen 9 5950X | Noctua NH-D15] This is hands down the best computer I have built to date. And the quietest. It's like a Ferrari.

That's good to hear! I have the Noctua NH-D15 sitting on my desk ready to be unboxed. The Ryzen 5950X is still running under the old stock cooler for the 65W Ryzen 1700, which is obviously working harder to cool the new processor (system started with the CPU at 46° C this morning, with the fan at a quiet 1300 rpm, but heat has built up in the case now, with the CPU at ~55°C and the fan at an audible 1800 rpm). I got the extra memory I ordered today, so I will install and test it, before I finally install the huge NH-D15. But it is good to hear that this solution works well. I would hate to end up with noticeably more noise than before.

I will let you all know how it goes.

Where is the "No, it has the same CPU I got when I got AM4 mb" option?

See reply #3.

 

[Tech Junky]

RE noise, use different fans than what comes with it. I use Arctic fans on my cooler push/pull and they usually sit at 700rpm and under load might hit 1000rpm. Using a Meshify 2 case with 2 fans top / 3 fans front / 1 on the back I never hear them even when they are under load.

 

[Vattila]

RE noise, use different fans than what comes with it.

When it comes to the case fan in my Antec Sontata III case, that's probably a good idea. I just connected it, and this one is noisy alright! And it doesn't even come with a standard fan connector, so there is no automated fan speed control. I put it on the High setting for now though — it also has Medium and Low settings that I will explore after I have installed the Noctua NH-D15 CPU cooler. I also removed the improvised cardboard sound dampening in the case and cleaned out some dust. These actions had great effect on temperatures. The CPU fan idles at ~1200 rpm now, with the CPU at ~40° C. That's a remarkable 10 or more degrees lower than before. I am amazed what a little bit of airflow can do!

After this improvement, the stock cooler for the Ryzen 1700 is now actually able to keep the 5950X below thermal limits during my OWLNext software compilation stress test (see reply #37). The CPU peaked at 87° C with an average of 79° (CCD1 peaked briefly to 90.5° in the first run, maybe due to aggressive boosting from a cold start, although in subsequent runs peak temperature was below 90° throughout). By the way, motherboard temperature reads 26° C at idle, with ambient room temperature at 22° C.

By the way, the memory installation works well. With 24 GB installed I am able to turn on multi-threaded compilation in this test, i.e. multi-threaded compilation for each of the maximum 16 configurations built in parallel. In the best case, this cuts the build time of the 112 configurations from 2:22 (142 seconds) to 2:01 (121 seconds). That is a speed-up of 17% (or 15% less waiting). The compilation speed is really impressive — at times the CPU manages to peak above 200 output files/s, with an average of 81 files/s throughout. Nice!

Peak virtual memory load was 99.9% (51 GB committed) with physical memory load peaking at just 56.7% (that means I should increase virtual memory settings, perhaps?). I may do some memory overclocking later (i.e. turn on XMP), to see what effect memory speed has on this workload.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The compilation speed is really impressive — at times the CPU manages to peak above 200 output files/s, with an average of 81 files/s throughout. Nice!

Which NVMe SSD are you using? I imagine a WD SN850 would result in even bigger gains.

 

[Vattila]

Which NVMe SSD are you using? I imagine a WD SN850 would result in even bigger gains.

The main drive in this system is just a reliable but old SATA Samsung SSD 850 PRO 512GB. So storage speed has room for a lot of improvement, true. I also have an old partially faulty hard drive installed, recycled for some extra space, but I don't really need it, and I would ideally like to remove it, to not have the annoyance of it spinning up from time to time.

Maybe there is another upgrade coming for this system. Or maybe I'll just cope until I get my planned AM5 (or Threadripper) system.

 

[Tech Junky]

~1200

That's still a bit high but you're still using the old cooler. Swap it out and see where you stand and if they're still revving like jet turbines get better fans. The Arctic ones come in 5 packs for ~$40.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I don't know why some people are amazed at stable computers. If it isn't stable, you got unlucky.

nForce chipsets have entered the chat. I used to moderate the Soltek forum at nForcersHQ BITD, and the forums stayed brisk with user to user support.

EDIT: And while AM4 has mostly been a tank for me, when adding a NAVI 23 card, I have seen my first BSODs on win11pro. I am using SAM with 5700G and B450 ITX, so I don't know if that is a factor. As I have only been using the card a couple of weeks.

It is an easily reproduceable bug with latest drivers. If I turn the system on, then turn on either the TV or A/V while it is booting, it BSODs and reboots every time. My RTX did not do it in this board.

 

[bigboxes]

nForce chipsets have entered the chat. I used to moderate the Soltek forum at nForcersHQ BITD, and the forums stayed brisk with user to user support.

Remember VIA? That was a constant battle to keep stable. Put one fire out and something else would stop working. Then there's nForce. I had one board, a DFI model. It was the worst board ever. Something LANparty. Spent every last minute trying to get that thing stable. Threw it in the trash. Eff DFI.

 

[biostud]

I actually bought a 3800X and a b450 setup for my work computer.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The main drive in this system is just a reliable but old SATA Samsung SSD 850 PRO 512GB.

4K QD32 read speed comparison in MB/s. You will enjoy double read speeds!

 

[igor_kavinski]

It is an easily reproduceable bug with latest drivers. If I turn the system on, then turn on either the TV or A/V while it is booting, it BSODs and reboots every time.

It's AMD's bad VGA/UEFI BIOS for sure. When I used the RX 580, I had so much trouble making it work flawlessly with HDMI to my TV. It would completely lose the signal during the boot process and only SOMETIMES display the Windows screen. Gave up and put my Geforce 1060 back in to use with the TV.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Threw it in the trash. Eff DFI.

Wasn't DFI's fault. Eff nForce

 

[DAPUNISHER]

While it has been too long to remember all of the particulars; I personally had excellent experiences with both nForce chipsets and DFI Lan Party boards. DFI had hired a rock star ABIT engineer, and they became premiere overclocking boards. Even my Soltek was a champ, especially given the low cost of the board, and the bling-tastic gold PCB when most were green. Don't get me started on how great the iGPU on that board was. When overclocked with custom cooling, it was a beast for the time all things considered.

My skt754 Lan Party, was a bang for buck champ; I used it for years. I built a bunch of systems for clients using the Shuttle nForce2 boards with the Soundstorm audio processor. A derivative of the version used in the OG XBOX.

You did have to know the chipsets really well, and I did get access to NDA software for a time.

While many many owners suffered with nForce chipsets, I mostly had smooth sailing. Though the beta testing was understandably, pretty rough sometimes.

Heck, the MSI K8N SLI is the longest I ever kept a board in service. That thing lasted me through the entire XBOX 360, PS3, Wii era while my son outgrew console gaming.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I did get access to NDA software for a time.

Is it a lifetime NDA or can you reveal the nature of that software? I'm guessing something to tweak the chipset parameters to eke out more performance at the expense of stability.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Is it a lifetime NDA or can you reveal the nature of that software? I'm guessing something to tweak the chipset parameters to eke out more performance at the expense of stability.

I can neither confirm or deny that, Senator.

 

[Vattila]

I have now installed the Noctua NH-D15. I did not mount the optional second fan, as there is no room on the side of the heat sink facing the memory modules.

After 10 minutes idling on the desktop the CPU now averages 34° C (motherboard: 27° C, CPU sensor: 33° C, ambient room temperature: 22° C) with the fan at an average 582 rpm. The case fan has no sensor, but it is pretty quiet now on the Low setting. Overall the system is so quiet that there are more prominent noises from the secondary hard-drive (it goes to sleep after 2 minutes of inactivity though) and my HP LP2475w monitor (it has audible coil noise unless I turn the brightness down below 42%). So noise is definitely not worse than before the upgrade, even though I then had the case fan disconnected. I guess the PSU contributes much of the idle noise — its fan is small and quite old now (it has run since 2008).

During repeated software compilation stress tests, the CPU fan peaked at 1094 rpm, averaging 1028 (max speed for this cooler is ~1500 rpm, or ~1200 rpm with the optional low-noise adapter). Noise level was noticeable, but bearable. CPU temperature peaked at just 72° C now, averaging 66°. Max frequency boost during the test was 4.9 GHz, averaging 4.2 (average effective clock was max 4.6 GHz, average 3.2).

By the way, the max core clock I have observed so far is 5.04 GHz, as reported by HWiNFO64.

Overall I am very pleased with the upgrade — both the CPU and cooler are very impressive, and the extra memory removes previous limitations. A shout-out must go to Asus as well, for providing such a stable, feature-rich and well-supported AM4 motherboard with the PRIME B350-PLUS. And thanks to everyone in this thread for participating in the poll, sharing your experiences and giving advice.

PS. Unfortunately, I had the same cemented heatsink scare with the 5950X CPU. After unscrewing the old cooler, it felt stuck. So I considered trying some dental floss, as advised by @moinmoin earlier in this discussion thread, but I then realised it would be quite awkward to get it in between the cooler and CPU, especially with the motherboard still mounted in the case. So, before going to that trouble, I gave the cooler a little shake, and it seemingly came loose — unfortunately with the CPU attached. No pins were bent though, so I got away with it again, luckily.