Look at you, going all out .

Have you decided which processor will you use on that new mobo?

Probably a 3600, nothing too fancy. But in terms of RAM I'm doubling both speed and capacity with the upgrade to DDR4, so yeah.

Coming from a FX 8350 which bottlenecks certain CPU-heavy modern games' framerates in the mid 40s, that should be a interesting jump.

Not sure how precise the data on GPUCheck is, but difference between 3600 and 8350 with same GPU is around 40%, so yeah, quite a bump.

It's closer to 100% according to Gamedebate and youtube comparisons seem to confirm it. It can be even more impressive with 1% lows sometimes.

As it should be, really - Zen 2 has the best IPC in the market, while Piledriver matches Intel's Core architecture from 2008, clock per clock. It's absolutely abysmal nowadays for almost anything except certain niches like compacting and decompacting data.

The 'Alienware' twins

Parents

Mine

The shared parts are the same for both:

CASE - Nikao Ogre (2004-2006 Alienware knockoff)

APU - Ryzen 2400G 4c/8t 3.6GHz-3.9GHz w/ Vega 11 1250MHz

HTSK - Deepcool Gammaxx 200

MOBO - Gigabyte Aorus B450 M

RAM - T-Force Vulcan Z DDR4 3000MHz 16GB

NVMe - Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 500GB

HDD's - Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 2TB

PSU - Antec Earthwatt 380w

ODD - LG Lightscribe DVD burner

OS - Win 10 Pro

Parents old PC was a pre-built HP, Intel i5 2400 4c/4t 3.1GHz w/ Intel HD2000, Intel H61 mobo, 4GB DDR3 1333MHz, 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM, 300w PSU, Win 7 Home.

My old PC was a custom Intel Q6600 Core2Quad 4c/4t 2.4GHz, Deepcool Gammaxx 200, Nvidia GeForce Zotac GT 630 SE 2GB, Asus P5NE-SLI, 4GB OCZ SLI DDR2 800MHz, 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM, 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM, 550w Titan Power PSU, Win 7 Pro. I initially started out with a GeForce 8600GT, 2GB OCZ DDR2 800, 320GB Seagate 7200RPM, 500GB Seagate 7200RPM, and stock Intel cooler. I kept the same case, and my parents case was left over from my older Athlon 64 3400+ build. Kept the cases mostly for nostalgia, since their airflow isn't spectacular, just ok.

Finally got around to finishing them the other day. The cases, ODD's, HTSK, 1 HDD, and a few case fans were kept from past PC's. The rest cost me just under $1,000 CDN total with BF sales. Best deal was the XPG NVMe, which was typically $225, on for just $79.

Haven't had a chance to game just yet, but in terms of general computing, while they are clearly better than my parents old PC, there is a night and day difference compared to the Q6600. Windows 7 used to take 3-4 minutes to fully load on my old rig, and Win 10 is ready to go in less than 20 seconds now. Chrome used to take 5-10 seconds to open, and it's 1 second now. Windows 7 updates on average would take about 20 minutes to install, and at times it would take hours. So far win 10 (1809), which had more updates than I anticipated, hasn't taken more than 1 minute to install any of them. UMS streaming which would drop streams if too many were going at once, can run twice as many now with ease. Transferring files at 100mbps USB 3 instead of 12mbps USB 2. The only thing that seems to hang a little, oddly enough, is MS Word 2019, which takes like 2 secs to open now. It was taking longer, around 5 seconds, but I shut off a few online options and it's snappy enough now.

The stock AMD cooler on my parents is already changed to the 5 blade version. After the first day there was nothing I could do to get rid of the rattle the 7 blade version seems to have. It's rev E. I used the rev B fan from my APU, and while it needs to run at higher RPM's to maintain the same temps, it's near silent. Even if I ramp it up to peak, it stays surprisingly quiet.

The builds were planned for potential future upgrades. Parents may get a new APU a few years down the road when they offer 8 cores. Depending on what happens with the consoles, I'll either follow suit and stick with APU's, or go with an entry 8 core CPU and solid 1080p capable GPU. Somewhat limited with the PSU, but I've read it can handle more than most would assume. The endless reviews on it are about as positive as they get. If I do decide to go with a GPU that the PSU can't handle, i'll just have to upgrade that too. Maybe SSD upgrades instead of more HDD space as well. We'll see.

Question for any Ryzen users. Do your APU/CPU temps fluctuate by a large amount constantly when in use? Both new rigs can jump 20C but will drop back near idle temps around 30C within seconds. During idle, temps still fluctuate but nowhere near as much. I assume this is Ryzen boosting maybe? It's not really a big deal if it's typical, but my fans were ramping up and down a lot and had to spend quite a bit of time on them to keep RPM's fairly consistent. Could also be that Gigabytes fan software isn't set up that great to begin with.

@haxxiy_ The 3600 is a solid upgrade, and you already said how much of an improvement it will be.
I would personally try to get an 8 core processor because of next gen consoles will have one and ports aren't always well optimized, but I'm sure you'll be fine.

@EricHiggin_ Looks like both you and your parents got a nice X-mas upgrade too. Congrats.

*** NEW CONTEST ***

• HEXUS EPIC Giveaway Day 20: Win an Nvidia Shield TV https://hexus.net/ce/features/audio-visual/137510-day-20-win-nvidia-shield-tv/

It's the new model with the improved Tegra X1+. The contest is GLOBAL.

Bloody hell, looked up few YT vids, it's indeed quite a jump in lot of titles, need to stop relying on GPU Check alone.

While a 3600 is a solid upgrade from the 8350, isn't it a bit small to mate him with an hugh-end X570 mobo? Sounds like a bit of an overkill to me. However, if you're just gaming and not doing anything else with it then the 3600 is the best choice in terms of value hands down. Otherwise, I would rather choose an 3700X, which has a bit more oomph to it and more future-proof with his 8c/16t for not too much more money.

Would be funny if that mobo would be paired with an 1600, as these can be found for less than 100$ these days and comes now even in 12nm like the 2600 as opposed to 14nm like it originally did.

Today's free game on the Epic Store is The Talos Principle: https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/the-talos-principle/home