Hi guys. Since I'm facing a clean install of my system I'm thinking there's no time like the present to upgrade my CPU & motherboard. My question is, is the Ryzen 3600 a worthy upgrade on the i5-6600 and is the Gigabyte GA-A320M-S2H a decent low-end motherboard? I do game on my PC and currently have a Palit Gaming Pro RTX 2060 in there.
I can get both CPU & motherboard for £223.99 which includes a BIOS upgrade before shipping.
Thanks.
I'm unsure. Depends on how you use it.
The I5 is a 4 core CPU without hyperthreading. The 3600 has 6 cores plus hyperthreading, 12 cores virtual. For multithreaded applications, the 3600 will be much more powerful. I'm not a gamer; do current games exploit multithreading?
For motherboards, I think I'd prefer one with an X570 or B550 chipset rather than A320. I don't overclock, but I wouldn't want a board that doesn't permit it, as a matter of principle. They'll be more expensive than the Gigabyte, but in the US, not enormously so. On the plus side, at least your MB vendor is willing to supply the A320 board with a BIOS update to support the 3rd gen Ryzen CPUs.
The upgrade would definitely be "worth it" even from a gaming perspective, as bobkn mentions the multi threaded performance will be much much better, and most games released in the last 3 - 4 years can take advantage of 4 - 6 cores at least.
The motherboard choice is a bit low end to be honest but if it suits your purpose and budget then it's good enough. The only other thing is the memory you choose as Ryzen really shine when paired with faster memory, look up the infinity fabric for that particular CPU, the memory should be double the rate for best performance, so if the fabric is 1800Mhz the memory should be 3600Mhz for one to one matching, ideally.
Of course that means the motherboard needs to support that memory speed as well.
My RAM is Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4 3200MHz (CMK16GX4M2B3200C16). I have decided against the A320M motherboard and went with a MSI Mortar MAX instead.
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