The X99 Xeon remains functional and operational.
The X99 Xeon remains functional and operational.
My R5 1600 seems to be showing signs of wear, and I worry about its reliability. My Shittabyte B450 Aorus M has some problems, so let's be honest. I own a B550M Steel Legend bought on Prime Day for $130, which can be returned until the 31st. I plan to upgrade to an R7 3700X, R5 5600X, or possibly the upcoming R7 5700X. But the numbers don’t look good: even a mid-range R5 3600 costs around $300, and the R7 3700X is currently $325 and unlikely to drop soon—expecting it to hit $400 at best. The R7 5700X isn’t cheap now and probably won’t fall below $400 until later. Alternatively, I could spend about $250 on a Machinist X99 motherboard from China and a Xeon E5 2678-V3 with a 12-core CPU clocked at 2.5GHz (which can be boosted to 3.3GHz with microcode). This raises the question: for someone who mostly plays light games like modded Skyrim and maybe Flight Simulator, is it worth $530+ to reach Zen 3? Or would a more affordable Haswell-E chip be better in the short term?
the e5's CAN game impresses easily compared to any ryzen chip, yet I’d opt for an h81 motherboard with a lga1155 xeon e3 that delivers around 1600 performance at a lower cost. For upgrades, only e5s with high clock speeds stand out.
I was taken aback by this. Tech Yes City and Craft Computing both appreciated the Machinist board a lot. I own an ASUS H81I-PLUS connected to a G3258 for some fun. I’m thinking about it, but there are concerns. The exposed VRM on that board seems risky with a Haswell 4/8 chipset. A i5-10400 or i3-10100 with a B460 or H470 board comes to mind, especially with the $20 deal at Micro Center. I worry the i3’s 4/8 will last me several years—this is my PC for a while. I also have an i7-8086K, but no compatible motherboard exists, and Z390 MATX boards are quite pricey right now. Plus, it’s only slightly better than what I’m using now.
You're mainly focused on gaming and have already got an AMD 5600X. The main challenge right now is finding a compatible one. I usually see the 5800X because it seems to be the model most people don't want anymore. The 5700X won't offer much speed improvement. A 12-core chip from that era can be fun to build and gives more PCI lanes than Zen, but for gaming it's just too slow. A single core isn't ideal and it consumes a lot of power.