we've all had that moment of regret when we finish building a new computer or we
get a new phone or a new car and then after like a week of bliss
the company announces a new one is coming out that's way better than the
one you just bought come on
well that moment just happened to us here at LTT we had hardly finished
building our land center before AMD dropped a bomb on the industry with
their zen 2 aka ryzen 3rd gen processors
so we are taking that bomb and dropping it into one of our land rigs to see how
it handles and this is where we drop
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now it's impossible to predict the future that's tech tip number one so when we
received the new cpus from AMD after just building the new lan center we all
had a good laugh the sad kind
but exactly how screwed are we by this and if you're in a similar situation
exactly how sol are you well it depends
does the store you bought it from have a return policy you may be able to return
the product for a refund and get the shiny new part right away but if you're
outside the return window what are your other options in our case we don't need
to worry about a whole platform change since ryzen 2 and 3 both use the am4
platform you might be able to give your motherboard a BIOS update drop in your
new chip and enjoy the greater performance and we'll get to exactly how
to do that in a bit but what if you just bought an Intel CPU and motherboard then
you panic just kidding you've got a few options
a lot of computer components especially newer stuff can retain a decent
percentage of their value for longer so you can just sell the CPU and board and
keep the rest of your hardware as it is still viable for the new build
now the used market can be a bit fickle but if you kept the boxes packaging and
receipt there's a good chance you'll be able to recoup between 60 to 75 percent
of what you paid and sometimes more depending on timing or what area you
reside in it's not ideal but
it's better than nothing another thing you can do is use the parts you just
replaced and build a rig for a friend they'd get a discount and they'd owe you
one a favor you could redeem at the time of your choosing but back to AMD team
red's commitment to supporting the am4 socket through 2020 has given us an
interesting set of components that are all interchangeable we now have three
generations of CPU that are compatible across six chipsets with a couple of
exceptions first gen ryzen chips are not compatible with the x570 chipset and
third-gen ryzen won't work on a320 boards while AMD has given us a neat
little compatibility chart for their desktop chips Intel has taken it a step
further for their processors with a very useful website dedicated to checking
compatibility for older processors all the way back to the core ii quads those
geezers all that to say basically if
you've got an am4 motherboard chances are you can simply update your BIOS and
drop your new ryzen processor in for an easy bump in performance if you've never
updated your BIOS before it's pretty easy head to your board manufacturer's
website go to the support section and search for your board's model number
once you find it look for the latest BIOS update usually they're sorted by
newest first then download the installer and run it this should be a relatively
simple process but keep in mind if the power goes out during a BIOS update your
computer could be bricked so ideally use
a ups or definitely don't do this during a thunderstorm
why would you be doing that now after your BIOS is updated pull off your
cooler and remove your old CPU then install your new shiny one
put it all back together boot it back up and pray to the pc gods it all works
hot tip i've heard they're more likely to listen if you buy our merch at
ltdstore.com now i hear some of you asking but riley
am i losing out on performance by not also upgrading my motherboard i heard
some of you say that just now the meds are starting to wear off well with ryzen
probably not the only major feature added on x570 is PCIe 4.0 support which
right now only provides a bump in performance for NVMe ssds as they can
use the increased throughput now for those of you saying but
x470 can handle PCIe 4.0 well AMD is
turning off that functionality in their next agiza update we will have to wait
and see what board manufacturers do in response but for everyone else you
probably won't notice any difference in gaming now we should say buying a 3rd
gen ryzen chip with an x570 board is
technically the recommended configuration we suggest the 3700x
because of its all-around fantastic performance and great pricing but if you
have limited funds we recommend getting the best 3rd gen ryzen CPU you can
afford and keeping your existing am4 motherboard unless it's an a320
motherboards can give you an extra 1 to 3 FPS depending but realistically the
CPU is the best value in this scenario and we recommend the board being the
last upgrade if your current one is compatible so AMD has claimed that they
have one of the most consumer-friendly series of cpus and chipsets in the
history of the x86 platform but now that we can see almost the entire upgrade
cycle how did they do well if you bought an x370 board and a 1700 x on release in
2017 you would have been able to enjoy top tier performance for a year and if
you just hated the feeling of running last gen hardware you could flip the
1700x for about 75 the original price when the 2700x arrived another year of
bliss and then another flip when the 3700x came on sale your parents never
said no huh in total you would have spent just over
500 and got to enjoy three generations of cpus from AMD that's pretty
compelling if you fancy yourself an enthusiast plus you didn't have to
upgrade your motherboard compare that to Intel at about 680 doing the same thing
and that's not including the motherboard upgrade basically you have a fantastic
amount of choice and can hit whatever price to performance threshold you
desire with AMD's approach now maintaining that level of compatibility
does have its downsides you can end up with a CPU that supports PCIe 4.0 and a
board that doesn't have any 4.0 slots and if you have an a320 board well
you're out of luck if you want to upgrade to zen 2. while there is a lot
going for AMD here compromises had to be made to maintain stability and the user
experience that's just life you know which brings us back to the land cave
just kidding we've been here the whole time are we upgrading to ryzen 3
although it would be quite simple to upgrade these rigs there are
12 of them and honestly they're already delivering
excellent performance so it doesn't really seem necessary but at least with
AMD we've got the option speaking of which
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