AMD - Zen chitchat

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I need a low end machine for the office and saw an ad for A520. Who is that aimed at?

Its basically a rebadged B450 with no overclocking support. But if you already have a GPU get this:
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/inte...100f-cpu-boxed

If you don't have one get this:
https://www.cclonline.com/product/31...ooler/CPU0660/

Even the AMD 12NM APUs are not cheaper. It's like the whole AMD CPU stack has become stupid priced. Seriously the Ryzen 3 3200G being nearly £100 makes no sense,if a Core i3 10100 which has double the threads costs around the same!!

[pp05]

We have been on intel laptops. so no dGpu. Plus onboard gfx is preferred for quietness and lower temps. Since it's stationery, may as well get a budget desktop.

I was thinking if we ordered a r5 2600, I'll swap them my 2200G (not oc'd) for it. They get an APU, I already have a graphic card and b450, so no updating to do on my end either. A case of throwing it in.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

We have been on intel laptops. so no dGpu. Plus onboard gfx is preferred for quietness and lower temps. Since it's stationery, may as well get a budget desktop.

I was thinking if we ordered a r5 2600, I'll swap them my 2200G (not oc'd) for it. They get an APU, I already have a graphic card and b450, so no updating to do on my end either. A case of throwing it in.

If you are buying everything from new,the Core i3 10100 is faster than a similarly priced Ryzen 3 3200G,in both single threaded and multi-threaded benchmarks.Its 4C/8T vs 4C/4T after all.

If you do intend to re-use the Ryzen 3 2200G then its another route,but secondhand prices for the Ryzen 5 2600 are madness. I paid £137 for mine two years ago,and they still go for between £100~£120 secondhand,or £120 from CEX. The Ryzen 5 2600 and the Ryzen 5 1600AF(basically the same CPU) by the end of last year and early this year were between £90 to £110 IIRC and that was brand new!!

[pp05]

If you are buying everything from new,the Core i3 10100 is faster than a similarly priced Ryzen 3 3200G,in both single threaded and multi-threaded benchmarks.Its 4C/8T vs 4C/4T after all.

If you do intend to re-use the Ryzen 3 2200G then its another route,but secondhand prices for the Ryzen 5 2600 are madness. I paid £137 for mine two years ago,and they still go for between £100~£120 secondhand,or £120 from CEX. The Ryzen 5 2600 and the Ryzen 5 1600AF(basically the same CPU) by the end of last year and early this year were between £90 to £110 IIRC and that was brand new!!

Everything has seen price increase except ddr4, add to that shipping delays due to covid over the last few months. Then we don't know what happens on Jan 1st with the EU..

I'll have a play around ccl configurator around i3 and see what it comes up with.

[Rob_B]

I'm holding out for the 3100 to go back down but I might just go with the 10100F, if time runs out.
prices are just silly compared to even a couple of weeks ago

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Everything has seen price increase except ddr4, add to that shipping delays due to covid over the last few months. Then we don't know what happens on Jan 1st with the EU..

I'll have a play around ccl configurator around i3 and see what it comes up with.

Intel CPUs seem to be fine - I don't understand what is happening with AMD CPUs. Even the 12NM ones are affected when they should be fine!!

NAND(SSDs) are fine,and most DDR4 is fine,unless you want Crucial Ballistic E-die stuff. It seems the worst affected things are new generation GPUs,and AMD CPUs.

I don't think things are going down in January!

I'm holding out for the 3100 to go back down but I might just go with the 10100F, if time runs out.
prices are just silly compared to even a couple of weeks ago

Unless you really want the flexibility of AM4,then a Core i3 10100F is a decent budget CPU and cheaper. Even on CEX,the Core i5 8400/9400F are significantly cheaper than a Ryzen 5 2600!!

[DanceswithUnix]

Everything has seen price increase except ddr4, add to that shipping delays due to covid over the last few months. Then we don't know what happens on Jan 1st with the EU..

I'll have a play around ccl configurator around i3 and see what it comes up with.

Next time we want a simple office PC I'm tempted to go with something like this:

https://www.quietpc.com/asus-pn50-kits

But if you want the build to give you a CPU swap, then frankly any 400 series motherboard out there will run a 2200g. Heck they will all run a 3900X, with enough fans on them so the VRM doesn't start glowing . But do check the motherboard spec, the cheap 500 series stuff won't support a 2200g and I doubt an X570 will be in your budget. I briefly tried my 2200g in my B550 motherboard and it booted and *seemed* to run OK but I couldn't up the ram to full speed so it was stuck at something like 2666MHz so I wouldn't trust it.

There are some pre-built office machines out there, like: https://www.ebuyer.com/990071-xenta-...sktop-xr-d5160 but again that has a Prime B550M-K motherboard (https://www.itpro.co.uk/hardware/357...prisingly-fast) so you can't swap out your 2200G unless you swap out the motherboard as well. The system spec says B500M, a board that doesn't exist on the Asus site, and the review clearly shows B550M which is quite a nice board. Perhaps they are giving themselves leeway to throw a B520M board in there which Ebuyer sell for about £60 and is what I would expect them to include.

If you want to go CPU swapsies, I would go B450 board and frankly whatever CPU you can find available at the time. Even the 3100 seems to be pretty much sold out atm.

[watercooled]

That actually looks like a neat little system. I wonder what it's like in terms of noise?

[Rob_B]

I would like the flexibility and overclocking potential of AMD, especially as Asrock (?) announced one of their A320 boards (at £44) will support the higher end chips

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news...20-motherboard

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would like the flexibility and overclocking potential of AMD, especially as Asrock (?) announced one of their A320 boards (at £44) will support the higher end chips

https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news...20-motherboard

A Ryzen 3 3100 is not worth £100 when a Core i3 10100 is nearer £70 and faster in gaming!



I would have told you to get a Ryzen 5 2600 but it costs more even secondhand than the Ryzen 3 3100.

Also,another thing is the 6C/12T Core i5 10400F is around £140,or nearly £40~£50 cheaper than a Ryzen 5 3600.

Because of the price rise on AMD parts,many of the Intel parts are actually viable alternatives.

It gets progressively worse when a secondhand Core i5 8400/9400F is significantly cheaper than even my Ryzen 5 2600 secondhand,and is generally better in many games. Plus the problem,as I found out an upgrade means diddly squat if AMD is jacking up prices at each generation. Not only does it mean the secondhand market is overpriced,it also means the slightly older CPUs don't drop in price. A Ryzen 7 3700X is slower in most games than cheaper Intel CPUs,but is close to its RRP even when it is now superceded by Zen3.

AMD basically did a Turing,ie,they made sure Zen3 pricing was high so Zen2 could get cleared out at near launch pricing.

Unless Intel Rocketlake and Alderlake force AMD to cut pricing,AMD is definitely not the cheaper brand now. This is what happened during the Athlon 64 era too,and even towards the end of the Athlon XP era. There were some P4 chips which ended up being pretty decent value for gaming IIRC.

This is why in my case,I should have spent the extra £200~£250 2 years ago and bought a Core i7 8700K,and been done with it. Two years later,I will have spend as much or more in CPUs,to perhaps either get a bit more multi-core performance(but worse gaming performance in older games) or a bit more gaming performance. Yet I would have had two years of better performance by now if I had gone with an Intel system. Now I am stuck with this Ryzen 5 2600,as I don't want to spend £300 on a Ryzen 7 3700X,when a Core i5 10600KF is going to much faster in certain things I run and is £220,and a Ryzen 5 3600/3600X is almost the same price now!

In fact I calculated I could actually sell my current setup,and get a Core i5 10600KF with a Z490 motherboard for less than the cost of a Ryzen 7 3700X or Ryzen 5 5600X alone. Which is madness!

Also another issue is as Zen3 is going to be the last AM4 DDR4 design AFAIK,those higher end models are not going to drop too much in price IMHO. This is why the Phenom II X6 CPUs held their value for years!!

Intel has nothing to compete with the 12 and 16 cores AMD models - this is why the Ryzen 9 3900X and Ryzen 9 3950X are still £400+ even now.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Oh another thing - there are reports AMD is now massively prioritising consoles and APUs over desktop CPUs and GPUs:
https://twitter.com/nerdtechgasm/sta...15920144146432

News from TW on TSMC 7N wafer customers. In Q4, AMD is set to use ~120K wafers for console SOCs, ~80K for PS5 + ~40K for SSX! This is ~80% of 7N wafers allocated to AMD in Q4. This console ramp is the main reason for lack of Zen 3 & Big Navi.

So as Zen2 older stock gets depleted,what do you think is going to happen to newer Zen2 stock,or its replacements??

So 7NM supply is going to be tight now,and I doubt pricing is going to get better,unless Intel actually has something decent next year. But the problem is even AMD 12NM parts have shot up in price,which I can't explain. There should be no problems with 12NM supply? Intel OTH seems to be not really affected?? This is why if you are on a budget,the Intel parts are increasingly an option here - £30~£60 for the comparable Zen2 AMD CPUs,isn't worth it. AMD was recommended over those parts,when they cost the same or less.

[badass]

Oh another thing - there are reports AMD is now massively prioritising consoles and APUs over desktop CPUs and GPUs:
https://twitter.com/nerdtechgasm/sta...15920144146432



So as Zen2 older stock gets depleted,what do you think is going to happen to newer Zen2 stock,or its replacements??

So 7NM supply is going to be tight now,and I doubt pricing is going to get better,unless Intel actually has something decent next year. But the problem is even AMD 12NM parts have shot up in price,which I can't explain. There should be no problems with 12NM supply? Intel OTH seems to be not really affected?? This is why if you are on a budget,the Intel parts are increasingly an option here - £30~£60 for the comparable Zen2 AMD CPUs,isn't worth it. AMD was recommended over those parts,when they cost the same or less.

Looks like the odds of me upgrading/replacing my PC in the next 6 months just went through the floor.

Oh well, another 6 months on top of 8 years of i5-3570k isn't really that long in the big scheme of things.
Still, Scan are selling a Ryzen 3500x for £139. That doesn't look like a bad price. I wonder how long that will last.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looks like the odds of me upgrading/replacing my PC in the next 6 months just went through the floor.

Oh well, another 6 months on top of 8 years of i5-3570k isn't really that long in the big scheme of things.
Still, Scan are selling a Ryzen 3500x for £139. That doesn't look like a bad price. I wonder how long that will last.

SB/IB are legendary - my Xeon E3 1230 V2 only got retired because the motherboard started bugging out,and it made no sense for me to buy a replacement(mini-ITX so prices were high). I was on socket 1155 from launch,so nearly 7 years myself. The Ryzen 5 3500X vs the Core i5 10400F,I would like to see which one wins at that price!

However,my mate got quite lucky yesterday. They were on an old FX6300 based system,and managed to snag a Ryzen 5 3600XT for £190 from Ebuyer,as they put up a few for that price(but it sold out very quickly).

If I do see any decent deals on Zen2,I will try and post them in the Black Friday thread. But non Micron E-die RAM is going quite cheap,as are SSDs,so you can actually slowly collect parts.

[kompukare]

That actually looks like a neat little system. I wonder what it's like in terms of noise?

Reviews are a bit thin (think I saw one youtube one buy since I hate video reviews gave that a miss), but according to Asus:

Mini PC PN50 consumes as little as 10W at idle. It is also whisper-quiet, generating just 21.9 dBA of noise at idle and 34.7dB at full load.

https://www.asus.com/uk/Mini-PCs/Mini-PC-PN50/
Which isn't bad, on paper.

Unlike the ASrock DeskMini A300 / X300 the fan isn't user selectable. The DeskMini can squeeze in the Noctua top-blower is something like 24dB(A) at load but also bumps up the price by around £50 or so. Then again while small it is nearly 2 litres vs 620ml of the Asus

[kompukare]

@CAT
I think you jinxed it!
Since you mentioned CEX I had a look and while the last time I looked there was plenty of AM4 stuff, now in-stock online there are only 3 CPUs and they price has definitely gone up!
I better hope my old Z77 mobo doesn't blow, or I too will be forced to upgrade at a bad time.

[Nelly.]

3500x all now sold out at scan too lol.