Ryzen R5 3600X vs. Intel i7 9700K

I'm looking to build a new rig, focused on silence and mainly gaming (I'll watch videos/films and very occasionally do some productivity tasks, but very rarely). I'll be using a 1440p 144hz monitor.

All other components being equal (RTX 2070 Super, 16GB RAM, SSD) I'm deciding between a Ryzen 3600X or Intel i7 9700K. For the Ryzen I would be buying a Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 4 cooler and for the Intel I would be reusing an existing Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 2, which is mainly why I'm comparing the two CPUs from different price categories. The below costs are simply the components that differ between the builds (~£105 difference). If it makes a difference it's an mATX build in a Fractal Design Define Mini C case.

I generally build my rig to last 5/6 years and would only upgrade things like the GPU.

Even though I can reuse the Dark Rick Pro 2 for the Intel build to make it cheaper, is it worth the extra £105?

Intel Build (£495)
Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [Intel - Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/...bx80684i79700k) | £364.99 @ Amazon UK
**Motherboard** | [Gigabyte - Z390 M GAMING Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/...-z390-m-gaming) | £129.95 @ Amazon UK
| *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* |
| **Total** | **£494.94**

Ryzen Build (£390)
Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [AMD - Ryzen 5 3600X 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/...0-100000022box) | £239.99 @ Amazon UK
**CPU Cooler** | [be quiet! - Dark Rock Pro 4 50.5 CFM CPU Cooler](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/...u-cooler-bk022) | £69.90 @ Amazon UK
**Motherboard** | [MSI - B450M MORTAR Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/...d-b450m-mortar) | £79.97 @ Box Limited
| *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* |
| **Total** | **£389.86**

Use the cooler that comes with the Ryzen 5 and save yourself another £70 - it's meant to be silent.

And at that point the cost difference between the two becomes even larger, no contest really.

A third option: trade up to the 3700X, the stock cooler is even better than the 3600X, and don't buy the dark rock. It's still £95 cheaper than the intel setup (£320 + £80, it's also still slightly cheaper with the dark rock), and has SMT over the intel chip along with a lower TDP (so quieter)

I was just having a discussion about this.

If you're coming from an Intel platform and want to go ITX, the X570 ITX boards (or board) are up at £220+, which severely impacts the value of the Ryzen 3000 CPUs.

If I was looking to upgrade, I'd give some serious consideration to just dropping a 9700K/KF in my current board. The performance hit will only be seen in productivity workloads, if at all, and it offers a significant saving right now.

I'd imagine when the new boards really start hitting the market, there will be better value alternatives but, right now, the ITX premium is really difficult to swallow.

Hardware Unboxed just released this video comparing the 3900x bundled cooler with a 360 Deepcool AIO. Looks like they've got very comparable performance on the Ryzen chips. The main difference is in the db rating which was a concern of yours, where the AIO does perform (as you'd expect) better. For pretty much all workloads the stock cooler is very adequate and not obnoxious when under low stress (video, etc). And if it's not, I'm fairly sure the stock cooler sells reasonably well on eBay so you can reclaim some of the costs of your alternative solution.

Edit:

At 8:30 on the video there's a direct comparison to intel performance with the costing of an adequate cooling solution for the Intel devices factored in. There's no 3600x comparison, however I have heard for gaming it's bang for buck is even higher than the 3700x. Gamers Nexus also release this video discussing the merits of 3600 vs 3600x which might net you some additional savings that you could put towards better case/cooling for a more silent build.

I'll definitely be buying the Dark Rock with the Ryzen due to sound concerns so have taken the stock cooler out of consideration for me, I know others won't but for me I will be.

If the Intel mATX motherboards were the same price as the AMD B450M I'd probably go for it, but they're around £40/50 more so it still keeps the overall price difference at around £100.

Would the difference between the Ryzen 3600X and Intel 9700K be significant enough to justify the £100? Various benchmarks seem to show the same performance whilst others have the i7 far ahead. Especially if I'm not looking to upgrade in the next 5 or so years, would it make much of a difference to be worth investing the £100 now?

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Originally Posted by ikix

I'll definitely be buying the Dark Rock with the Ryzen due to sound concerns so have taken the stock cooler out of consideration for me, I know others won't but for me I will be.

If the Intel mATX motherboards were the same price as the AMD B450M I'd probably go for it, but they're around £40/50 more so it still keeps the overall price difference at around £100.

Would the difference between the Ryzen 3600X and Intel 9700K be significant enough to justify the £100? Various benchmarks seem to show the same performance whilst others have the i7 far ahead. Especially if I'm not looking to upgrade in the next 5 or so years, would it make much of a difference to be worth investing the £100 now?

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I have a Dark Rock 4 (non-pro) on my 3700x, in a NZXT 500 and it's very acceptable noise wise. So I can't blame you!

As for the difference between the two, I've seen/heard much controversy on this subject. There's a good amount of bias in some reviews, compounded by the poor driver/bios support Ryzen currently has. The Ryzen architecture is more advanced, and I'm feeling confident that ultimately once those kinks are worked out those chips will evolve and be utilised much more successfully.

AMD has a good relationship with a lot of software companies so I'm hopeful that new games will come to adopt to those chips with the increased core/thread count and really excel. It's all a bit of a gamble, but I'd probably prefer to take a gamble with AMD over intel as it stands. I feel AMD Ryzen 3xxx series has more to offer in the next 2/3 years.

Edit: It's important to note that AMD are also working with Sony on the new PS5 and Xbox; so engines will be built for those architectures that'll likely transition to the PC market and visa-versa

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Originally Posted by ikix

Especially if I'm not looking to upgrade in the next 5 or so years, would it make much of a difference to be worth investing the £100 now?

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Well, if keeping the rig for 5 years, why not spend the extra £70 or so for the 3700X? 8C/16T is nice now and will probably become essential during the next 5 years.

Especially once the new consoles come out at the end of next year, 8 Zen2 cores are going to be required for a lot of newer games. In the meantime, the extra cores means less frame inconsistencies when background tasks 'do' stuff - unless you shut down most background tasks when gaming.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ikix

I'll definitely be buying the Dark Rock with the Ryzen due to sound concerns so have taken the stock cooler out of consideration for me, I know others won't but for me I will be.

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I guess it depends on how much hassle you'd find it to have to open up the rig and swap out a cooler, as the pragmatic thing would be give the Ryzen stock cooler a go and if you don't like it buy the Dark Rock etc.

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Originally Posted by kompukare

Well, if keeping the rig for 5 years, why not spend the extra £70 or so for the 3700X? 8C/16T is nice now and will probably become essential during the next 5 years.

Especially once the new consoles come out at the end of next year, 8 Zen2 cores are going to be required for a lot of newer games. In the meantime, the extra cores means less frame inconsistencies when background tasks 'do' stuff - unless you shut down most background tasks when gaming.


I guess it depends on how much hassle you'd find it to have to open up the rig and swap out a cooler, as the pragmatic thing would be give the Ryzen stock cooler a go and if you don't like it buy the Dark Rock etc.

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I decided against the 3700X due to a Gamers Nexus video which showed a pretty minimal difference between it and the 3600, especially for the price difference. The reason I was tempted by the i7 9700K was the reasonable increase in performance beyond the 3600, but of course there is the cost difference. If I didn't have an existing cooler for the i7 I probably wouldn't be looking at it due to the price increase.

Would the 8 threads of an i7 9700K be at much of a disadvantage compared to the 12 threads of a Ryzen 3600X in the future?

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Originally Posted by ikix

Would the 8 threads of an i7 9700K be at much of a disadvantage compared to the 12 threads of a Ryzen 3600X in the future?

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*peers into his crystal ball*

Yes.

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Originally Posted by ikix

I decided against the 3700X due to a Gamers Nexus video which showed a pretty minimal difference between it and the 3600, especially for the price difference. The reason I was tempted by the i7 9700K was the reasonable increase in performance beyond the 3600, but of course there is the cost difference. If I didn't have an existing cooler for the i7 I probably wouldn't be looking at it due to the price increase.

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Gamers Nexus pretty much only recommend the 3600 for gaming though. They show the 3600X as measurably but not noticeably faster for a lot more money (2% faster for 25% more money I think was the line). If I was only gaming I think I would have gone 3600, but this is a work machine as well so the 3700X seemed a better bet (given I already have an X470 mobo so Intel is out).

Their 3900X overclocking stream starts with an interesting demo though where they don't overclock they just use their LN2 rig to vary the temperature to show how Precision Boost 2 changes the clocks. It's quite a lot, making a water loop look like it is worthwhile to keep that beast chilly even for people like me that keep the CPU at stock.

Its kind of a weird time to upgrade at the moment. RTX GPU is still a gimmick and will have to wait until wait future game engines do. The deal in GPU is the 2070 super. CPU wise Intel offering are still competitive at least performance wise vs zen2 maybe still on the pricey side. The upgrade ability of just dropping a new cpu into amd board will be less hassle. Due to new consoles coming out next year with 8c 16 thread zen2 cpu then your best bet is 3700x that will be enough power next 4-5 years. The console zen2 will be clocked lower due to power/cooling constraints.

However if you suffer from upgrade buggits like I do just drop an intel 9600k overclock to 5.1 ghz. It will beat anything from amd in gaming at the moment. Then look at your options in late 2020 when zen2+ and 10nm sunny cove will be floating about. If you definitely not going to upgrade for 5 years then options are simple 3700x or 9900k then its down to price. If intel drop the price of the i9 it could be tempting. You could always buy 9700k and drop a second hand i9900k when you feel 8c 8t of the 9700k is not enough but to be honest that will not be for a while yet. If pushing frames is what you want to do then intel it is but amd do offer a very budget friendly alternative which is not far off. You can't really go wrong with 9700, 9900 3700x its just a question of what price you can get them.

Top-end intel CPUs go for silly money second hand, you can't really pick one up later when prices drop unless you wait ridiculous lengths of time

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Spreadie

I was just having a discussion about this.

If you're coming from an Intel platform and want to go ITX, the X570 ITX boards (or board) are up at £220+, which severely impacts the value of the Ryzen 3000 CPUs.

If I was looking to upgrade, I'd give some serious consideration to just dropping a 9700K/KF in my current board. The performance hit will only be seen in productivity workloads, if at all, and it offers a significant saving right now.

I'd imagine when the new boards really start hitting the market, there will be better value alternatives but, right now, the ITX premium is really difficult to swallow.

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1) Why'd someone with a modern intel platform need to upgrade? Any rig that can take the 9700 is only 18 months old at most

2) Just get an X470 or B450 if you need ITX

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Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

Gamers Nexus pretty much only recommend the 3600 for gaming though. They show the 3600X as measurably but not noticeably faster for a lot more money (2% faster for 25% more money I think was the line). If I was only gaming I think I would have gone 3600, but this is a work machine as well so the 3700X seemed a better bet (given I already have an X480 mobo so Intel is out).

Their 3900X overclocking stream starts with an interesting demo though where they don't overclock they just use their LN2 rig to vary the temperature to show how Precision Boost 2 changes the clocks. It's quite a lot, making a water loop look like it is worthwhile to keep that beast chilly even for people like me that keep the CPU at stock.

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It's not hard to keep the 3900X cool at stock, some reviewers even used the stock cooler in tests and it still beat the intel line-up hands down with all cores loaded

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Originally Posted by Xlucine

It's not hard to keep the 3900X cool at stock, some reviewers even used the stock cooler in tests and it still beat the intel line-up hands down with all cores loaded

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The point they were making is that room temperature matters when benchmarking these AMD chips. If you have a poorly ventilated case, performance will suffer. The flip side is that if you keep the CPU chilly, like at 30C, then it will boost all day.

It might explain some of the variations in review conclusions. Not as bad as the Raspberry Pi 4 mind you, which seems to be thermal throttling central for a lot of benchmarks. Phoronix did a benchmark with a 2GB and 4GB Pi where the 2GB one was way faster because they weren't consistently cooled. So sloppy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

The point they were making is that room temperature matters when benchmarking these AMD chips. If you have a poorly ventilated case, performance will suffer. The flip side is that if you keep the CPU chilly, like at 30C, then it will boost all day.

It might explain some of the variations in review conclusions. Not as bad as the Raspberry Pi 4 mind you, which seems to be thermal throttling central for a lot of benchmarks. Phoronix did a benchmark with a 2GB and 4GB Pi where the 2GB one was way faster because they weren't consistently cooled. So sloppy.

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The same goes for GPUs, probably to a greater extent. The video lemonsqueezy linked showed a ~20 C temp drop only getting an extra 100 MHz clock speed (2.5%), which pales in comparison to the ~40% performance difference between the 3900X and 9900k in the hexus blender test

You could look at a 3700X with stock cooler for now as well? (not sure its worth for your light use tho)