If I decide to upgrade is the 5700x that much better than the 3700x? 3700x's are listed at less than 100USD on ebay. 5700x's are around 200USB. The CPU is going to be used for gaming and transcoding. Is there any reason to get a 12 core CPU?
Your board doesn't have bios flashback.
I have used a toothpick to nudge the pins back, then took a credit card I shaved the edge of, to make certain they are properly aligned. Never had a issue afterwards. If it doesn't drop in i.e. zero insertion force, keep at it until it does. Then flash the bios for the Zen 3 support.
How bios flashback works, is you can put a USB drive with the new bios in the designated port, push a button, and it will flash it to the board. All without a CPU or ram installed, just the board and power supply.The manual says it has a clear CMOS button that will reset BIOS to default values. I haven't looked at the actual board.
How bios flashback works, is you can put a USB drive with the new bios in the designated port, push a button, and it will flash it to the board. All without a CPU or ram installed, just the board and power supply.
I like my 5800X, I set it to ECO mode in the UEFI and add the +200MHz boost clock. It boosts past 5GHz and runs on 88W package power.
12 cores isn't needed for gaming, though some games can use them. I'd go 5800X in your situation. Down the road you could get a 5950x or 5800x 3D for a nice discount if you can use the extra performance or cores.
Sorry I was confused. I'll figure out the flashing the BIOS. As long as I can reset to factory defaults I can't brick my MB.
If so I'll get the system up and running and then decide when I want to grab a new CPU. I was just looking at Anandtech benchmarks and the 5800X is the clear winner. For some reason the 5700X isn't listed but the 5800X is only 10 dollars more. The 5800X beats the 3900X in pretty much every category that counts. I guess most things just don't take advantage of more than 8 cores.
The manual says it has a clear CMOS button that will reset BIOS to default values. I haven't looked at the actual board.
Clearing the CMOS won't recover you from a bad flash - it resets the BIOS values to defaults, not the BIOS itself.
Honestly, unless you can get that CPU booting solidly, I'd pay Microcenter the $30 (I think that is what they charge to update a BIOS) to do it rather than trust a flaky CPU and trash the motherboard with a crash in the middle of flashing the BIOS.
There is a 3rd option as well, if you can't get the CPU stable and you don't want to pay Microcenter to do it.
AMD will loan you a low end CPU to use to flash the BIOS since you can't boot your AM4 motherboard without it. As far as I know, this program is still ongoing though you'd want to email AMD to be sure.
How did you get into the BIOS without a video card?I worked on it today. I had apparently plugged my keyboard into the wrong USB port without noticing, one that probably needs drivers to work. So when I pressed Delete to get into BIOS it continued to boot from a hard drive with no GRUB on it. Switched to another port and got the 2700X to post and got into BIOS so it appears to be working ok. I'm going to have it dual boot Win7/Linux. I don't even have a video card yet so BIOS flash and CPU upgrade will be done after everything is up and running.
How did you get into the BIOS without a video card?
I question how much sense it makes to drop a $200+ Zen 3 CPU into one of these older motherboards given the I/O limitations....
Your primary GPU lanes are stuck at gen 3 x16 (or 8+8), your primary NVME slot is stuck at gen 3 x4, and your x470 chipset uplink is gen 3 x4. The M2_2 runs through the chipset and is limited to gen 2 x4. The remaining PCIE slots are also stuck on gen 2. While it's a decent motherboard, and was quite good when it was current, its vastly inferior to any x570 or even a b550 board in terms of PCIE bandwidth.
This is all true, and I don't dispute that the B450's and X470's are limited. The question is does that actually matter, and there are a vast range of use cases where it doesn't - most gaming builds, for instance. PCIe 3 doesn't affect gaming GPU performance unless you are using one of the crippled AMD low-end units. Likewise for PCIe 3 vs 4 running NVMe SSD's. I would defy most users, including gamers, to subjectively tell the difference between PCIe 3.0 x2 and PCIe 4.0 x4, never mind PCIe 3.0 x2 vs x4. Put your most-used games on the x4 NVMe and use SATA for bulk storage.
There are absolutely use cases where all the above matters, but they are very very far from the majority, IMO. If I had a B450 or X470 motherboard, I wouldn't stress over whether I should keep it while upgrading the CPU.
This is all true, and I don't dispute that the B450's and X470's are limited. The question is does that actually matter, and there are a vast range of use cases where it doesn't - most gaming builds, for instance. PCIe 3 doesn't affect gaming GPU performance unless you are using one of the crippled AMD low-end units. Likewise for PCIe 3 vs 4 running NVMe SSD's. I would defy most users, including gamers, to subjectively tell the difference between PCIe 3.0 x2 and PCIe 4.0 x4, never mind PCIe 3.0 x2 vs x4. Put your most-used games on the x4 NVMe and use SATA for bulk storage.
If I had a B450 or X470 motherboard, I wouldn't stress over whether I should keep it while upgrading the CPU.
I bought the board and CPU in April 2021 with the intention of upgrading my FX8350 that I used to transcode. I was going to pair it with a video card so I could use it to game as well. I haven't upgraded my gaming rig in years. The stupid video card prices hit and then I got involved with other things in life so I put the whole thing on the self. I just recently got back to it. The FX8350/ASUS Sabertooth is living out it's retirement as a storage server. I have everything finally put together and at this point just need to install the OS. A new MB would involve tearing everything down and rebuilding. I have no desire to do that so the limitations are more than acceptable. And I'm going from an FX8350/crossfired 7970's to 2700X>5800X/5700XT or 6600XT or maybe higher. Anything is going to seem insanely fast to me.
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What if you could walk into a Micro Center tomorrow and grab an Asus Z690 TUF and a 12700k for $360? ...
You’ve waited long enough! I vote 6700XT!