Spent most of my budget on a GPU what are my options for CPU?

[MatthewOU2015]

Hello,


My prebuilt got canceled but I managed to snag a 3080 FE for MSRP. I had an $1100 budget but I spent $800 of it on the GPU. I currently have a ryzen 3600 but I play wow, cod, racing games, and they are heavily CPU bound. Upgrading to a newer CPU will require a new motherboard and windows license since I'm still using an x370 board. Would it be worth it to upgrade to a newer CPU? I feel like my 3600 will become a bottleneck in the future. Everything else in my PC will be reused unless 750 watts wont be enough for a newer CPU

[Kagthul]

An R5 3600 is not meaningfully bottlenecking your 3080 except in a theoretical way.

This would literally just be throwing money away for potential top end FPS gains that you likely wouldnt see anyway unless you're playing on a 240hz monitor or faster

An R5 3600 performs roughly equal to my 8600K (OCed to 5Ghz, i might have more stable minimums than you, but max fps wise, theyre close enough to even) and my CPU in no way bottlenecks my GPU. I can hit 144fps (the max refresh on my monitor) at 1440p in any game you care to name that isnt Cyberpunk and/or so heavily CPU limited that literally NO CPU can fix it (like WoW and other secure client-server games)

Just save your money.

Maybe worry about upgrading your 3600 when it actually does start to choke performance below acceptable framerates. There will certainly be something available in the same price range as a 5600X (about the only thing you can buy that would be a real "upgrade" over your 3600) - or faster if you want - that will be better than the 5600X (which you couldn't afford right now anyway evven if you could find them).

Just wait.

A 3600 + 3080 is not a weaksauce machine or something.

[elnimrod]

I can offer you a Ryzen 7 3800X @ $300, in fact I have it offered in Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/224336308892
I used it for about a year and replaced it for a Ryzen 9 5950X.

let me know if you are interested

[Shakadam]

A Ryzen 3600 is perfectly fine with a 3080. If you play at 1080p you'll get a tiny CPU bottleneck (we're talking just a few %) in a handful of games, if you play at 1440p or above there's absolutely no CPU bottleneck.

[Gref]

got an rx 6800 gpu and ryzen 5 3600.
144hz 1440p monitor. doom eternal everything max is constant 270~330 fps. I worried about bottleneck when buying these parts a month ago but it seems they are ok. your ryzen 5 3600 should be good for a few more years.

[Nihilist74]

800$ for a GPU. The most I have ever spent on a GPU was 220$ for my 1660. Could bitcoin farmers use a bunch of raspberry pi's or something instead of GPUs. They are cheaper. They would stop driving the cost up of GPUs.

[Erous]

Confused why you would need a new Windows license. You can bring win 10 with you anywhere.

[callipygoustp]

Upgrading to a newer CPU will require a new motherboard and windows license since I'm still using an x370 board.

You don't/won't need a new windows license. Just un-register the one you're using and then re-register it after you install windows on the upgraded machine. I've done it multiple times over the past few years with no issues what so ever.

[Kagthul]

You don't/won't need a new windows license. Just un-register the one you're using and then re-register it after you install windows on the upgraded machine. I've done it multiple times over the past few years with no issues what so ever.

you cant do this with OEM copies. If you paid full freight for a non OEM copy, then yeah, this is no sweat. You can just tie it to your MS account and be done with it. As long as iits only active on one machine at a time you're good to go.

- - - Updated - - -

800$ for a GPU. The most I have ever spent on a GPU was 220$ for my 1660. Could bitcoin farmers use a bunch of raspberry pi's or something instead of GPUs. They are cheaper. They would stop driving the cost up of GPUs.

That isn't why the 3080 costs 800$.

At launch it was a 700$ GPU, and recent tariff hikes have driven the price up further.

Its an 800% (700$) GPU because it can run 4k/Ultra at 60fps in most games and over that in many that aren't top-end.

Just like the 2080 before that, and the 1080Ti before that, and the 980Ti before that.. etc. The penultimate card in the stack is always pricy.

Thats the price you pay for high-end parts.