Greetings!
So I’m going to upgrade my 8 year old i7 desktop to an AMD 3700x when it comes out next month. I’m going to put in 32gb RAM, and was wondering if I should get a Asus Prime X470-Pro now or wait for a x570. I’m on a budget, and read x570 may be much more expensive. I’m not really going to do overclocking. I mainly do media consumption and Photoshop lightroom work. And some minor Fusion 360.
Thanks!
Max
If you aren’t going to overclock, use PCIE 4 for storage or go for the 16 core CPU then any X470 should be fine.
X570 will be a lot of things but cheap is not one of them. It is going to take a while for Ram, storage speeds and PCIE devices in general to get to the point where we NEED X570 boards.
That’s my thought. Only concerned about bios since I have no other AMD processors. Howe can I update bios for 3700x?
True.
Then again, @westech has been using his current PC for 8 years so it stands to reason that he’ll probably keep the new one for a while as well. Even if PCIe 4.0 is going to take 4 years to become common, that may limit the potential for upgrading the PC later on.
I ran into that problem with my Sandy Bridge rig, which is limited to PCIe 2.0 and hence can’t take advantage of NVMe data drives or fast (2000+MB/s) PCIe RAID arrays. Kinda annoying when you do a lot of stuff that involves very large video files and where drive speed is important.
As for updating X470 BIOS for the upcoming Ryzen CPUs:
That Asus board is super mediocre features wise.
I would say wait for X570 and see the pricing, but if you go X470 try to look for some more feature rich board. Especially if you keep your system for 8 years.
Definitely wait in my opinion. The regular price for the Prime X470-Pro is fairly high too so there should be at least some X570 boards that are not a lot more expensive than that.
Besides there could theoretically be some little detail about how the new CPU’s perform when running with older boards that would be good to know.
And when tests are out and the new boards start shipping to stores, maybe there will be some great deals on X470 motherboards.
If you can wait, then i would recommend to wait.
As soon as X570 hits the market, X470 boards might go on fire sale.
Then you can still make a choice.
Also keep in mind that it’s rumored that the amazon day sale will happen around a week after the Ryzen 3000 launches so you might find further discounts on the last gen MB’s if you go that route. Another thing to consider is just how long will the industry wait until they implement PCIe 5.0? Since it was recently ratified. I haven’t heard anything about how much more difficult it will be do design products on that standard? I imagine they’ll be pretty mum on the subject for fear of killing their sales of gen 4.0 products. Kinda like how AMD kept true to the message that they didn’t want to add any features that lowered frame rate on their NAVI gpu’s. Subtext - the market isn’t ready for ray tracing until next year when their partners MS and Sony say they are with next years consoles… Joking. Mostly. Anyhow it all depends on your short term vs long term needs. There is also the trap of waiting for ‘the next big thing’, only to realize you wasted time/money working on kit that was a serious bottleneck to your workflow. Decisions are hard. 
There are now leaks of Asus X570 Mobo prices. Can at least decide if now X570 is even in your price range.
I too am sitting on the fence, it is about time to update from my 4690K. Contemplating building an 2700 rig or waiting for x570/3700X. Possible future storage and the ability to run PCIe 4.0 x8/x8 for VFIO are the 2 advantages I can actually see myself making use of with the x570. I often upgrade storage mid cycle, but the dual GPU setup for VFIO I am unsure on. Will it actually work well enough to save me from dual booting? If I only run a single GPU could save a lot by running a higher end B450 and a smaller PSU… Keep talking myself into buying something today and then into waiting…
EDIT: Fixed link
Where are the leaks?
Sorry, posted wrong link above, this is the one I meant to post: https://www.techpowerup.com/256443/alleged-asus-amd-x570-motherboard-price-list-paints-a-horror-story
Wait for deals after the X570 launch to decide.
As for the BIOS, some boards like the C7H can be updated without CPU or RAM. Highly recommended feature.
Thanks… yeah, right now for future proofing you could go with an X570 or if you need very fast RAM (or want fast RAM support down the road)
Wendell did post a slide from AMD in his wrap-up video that showed the sweet spot of about 64 to 66 nanoseconds response time was in the 3466 area then the delay went up about 15 nanoseconds from 4K or higher… until it dropped again way up in the speed range.
I will probably end up going with a TaiChi for either X470 or X570, just depends what the pricing is.
I am just hoping the 3950 will run in the hero VII. If not, i will be one upset person with Asus
Then again, @westech has been using his current PC for 8 years so it stands to reason that he’ll probably keep the new one for a while as well.
I did that with my first pc in college and in I find that I don’t care for the trade off of premium tech prices (Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU top tier prices in particular). I find it to be easier to pick up the mid tier range stuff and just upgrade it a bit more often. X570 is going to be a lot more expensive then x470 and B450 were. Wait a year though a X470 prices will drop then we could move his cpu over to a new sale motherboard or a B550 board which may have PCIE 4 without paying for the extra PCIE slots or AMD fabbed PCIE 4 design.
With @westech’s usage levels, another option is to upgrade parts more often but buy cheaper ones. His use case doesn’t have big hardware demands and editing in adobe and other photo apps really benefit from newer CPU (with more Cores, higher IPC and newer instruction sets) and GPU (for newer hardware encoders and more ram.) He will have less cores, less powerful video cards and probably a bit ram compared to a max build but it will insulate him from market hype and let him build more often.
I have nothing against Buying Big and then riding it out for the long haul, I still have an OC’d 2600k on a big old noctua air cooler was an awesome gaming pc/ video workstation, though it far outlived the GeForce GTX 480 I had it paired with. Then it became a baremetal hypervisor and is now a Nas with non-important test stuff. The build after that is being used as sound and hdmi capture pc and as a render box off my main machine. I find that I’d rather buy a Geforce 960 then upgrade earlier to 1060/1660 as opposed trying to ride out a Geforce 980ti to 3080 TI Super. . Same goes for CPUs. I think about how good the i7 7820X was at launch with the massive price tag vs buying an Ryzen 5 1600x, 2600x then a 3600x when they have gone on sale for about the same price over time. I think there is something to be said for lower priced mid tier purchases and quicker increments that could really works for people who aren’t maxing the hardware. The upside is you can turn that older hardware around as ebay beer money, hand me downs or spin them out into utility machines like a Home Server/LinuxTestbox/FreeNas.
@westech In the end good hardware will run for years and there are some things that only top tier hardware can do right. If you don’t need it then I’d advocate for a mid tier stead path of upgrades more often when there are good sales.
That’s my thought. Only concerned about bios since I have no other AMD processors. Howe can I update bios for 3700x?
This is a downside to this process.
Newegg had a “Ryzen 2000 Ready” tag for motherboards that supported the latest chips, they may do something like this again.
Some motherboard manufacturers have a loaner program to allow for bios updates.
I’ve heard of people borrowing or buying a cheaper amd supported cpu to do it.
The morally gray route is I purchased an a open box Zen 1 chip and returned back to Micro Center the last time I needed to do this.
Its a hassle that you’ll have going this route.
That is one of the most over engineered motherboards Asus released for X470. If that can’t take the 3950 then there is no hope for anyone else haha.
I’d wait for X570 for PCIe4, longer BIOS support time-frame, guaranteed support for the full Ryzen 3000 lineup, possibly better layout for better memory timings, etc.
I am right there with you.
One thing is for sure, AMD is my next build… only question is when and which gen mobo.
That was my thinking when i bought it. I specifically was planning on upgrading to the next gen which is why I bought a cheaper 2700 rather than a 2700x