I built a system for my better half with AM4 and a Ryzen 5 2400G APU back when they first came out.
It was nothing but trouble. Frequent freezes. At first I thought it was just a matter of waiting for a newer Linux kernel, but that never fixed anyhting.
I never quite figured out if I was suffering from the power management bug (I also vaguely remember hearing about it back then) or if it was just a matter of RAM and how picky Zen1 was about it.
What you pick for AM4 is going to depend on a combination of what your motherboard supports, and what you want to do with it.
If you play games, the choice is easy (if your motherboard supports it). Ryzen 7 5800X3D is the best choice hands down.
I have thus far upgraded two separate earlier AM4 systems to 5800X3D. Both of them worked perfectly, but flashing the BIOS was tricky on one of them.
The first was a MSI B350 Tomahawk that had been running a Ryzen 5 1600x from the start back in 2016. This one was easy, but required flashing the latest beta bios. They call it beta, but I don’t know why. I have found it to be rock solid. Maybe they just didn’t run the normal suite of tests on it to validate it.
Process was easy. Just flash the appropriate BIOS (motherboards support site listed which BIOS to flash for which CPU) then - when done - shut down, remove old CPU install new CPU and then power up again.
This system didn’t get Gen3 PCIe due to th eolder chipset, but that was fine.
The other was a little trickier. This was my better halfs 2400G system. I it was an Asrock X470 mini-ITX motherboard. It required me to remove the 2400G CPU, install the 1600x CPU (from the system above, luckily I had it) then flash it to the latest BIOS. Shut it down, and replace the 1600x CPU with the 5800x CPU.
Once done it works perfectly though.
What I would do is look up the support pages for your Motherboard and see if you can figure out which CPU’s are supported.
Then I would select from the following:
- $339 - Ryzen 7 5800X3D - 8C16T, best for games, very slightly slower for other things.
- $174 - Ryzen 7 5800X - 8C16T, like the above, but worse at games, but clocked slighly higher. This is the best budget choice.
- $262 - Ryzen 9 5900x - 12C24T. More cores = better for rendering/encoding
- $358 - Ryzen 9 5950x - 16C24T. Even more codes = Even better for rendering/encoding.
(Prices are current Amazon pricing in my area)
You mention 1080p as if that means you need a lesser CPU, but usually it is the other way around. The lower the resolution, the more the bottleneck shifts to the CPU, so the CPU becomes even more important.
You also mention encoding, in which case higher core count might be useful.
You may also consider upgrading your RAM while you are at it. RAM compatibility is much better with newer Ryzen chips than back on your 1700x. I would go for a set of DDR4-3600 with decent timings, as that appears to be more or less the sweet spot, and will make a difference, especially on the higher core variants when all the cores want to hit the RAM at the same time.
Luckily, as long as you don’t need too much of it, DDR4 is pretty cheap these days. I used this RAM in both the systems I upgraded to 5800X3D’s and it works perfectly:
If you are going to buy a motherboard, forget AM4. AM4 is a a dead socket with no future. If you are going to buy a motherboard today (or at any time after late September 2022, it should be AM5. That’s the only reasonable thing to do.
It does make sense to upgrade an existing AM4 system as far as it will go to get more performance while being budget friendly, but if you are going to replace the motherboard anyway, don’t get anything older than the latest socket. You’ll regret it later.