So a very long time ago now, I upgraded from my ancient AMD FX 6100 to a Ryzen 5 1600, and now I am on my 3rd CPU with an Intel i3 12100f.
Why did I go with an i3 and not the i5? Simple, I was on a budget and I couldn’t justify spending more than $250 CAD for this upgrade. I could’ve squeezed in the 12400 if it was in stock, but it wasn’t.
Why didn’t I just get a new AMD CPU and slot it in? Well I tried, but my Gigabyte motherboard (even with updates) refused to play nice with the 5500 I tried to upgrade too. If I was keeping with AMD I’d need to buy a new Motherboard and if I was buying a new Motherboard for this I might as well get the best bang for my Buck.
So what did I get.
Motherboard: MSI PRO B760M-P since it had the IO I wanted (2x M.2 slots and a USB C Port on the back)
CPU: Intel i3 12100f
And the results are… honestly surprising. Despite loosing 2 core and 4 threads, I gained in performance everywhere, or I was GPU limited with my 3050. 2 minutes off of my 10 minute handbrake render, 50fps extra in Doom 2016, and a doubling in Geekbench single core performance which I need thanks to my work in FreeCAD. FreeCAD is still slow, but the models I am loading are demanding.
Overall I am happy with my upgrade, and the best part is, since I am buying my Motherboards at the end of a socket generation rather than the beginning, it means when I want to upgrade in a few years, it should work with intel 13th and 14th gen CPU’s.
Geekbench before: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/6614622
Geekbench after: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/6616466
I just upgraded my cpu in a long time too! Everything that could go wrong, did. I had to flash my bios a few times, straighten some pins, clean out some thermal paste from the socket, but after 3 days I figured it all out and got it working. Getting a build working after lots of problems is so fulfilling, it’s almost worth the years of life I lost from stress.
I feel your pain. 9 years ago I dropped my Intel CPU into the socket. One magnifying glass, a tweezer, some toothpick, and a week later it was up and running for 8 years, until I moved and leave it in a cardboard box for 6 months. Now it’s just boot looping after the CPU fan spin for a few seconds.
I didn’t have to do that. Bought my parts from Canada Computers and they open the Motherboard box in store before the sale, to inspect it, and I had to sign off on it.
That said I had some issues of my own design. My PC has a space for a 3 1/2" floppy and I wanted it internal so I got a USB adapter for it to run off of the internal header. The damn board locks up on boot if its in.
Probably a setting but still annoying
Sweet upgrade! Good work benching it, thinking of doing a little overclock or undervolt or whatever the kids are doing these days?
Well I did enable XMP, but since I’m on a B series board I don’t think I can overclock. And she’s toasty as is with the intel cooler.
Nice, is your ram 4x8, 2x16, or 1x32? How about those m.2 slots?
You don’t need overclocking or undervolting to squeeze a bit more out of the system with dual or quad DDR and an nvme drive.
Ram is x2 16GB sticks, my BIOS yelled at me for not putting them in the optimum channels.
M.2 has my 2TB Linux Mint install and my 1TB Windows install. I’m not dual booting, just having the Windows install nearby just in case.
Beauty
Maybe no over/under tweaking with the non K CPU and B motherboard. No matter, upgrade is sweet anyway.
Looks like a cool benchmark program, I’ll try and remember to give it a go before I swap out my cpu
