I have been wanting to upgrade my PC for a few years now and decided to finally commit. My old PC was first gen Ryzen 7 1700 build, still capable, but definitely outdated.
I have been an AMD fan for a long time, so I decided to start there for my CPU purchase. Doing some research, I was looking at the 5000 or 7000 series processors. The main difference is the 5000 series is the last of the AM4 line, and the 7000 and 9000 series is the newer AM5 socket which also supports DDR5.
Normally I am all about the latest and greatest, so this may seem odd, but I went with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700x! I was going for a lower budget (~$700 with no case or graphics card), partial upgrade build. The 5700x came out in 2022, so its not as old as the first gen 5000 series processors that came out in late 2020. This processor is 8 cores and only rated at 65 TDP, which is the same as my Ryzen 7 1700 was and I knew that lower TDP wouldn’t heat up my office to much, so that was one of the major selling points for me.
I did spend time pricing out the a 7000 series processor, like the 7600x as an example. In general for the price point I was looking at an AM5 processor was about ~$75 to $150 more, motherboard ~$50 to $150 more, and memory ~$50. If I went with an AM5 processor, I would have spent probably $250 more and it wasn’t worth it to me for the 15-30 percent in performance increase. This build will last for many years and allow me to save a little to upgrade my graphics card in the future.
Let’s jump on with the parts list
- AMD Ryzen 7 5700x
- MSI PRO B550M-VC WiFi ProSeries Motherboard
- G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series DDR4 RAM 64GB (2x32GB) 3600MT/s
- be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 750W
- Western Digital WD_BLACK 2TB SN770 (OS Drive)
- Western Digital 4TB WD Red Plus (General Storage Drive)
- Thermalright PS120SE CPU Air Cooler
I mentioned above that I was only doing a partial build here is the parts I am reusing from my previous build.
- XFX AMD RX 6600
- TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 2TB (Game Drive)
- LIAN LI PC-K6SX
Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. No additional cost to you.
First step was to remove the old components, as you can see, its a pretty simple, still using the stock CPU cooler and collected plenty of dust in 7 plus years.
The installation was pretty straightforward, however I did install the motherboard then realized that I forgot to install the CPU fan mounting bracket, so I removed the motherboard then installed the cpu mounting bracket, CPU, memory, heat sink and heat sink fans.
I am the worst at cable management, but I did try my best to run them better. Having the modular power supply helped a little, however I thought the cable management would have been a little better with a module power supply, I should have done my research. Anyone have some helpful videos on how to better organize cables?
The one thing I didn’t like about the motherboard was the system fan connection is near the memory slots and I am using a rear exhaust fan, so I had to run the wire longer, but it’s a minor complaint.
First time using a MSI motherboard, unsure if I like the BIOS, the layout and interface wasn’t super intuitive, but I am sure with a little time I will figure it out.
The one item I had to configure in the BIOS was the memory speed from 2600 to 3600Mhz.
Before I decommissioned my old computer, I downloaded Windows 11 and made a load able USB drive with Rufus.
Rufus allows you to install windows 11 with local user accounts (vs having to use a Microsoft account) and bypassing the requirement for Trusted Platform Module (TPM 2.0). I didn’t want my local windows user To require Microsoft account. I understand the intention and integration aspect, but I like my data local so I am going this route.
Since I was upgrading my hard drives as well, I had to plug all of them in at once and migrate user data from the OS drive to the new m.2 OS drive, and my spinning drive storage to the new WD Red plus drive. I didn’t intentionally go with all western digital, just happened to be what worked out, I have used Seagate and Samsung’s in the past.
Here is my computer installed back to the final locations, not as neat as others, but I like that is quiet, no leds, and out of the way.
I might put together a few build options based on price points in the future. I also highly recommend looking at https://pcpartpicker.com/ great website to see current prices on components, checks fit of basic things like CPU to motherboard and memory, and has just a great community.
One thought on “2025 Desktop build – AMD Ryzen 7 5700x”