PC Master Race

I’ll second what has been said. Depending on what kinds of games you play will guide your CPU purchase. If you play CPU heavy games (simulators, grand strategy, Escape from Tarkov, etc.) the X3D variants would be a good choice. For previous gen that would be the 5800X3D. My brother has this one so I can tell you firsthand that it is a beast of a processor. However, this would lock you into DDR4 ram which means your next upgrade is guaranteed to need a new mobo, processor, and ram. The upside is that it’s fairly inexpensive compared to current products, so it’s good if you’re on a budget. If you don’t play those game the normal 5800X should be good.

If you’re looking for more current DDR5 build that you might be able to reuse parts for on your next upgrade, the 7800 and 7800X3D are what you want to be looking at (the 7800X gives you marginal improvement for way more power usage if I recall correctly, so not worth imo). I upgraded from an i7 7700k to a 7800X3D earlier this year and noticed fairly sizable improvements in performance for the games I play.

Either way, I don’t think you can go wrong with any of these options.

The first generation of AM5 socket CPUs (7000 series) came out this year. AM5 boards are also the first generation DDR5 boards as well. If you're looking to build something you can upgrade with some drop in replacement CPUs in another 2 or 3 years, then go with an AM5 motherboard. Otherwise go AM4 and put in a 5800x3d.

I think the sensible long term decision right now is to go with AM5 if you're doing a new build. If it's primarily a gaming machine, you'll want an x3d variant processor as those have triple the L3 cache which games tend to do much better with.

AM4 vs AM5 is really a budgetary question at this point. I had an AM4 build in 2020. A few months ago I upgraded it to a 5800X3D cpu and 6700XT gpu and it's been great. I considered a full rebuild with AM5, but couldn't justify the extra expense. My build was able to play elden ring at 1440p with max settings smoothly.

The latest and greatest generally isn't worth it. Those groundbreaking new features won't be consistently implemented in games for years to come. If money is no object, go for AM5. Otherwise AM4 should serve you well for quite a while.

Stupid question...maybe: Is there ANY benefits to the case choice? They go from 50 bucks all the way to 500. I honestly couldn't care less for design, LED lighting, open casing...If anything, I'd prefer it to be kinda quiet, and that's about it.

Last year i built my third gaming rig and have always been using full AMD setups. This time i have gone with a 5800X CPU and a RX 6700XT GPU. I'm also running full time linux (fedora) and i can't remember the last time i booted windows. Have played about 10-20 games in the last year, from indie to triple A, 90% of the time were buttery smooth experiences.

But back to your question. The 5800X serves me well, you could also consider the 3D variant. But then again, consider if you really want to invest in an "old" platform by now. You won't get PCIe 5 and DDR5.

As others have said, AM5 will give you DDR5 and PCIe 5 options for some future proofing, but the 5800X3D is still an excellent CPU and would save you some money in the short run. If you go AM4 I wouldn't bother with anything but the 5800X3D unless you're on a really tight budget, which doesn't seem to be the case.

And yes, rebar is a thing now. Improvements vary but it's there and works.

Ok...So I think I'm mostly thinking of an AM5 board with an 7600 CPU and possibly a 7800XT GPU, 2x16GB DDR5...What should I look for on an AM5 board if it was to last? I mean, I've been using a Gigabyte Z170K3 for nearly 7 years, and so far I never had an issue with it. Then again I never had to mess with it either, other than swapping SSDs and HDDs. Also, what kinda power will I need to hold all this together? Up until now a 750W PSU did the job just fine, but not sure with this config what would be advisable. I'm also concerned as due to the home crappy layout, a lot of stuff goes to the same damn fuse (a NAS, a microPC that acts as self-hosted server stack, a TV and a PS4), so sometimes the fuse gets triggered and shuts everything down. Not great for the PC, but definitely not good for the NAS. This is not all that frequent, maybe once every 6 months...but I don't want to increase it if possible.

I went balls deep with an ASUS x670 gene board so bought an 7950x3d. Havent received it so not sure what to expect.

In my logic the most important part is essentially whether you are getting a good enough AM5 motherboard and enough RAM to not have to swap them. Having power for a possibly larger power consumption next gen CPU and PCIe 5 x16+M.2 are important for longevity.

Once you are at am5 EOL, the TOTL might be a 32 core CPU. If you have all the newest gen PCIe, your setup might live a loong life even into newer generations. Otherwise you might be unsatisfied and make a new build sooner than later.

Wow...Just saw the tomshardware reviews for Alan Wake 2. A 7800XT basically struggles to keep at 1080p 30FPS when full RT is enabled.