Folks

I need your input on the following

how important do you think having high core count in CPUs in your daily workflow?

I'm planning on buying a new ryzen 5000 processor, while I am going to game the hell out of it I'm also planning to run wsl2, a ton of chrome tabs, maybe have multiple IDEs for developing random stuff, maybe some virtual machines for some experimentations, some docker containers for some selfhosted software and lastly open demanding games while having everything else open.

Will a 6 core 5600x be enough? or do you think investing in a 5900x will be worth it down the line? (lets say for the next 7 years)

Assume that the GPU will handle the games im going to play and the RAM is going to be 32gb for now

@jespersh if only it didnt cost an extra 300$ where i live (cause taxes)

5900x costs the same as 5950x abroad

I have 6 cores on my gaming machine and I've never noticed any performance issues. 2 cores on my work machine and the only reason I've seen anything weird with that is because I have a course on concurrency at the moment 🤷🏻‍♀️

Most normal programs in including games use one or a few cores at most.

If you regularly run multiple background programs you might need more.

Bit by bit programs are using more cores.

If you don't plan to run Android studio, 6 to 8 will be plenty. I can not run it at work (it runs but randomly cras he's and is slow) on my 4 core Intel processor. You won't have such extreme problems but the extra cores are worth it at least for that.

Funny thing with Ryzen 5000 is that it's not "single thread performance OR many cores" any more, i.e. the 5950X has both the biggest amount of cores and the best single thread performance (with some exceptions). So I'd say go as big as you can, especially if you intend to keep the machine for such a long time.

For my bau a dual-core is perfectly enough. I almost never disable powersave too [except when I'm compiling all the 48 projects]

Even the 6 core 1600 is enough.

Save the full money for the more expensive one. But buy the cheaper processor. In two years you upgrade the processor with the money you set aside and sell the old one on ebay.
That way you'll get double the performance in two years.

While you're asking about a CPU, pretty much all the workload you've identified is going to benefit way more from a RAM increase than a CPU increase. Multiple VMs open alongside loads of chrome tabs, docker containers, a game running, and a bunch of IDEs? Most of them won't give two hoots about CPU (unless you're running something particularly intensive) but will eat through RAM, especially if you want to give your VMs a decent amount each.

Honestly, I'd go for the cheaper CPU and double your RAM to 64GB with that use case. (And ignore all the tech Youtubers who seem convinced that no-one could ever need anymore than 32GB because the most memory intensive thing you can do on a PC is open blender and/or an Adobe product 🤦‍♂️)

FWIW, I'm likely going to go with a 5900X on my new build, but that's purely because I do a whole bunch of transcoding workloads which eat through CPU (and despite the marketing, the GPU accelerated transcodes don't produce content nearly as good.)

Threadripper or go home

@LameCode20 Come on man I haven't reached that level of paycheck yet XD