Hi all! I was wondering if I could get some suggestions for an upgrade for my rig. I'm pretty sure my bottleneck is my CPU (my comp bogs down playing Total War:Warhammer3 under proton, but not at all/minimal in other games), I'm currently running:
Ryzen 5 2600x
AMD RX5600xt
16 gigs ram
Asrock Asus B450M-A
500 Watt power supply
Running Linux if that matters
So, what should I upgrade first? My budget is $500, but it's pretty flexible. I'm pretty sure I could get both a better GPU/CPU under that price.
Edit: wondering about the power supply, have had it since 2017 or so, should I upgrade? From all appearances, it's working fine, but I'm unsure about headroom with a more up to date CPU and GPU.
Also should I try to get more cores, or a faster CPU? It looks like some of the more recent AMD CPUs have better TDPs than my current CPU (95W vs 65W), but I'm not concerned about the difference between my current one and the newer, higher wattage CPUs (which look to max out at 105 or so?)
6700(xt) are at much better prices now. You have a lot of options for cpu, pretty much depends on how high you want to go. The high end Zen 2 cpus might need a newer motherboard. Put whatever you end up deciding on in pcpartpicker and it'll give you a wattage estimate, the main thing I would worry about for psu is gold rating from a well known brand. All of the Zen 2 prices are good, it's really just a matter of how high you want to go and if you're willing to upgrade your motherboard if necessary.
If you get an aftermarket cooler, get this. It performs pretty much as well as a high end Noctua but for around half the price.
I would look at getting 32gb of ram sometime unless you've checked and definitely don't need it for anything you do.
Generally, productivity things benefit from and utilize more cores more effectively. Some games use more cores well, some don't. Some exceptionally shitty ones won't use them well at all and will pretty much need strong single core, ie 5800x3d. I wouldn't worry about it unless you specifically know something you do falls into the last category or if you have a productivity hobby.
Thermalright coolers are good and cheap. I used all Thermalright fans and their AIO cooler (only cost $75 CAD) when I built my PC.