I feel this happens to everyone. Buy a PC, be happy that it’s better than what it replaces, then after a few years get annoyed that’s slow.

This happened to me with my now 6/7 year old Ryzen 5 1600x. It was so much faster then my FX 6100, but my workload changed, and while multicore it’s good, single core leaves much to be desired, especially since my CAD software of choice FreeCAD is very dependent on single core/thread performance.

So I’ve been keeping an eye on the markets, waiting for a deal to be had, and I found one, with the Ryzen 5 5500 going into my budget. So I bought it thinking that my old Gigabyte B350M Motherboard would support it. I mean Gigabyte says it’s supported and they’ve never lied about anything before… let alone deny by rebate claim for my laptop.

So I installed the CPU, booted it up, and boot loop. So I took out a stick of ram and it posted, was planning on fixing that later. Configured my BIOS to my liking, saved and restarted into my OS. It booted, for 3 seconds, then promptly black screened and crashed. Not even the power and reset buttons worked, so I had to hard kill it.

OK Troubleshooting time. Check BIOS version. 52h, hummm looks good but there is a 53, lets install that. And a reboot after, no fix.

OK let ask Google, within the dozens of responses asking for BIOS version, there was reseating the RAM. That did nothing, and underclocking the CPU to 3000MHz. That shockingly worked, and I booted into my OS. Neat, I can troubleshoot that later.

Now let’s install my other stick of RAM and lets get to fixing this sucker… and it’s boot looping again. I’ve reset the CMOS, put both sticks of RAM into all slot configurations, and nothing.

So I re-installed my 1600x to sanity check myself, and it worked, with both RAM installed. So back to Canada Computers I went to get a refund. While I was tempted by the Intel CPU’s on the way out, I got new thermal paste and now I am writing this post on my PC with the 1600x.

Lessons I learned today.

1. If you are upgrading a 1000 series Ryzen stick with the 3000 series as 5000 compatibility is dodgy depending on the manufacturer.

2. The Manufacturers can and will lie about compatibility, and hardware upgradability is hit or miss depending on the Motherboard.

3. I’m not buying from Gigabyte ever again. Though I’ve heard Asus isn’t much better.

Now PLEASE NOTE BEFORE COMMENTING. I do not have the 5500 and will not go back and get it again, so no troubleshooting, please. I just wanted to share my experience and kind of warn those who plan on doing the same.