Ryzen 3 4100 + RX 6400 - The Budget Gaming PC You Shouldn't Build

# Review: Ryzen 3 4100 and RX 6400 - A Sensibly Priced Entry-Level Gaming PC Build

In this video, we’ve tested two entry-level components: the Ryzen 3 4100 CPU and the RX 6400 GPU. Neither of these parts is particularly exciting, and some might even say they’re disappointing in their own ways. While the Ryzen 3 4100 has its flaws, it’s still a decent option for budget gaming when paired with the right hardware. The RX 6400, on the other hand, shows promise but struggles in PCIe 3.0 systems due to its x4 bandwidth limitation.

## The Ryzen 3 4100: Too Little, Too Late

In my review of the Ryzen 3 4100, I mentioned that its launch was *too little, too late*. While it can handle gaming tasks, it’s overshadowed by the slightly more expensive Intel Core i3-12th Gen processors. Despite its limitations, the Ryzen 3 4100 has one major advantage: compatibility with the tried-and-true AM4 socket. This means you can pair it with a secondhand B450 motherboard and get started with PC gaming without breaking the bank.

## The RX 6400: Best in PCIe 4.0, Limited in PCIe 3.0

The RX 6400 is a solid GPU for its price point, but it truly shines in PCIe 4.0 systems due to its x4 bandwidth. In PCIe 3.0 systems, however, its gaming capabilities are limited. Pairing this card with the Ryzen 3 4100 (a PCIe 3.0 CPU) means you won’t be getting the most out of either component.

## The Combo: A Solid Entry-Level Build on Paper

On paper, the combination of the Ryzen 3 4100 and RX 6400 sounds like a solid, sensibly priced way to get into PC gaming. However, there are some issues you should be aware of before committing to this build.

## Performance in Games

### CS:GO and Fortnite

For casual gamers looking to play competitive shooters like *CS:GO* or *Fortnite*, this combo holds up decently well. At low settings, both games run smoothly with frame rates ranging from 60 to 144 FPS. While there are minor hiccups in *Fortnite*, they tend to even out after a few moments.

### Cyberpunk

When it comes to more demanding titles like *Cyberpunk: Edgerunners*, you’ll need to tweak the settings carefully. Lowering crowd density and turning down the graphical preset helps, but expect some drops below 30 FPS in intense scenes. Enabling FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) is a must for the best experience without sacrificing visual fidelity.

### Far Cry 6

The good news continues with *Far Cry 6*. Even at native resolution and the lowest preset, this game runs smoothly with solid frame rates. The inclusion of FSR makes it an even better option for budget gaming.

### Elden Ring

*Elden Ring* is another title that performs surprisingly well on this setup. With native 1080p and low settings, you can expect to hit close to 60 FPS on average, with only a few dips and drops. While it’s not perfect, it’s far better than expected for such a demanding game.

### Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5 is a testament to optimization. Even on medium settings, this game runs smoothly at over 60 FPS. If you’re racing from a first-person perspective, the higher frame rate makes for a much more enjoyable experience.

### God of War

*God of War* looks great even on low settings and hits at least 60 FPS with FSR enabled. You could even try bumping the graphical preset to medium or higher if you’re comfortable sacrificing some sharpness in exchange for better visuals.

### Death Loop

Unfortunately, *Death Loop* is a worst-case scenario example for this build. At very low settings and balanced FSR 1.0, stuttering and frame rate drops are unavoidable. For an enjoyable gaming session, lower resolution combined with FSR or FSR 2.0 would be the way to go.

### GTA V

For Grand Theft Auto V, you’re in luck. This game runs smoothly at high settings with almost 100 FPS during downtown Los Santos rush hour. The advanced settings can be switched off without much loss of quality, and FXAA is enabled by default for better visual clarity.

### Red Dead Redemption 2

*Red Dead Redemption 2* also holds up well on this setup. Running at 1080p with Xbox One X equivalent settings, you can expect a solid 60 FPS average. The bustling city of Sandini doesn’t cause any performance issues either.

### Warzone

Finally, *Warzone* runs just fine most of the time. With low settings, normal textures, and SMAA set to 1, the game averages just over 60 FPS. Dynamic resolution helps maintain a consistent frame rate, making it an enjoyable experience for casual players.

## Upgrading and Future Proofing

While the Ryzen 3 4100 and RX 6400 aren’t the most exciting pair, they do have room for upgrades. The AM4 socket is a tried-and-true platform that has served me well over the years, from the Ryzen 3 1200 to the Ryzen 3 6600. If you’re planning to upgrade later down the line, this build isn’t a bad starting point.

For the RX 6400 GPU, I’d recommend considering secondhand options from AMD or NVIDIA. Rumors of a GTX 1630 are swirling, so it’ll be interesting to see how that fits into the market when (or if) it’s officially announced and released.

## Conclusion

The Ryzen 3 4100 and RX 6400 may not be the most exciting pairing, but together they can still handle gaming tasks with a few tweaks and setting adjustments. If you’re building a PC on a budget or looking to upgrade from older hardware, this combination could work for you.

However, I wouldn’t recommend this build if your main goal is to play the latest AAA games at high settings. While it performs decently in some titles, others like *Death Loop* are a clear reminder of its limitations.

If you’re considering a pre-built system with these components, make sure to check used market prices for aging six-core CPUs and verify your motherboard’s support list. As for the RX 6400, I’m confident it won’t be long before we see some price reductions in the future.

That’s all for this video. If you enjoyed it, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share your thoughts on this combo in the comments below. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome to another video now we've tested the rx 6400 and the ryzen 3 4100 both are entry level parts and neither gpu or cpu are particularly exciting some might go as far as to say that both are disappointing in their own way in my ryzen 3 4100 review i commented that its launch was too little too late sure it can play games but it's outright destroyed by the slightly more expensive i312 the rx 6400 on the other hand is okay but it performs best in pcie 4.0 capable systems because of its x4 bandwidth in the pcie 3.0 systems its gaming capabilities are limited because of this pairing one with an aforementioned ryzen 4100 a pcie 3.0 cpu will mean that you aren't going to be getting the most out of the graphics card a ryzen 340 100 and rx 6400 combo sounds like a solid sensibly priced way into pc gaming on paper but in reality there will be some problems that said it's not all bad and today we're going to be putting this combo through its paces let's start with the good news the ryzen 3 4100 is based on the good old am4 socket so you can pick up a secondhand b450 board for example and away you go even in pairing with the 6400 and with the pcie 3.0 limitation in place games like cs go will pose no problems whether you want to play at 60 120 or 144 fps fortnite another online competitive shooter will also run reasonably well with a few minor hiccups that seem to even out after a few moments i've taken to playing on low settings to maximize performance recently though i do keep view distance on epic so that i can see those pesky enemy players before they see me that said with my vision i'm surprised i get any kills still for those of you who aren't visually impaired or suck at the game this frame rate will mean that you can stay competitive i've gotta say that this combo is fairly quiet too even under load always a bonus in my eyes performance in cyberpunk here will go up and down depending on where you are and what you're doing it's best to have crowd density set to low for the sake of the processor and it's best to have the graphical preset turned down to low for the sake of the 4 gig 6400 fsr also needs to be enabled for the best experience but we don't have to turn the game into a complete pixelated mess which is always nice though you can still expect some drops below 30 with these settings eldon ring with native 1080p and the low preset with high anti-aliasing runs fairly well close to 60fps on average with a few dips and drops i've experienced similar 0.1 issues on far more powerful hardware so the blame can't solely be placed on the hardware at hand and actually it's not too bad overall it certainly did better than i thought it would it's even better news for far cry 6. this does have the option of fsr as well but i left it turned off here because i was fairly happy with the result at native the average 1 and 0.1 lows were all solid and even with the lowest preset it's still a fairly good looking game a pc like this certainly has room for upgrade too the am4 socket is sort of legendary in my eyes it's been really good to me over the years from my ryzen 3 1200 to 1600 upgrade and then 3600 it's a brilliant platform it really is i wouldn't hold it against you if you purchased one of these chips with a plan to upgrade later down the line but as for the rx 6400 gpu i perhaps consider something secondhand instead from amd or nvidia there's a rumored gtx 1630 apparently coming soon too so we'll have to see how that fits in and what it offers when or if it's officially announced and released forza horizon 5 is a testament to optimization it runs well on such a wide range of hardware and even here we can crank it up to medium and it still hits in excess of 60 frames per second that's what i like to see for me personally 30 fps feels fine but if you're racing from a first person perspective instead then 60fps does feel a lot nicer to be honest but it's nice to know that we can still achieve that with fairly decent looking quality settings here god of war looks good even on low and it will hit at least 60 fps thanks to the help of fsr one of the best things ever to happen to those of us with more modest pcs we could also go medium or higher with more intense fsr options but sacrificing the sharpness of the image doesn't make much sense to me when it looks good at low with ultra quality fsr enabled again those of you who are happy with at least 30fps can crank things up a little bit more at native 1080p but if you can hit 60 without too much tweaking then it's always worth trying to target the less said about death loop the better very low with balanced fsr 1.0 still meant a terrible experience way too much stutter and dipping here for an enjoyable gameplay session even if we were to cap the frame rate to 30. a lower resolution is definitely best but in combination with fsr or fsr 2.0 which this game supports you can have a much better time than i did here i stuck to 1080p for this test though because i feel that being able to hit 30fps with 1920 by 1080 at least more consistently than this is a minimum requirement for a pc built with new parts in 2022. modern cpus and gpus should be able to handle this with low settings at least this game is a worst case scenario example really if you buy a 4100 and 6400 don't expect to play death loop smoothly at 1080p unless you really hit it hard with the fsr preset gta 5 ram fine of course it did i did try out the may preview drivers from amd first of all but these caused some stutter so i reinstalled the current recommended 22.5.1 version and everything was fine downtown los santos during rush hour ran with almost 100 fps at the highest settings so no complaints from me the advanced settings were switched off and the game sliders were set to halfway or just under as is the default position msaa was also turned off but fxaa was enabled though there is a little bit of breathing room to enable msaa if you wish i was very happy with the performance of red dead redemption 2 this ran with the xbox one x equivalent settings albeit at 1080p with almost 60 frames per second at least 50 anyway even the bustling city of sandini didn't give our entry-level combo too many problems i got into a bit of trouble with the law and had them chase me around the busy back streets without so much as a hiccup this is a couple of years old now on pc but it's still very much worth playing i think it's one of the first games that any new pc builder or buyer should purchase not only for benchmarking reasons but because it's just really good it can also be made to look quite bad to suit lower end machines as well or it can be made to look phenomenal for higher end rigs here it runs well with respectable settings warzone with the low settings normal textures smaa set to 1 and dynamic res enabled averaged just over 60. i used the dynamic resmo to target 60 so the game will adjust the resolution to try and constantly hit this target which it seemed to do a pretty good job of most of the time for some reason godzilla is in this game now which is news to me yeah i don't really play this game much but it's back in the benchmarks by popular demand and for any of you who might want to put together a system like the one i've used today you'll be pleased to know that warzone runs just fine most of the time but that's it the ryzen 3 4100 and rx 6400 certainly isn't what i'd call an exciting pairing but together you can play games with a build like this and if you have an am4 board with an old athlon rattling about in it then the 4100 will make for a decent upgrade now i'd still check out used market prices of aging six core chips for example and be sure to check out your motherboard support list too as for the rx 6400 graphics card well it's okay it could do with a price reduction that's for sure and i'm sure it won't be long before we see that happen again though those of you with a solid second hand market where you live should consider other options first but i could say that about any pc build i have a feeling that the ryzen 4100 and 6400 will be paired together a lot in pre-built systems that are sold online too so i wanted to sort of show you what you could expect in case you were wondering how this duo performs together that way you know whether you want to go for a pc like this or whether or not you want to steer well clear that's all for this one then thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed it leave a like leave a dislike if you didn't let me know your thoughts on this combo in the comments below subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next onehello everyone and welcome to another video now we've tested the rx 6400 and the ryzen 3 4100 both are entry level parts and neither gpu or cpu are particularly exciting some might go as far as to say that both are disappointing in their own way in my ryzen 3 4100 review i commented that its launch was too little too late sure it can play games but it's outright destroyed by the slightly more expensive i312 the rx 6400 on the other hand is okay but it performs best in pcie 4.0 capable systems because of its x4 bandwidth in the pcie 3.0 systems its gaming capabilities are limited because of this pairing one with an aforementioned ryzen 4100 a pcie 3.0 cpu will mean that you aren't going to be getting the most out of the graphics card a ryzen 340 100 and rx 6400 combo sounds like a solid sensibly priced way into pc gaming on paper but in reality there will be some problems that said it's not all bad and today we're going to be putting this combo through its paces let's start with the good news the ryzen 3 4100 is based on the good old am4 socket so you can pick up a secondhand b450 board for example and away you go even in pairing with the 6400 and with the pcie 3.0 limitation in place games like cs go will pose no problems whether you want to play at 60 120 or 144 fps fortnite another online competitive shooter will also run reasonably well with a few minor hiccups that seem to even out after a few moments i've taken to playing on low settings to maximize performance recently though i do keep view distance on epic so that i can see those pesky enemy players before they see me that said with my vision i'm surprised i get any kills still for those of you who aren't visually impaired or suck at the game this frame rate will mean that you can stay competitive i've gotta say that this combo is fairly quiet too even under load always a bonus in my eyes performance in cyberpunk here will go up and down depending on where you are and what you're doing it's best to have crowd density set to low for the sake of the processor and it's best to have the graphical preset turned down to low for the sake of the 4 gig 6400 fsr also needs to be enabled for the best experience but we don't have to turn the game into a complete pixelated mess which is always nice though you can still expect some drops below 30 with these settings eldon ring with native 1080p and the low preset with high anti-aliasing runs fairly well close to 60fps on average with a few dips and drops i've experienced similar 0.1 issues on far more powerful hardware so the blame can't solely be placed on the hardware at hand and actually it's not too bad overall it certainly did better than i thought it would it's even better news for far cry 6. this does have the option of fsr as well but i left it turned off here because i was fairly happy with the result at native the average 1 and 0.1 lows were all solid and even with the lowest preset it's still a fairly good looking game a pc like this certainly has room for upgrade too the am4 socket is sort of legendary in my eyes it's been really good to me over the years from my ryzen 3 1200 to 1600 upgrade and then 3600 it's a brilliant platform it really is i wouldn't hold it against you if you purchased one of these chips with a plan to upgrade later down the line but as for the rx 6400 gpu i perhaps consider something secondhand instead from amd or nvidia there's a rumored gtx 1630 apparently coming soon too so we'll have to see how that fits in and what it offers when or if it's officially announced and released forza horizon 5 is a testament to optimization it runs well on such a wide range of hardware and even here we can crank it up to medium and it still hits in excess of 60 frames per second that's what i like to see for me personally 30 fps feels fine but if you're racing from a first person perspective instead then 60fps does feel a lot nicer to be honest but it's nice to know that we can still achieve that with fairly decent looking quality settings here god of war looks good even on low and it will hit at least 60 fps thanks to the help of fsr one of the best things ever to happen to those of us with more modest pcs we could also go medium or higher with more intense fsr options but sacrificing the sharpness of the image doesn't make much sense to me when it looks good at low with ultra quality fsr enabled again those of you who are happy with at least 30fps can crank things up a little bit more at native 1080p but if you can hit 60 without too much tweaking then it's always worth trying to target the less said about death loop the better very low with balanced fsr 1.0 still meant a terrible experience way too much stutter and dipping here for an enjoyable gameplay session even if we were to cap the frame rate to 30. a lower resolution is definitely best but in combination with fsr or fsr 2.0 which this game supports you can have a much better time than i did here i stuck to 1080p for this test though because i feel that being able to hit 30fps with 1920 by 1080 at least more consistently than this is a minimum requirement for a pc built with new parts in 2022. modern cpus and gpus should be able to handle this with low settings at least this game is a worst case scenario example really if you buy a 4100 and 6400 don't expect to play death loop smoothly at 1080p unless you really hit it hard with the fsr preset gta 5 ram fine of course it did i did try out the may preview drivers from amd first of all but these caused some stutter so i reinstalled the current recommended 22.5.1 version and everything was fine downtown los santos during rush hour ran with almost 100 fps at the highest settings so no complaints from me the advanced settings were switched off and the game sliders were set to halfway or just under as is the default position msaa was also turned off but fxaa was enabled though there is a little bit of breathing room to enable msaa if you wish i was very happy with the performance of red dead redemption 2 this ran with the xbox one x equivalent settings albeit at 1080p with almost 60 frames per second at least 50 anyway even the bustling city of sandini didn't give our entry-level combo too many problems i got into a bit of trouble with the law and had them chase me around the busy back streets without so much as a hiccup this is a couple of years old now on pc but it's still very much worth playing i think it's one of the first games that any new pc builder or buyer should purchase not only for benchmarking reasons but because it's just really good it can also be made to look quite bad to suit lower end machines as well or it can be made to look phenomenal for higher end rigs here it runs well with respectable settings warzone with the low settings normal textures smaa set to 1 and dynamic res enabled averaged just over 60. i used the dynamic resmo to target 60 so the game will adjust the resolution to try and constantly hit this target which it seemed to do a pretty good job of most of the time for some reason godzilla is in this game now which is news to me yeah i don't really play this game much but it's back in the benchmarks by popular demand and for any of you who might want to put together a system like the one i've used today you'll be pleased to know that warzone runs just fine most of the time but that's it the ryzen 3 4100 and rx 6400 certainly isn't what i'd call an exciting pairing but together you can play games with a build like this and if you have an am4 board with an old athlon rattling about in it then the 4100 will make for a decent upgrade now i'd still check out used market prices of aging six core chips for example and be sure to check out your motherboard support list too as for the rx 6400 graphics card well it's okay it could do with a price reduction that's for sure and i'm sure it won't be long before we see that happen again though those of you with a solid second hand market where you live should consider other options first but i could say that about any pc build i have a feeling that the ryzen 4100 and 6400 will be paired together a lot in pre-built systems that are sold online too so i wanted to sort of show you what you could expect in case you were wondering how this duo performs together that way you know whether you want to go for a pc like this or whether or not you want to steer well clear that's all for this one then thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed it leave a like leave a dislike if you didn't let me know your thoughts on this combo in the comments below subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next one\n"