AMD Ryzen 7 3800X Processor (8C/16T, 36 MB Cache, 4.5 GHz
AMD Ryzen 7 3800X Processor (8C/16T, 36 MB Cache, 4.5 GHz Max Boost)
| Weight: | 635 g |
| Dimensions: | 4 x 4 x 0.6 cm; 635.03 Grams |
| Brand: | AMD |
| Model: | Ryzen 7 3800X |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | AMD |
| Dimensions: | 4 x 4 x 0.6 cm; 635.03 Grams |
Worker super well for gaming for 2 years. Then died. Decent product.
Works really well for gaming mine came with thermal paste on 4 of the pins somehow so I had to spend around 3 hours very carefully removing it, luckily the CPU works and was no further issues
Using to develop and model 3D.
No problems working very well.
works great , working a bit faster ,than the last one , just so i can upgrade to windows 11
Really good CPU, have it for 3 years now. 3 years and 5 days it died on me, just out of warranty….
The Apu does not work at full speed as you can see in photo ..next to utilisation..is supposed to be 3 60ghz..not 0.54..no matter what load I put it under it does not change..IV also done multiple bios updates and downgrades to see if it changes . And done 2 fresh installs of windows 10..and still no change… Very disappointed…
Now, I wouldn’t have minded being sent an open box product if I hadn’t paid the full price for a CPU I expected to get in its original package. What a joke.
UPDATE
The seller contacted me and issued me a small refund as the CPU wasn’t sent in its original box. I am now updating the review after properly installing Ryzen 7.
I am pleased to say that there was no damage to the fan and the CPU chip upon inspection. I had to look for additional parts to my motherboard as the fan clips on and requires no screws. But it is powerful and works great so far. Will update the review again after a few months to see how it fairs, though so far so good! I am pleased with it, even after my initial skepticism.
Well few words could describe this processor but wow. That wow applies if like me you are running an very old pc with a snail as a processor. When I decided to upgrade this was within my budget and I was not disappointed. I never overclocked it at anytime just stock settings. Coupled with a good MB this processor is smashing and 100% great upgrade. I know I should have done some benchmarks prior to me buying a ryzen 5 5960 but you will not be disappointed. I love F1 and running this game on this processor was not an issue given I had a 1050ti 4gb old graphics card.
Over all worth the money and worth you wait for an upgrade to this
I was an early adopter of Ryzen having purchased a R5 1600X back in 2017 when they were first released. AMD chose to guarantee 5yrs support for the AM4 socket and have kept their word. I upgraded to the 3700X over the weekend and the machine boots faster and is “snappier” if that helps. Process was easy for my Asus X370 Prime Pro motherboard – upgraded bios first, reboot and loaded to default settings then shut down, install new processor, reboot, default settings and away you go! Would have been 5 stars if the price was a bit lower (say 249). However price included fan and next day delivery so I am happy
I always have intel as my CPU never tried AMD as the old generation was prone to over heat if not using the right CPU heatsink but that was the olden days! Since Ryzen showed in the market I was impressed with its clock speed for the price compared to Intel. so I decided to go and build AMD PC and I chose this CPU clock speed was far better than my old i7 6950X clock speed of 3.0Ghz stock although I Overclocked it to 4.2, this Ryzen CPU base clock 3.9Ghz but I put it on 4.4GHz with water cooling AIO and so far stable. Overclocking either using app from your motherboard or do it manually. I prefer doing it manually as I can stabilise the CPU temp better. using app to overclock your CPU temp is ok as well but expect an erratic temp. In editing 4K videos using my newly build AMD PC matching with 3080 GPU I would say perfect! gaming I would say fantastic graphic wise FPS wise wow. I also overclocked my GPU using afterburner just a bit of tweak not too much every time I play games but I revert it back to normal range afterwards not recommended but if you know what you are doing I am telling you guys gaming experience will be more dramatic and far better depending of course with your PC monitor too. I have 4K 49 inches monitor and as an Enthusiasts I can see the difference performance, visual and experience, in total to sum it up this CPU is more than capable not just for gaming but for editing too! well worth the money.
1. I am not a gamer; I use power hungry photo editing applications that are better suited to the 3700x.
2. The cooling is better with a Wraith ‘Prism’ cooler, instead of the inferior Wraith ‘Stealth’ included with the Ryzen 5 5600X. Some experts claim it needs to be replaced as it runs a bit hot! That would mean another 35 to upgrade to the Wraith Prism.
Also, the 1600 is not Windows 11 compatible so a CPU upgrade was inevitable.
I am very pleased with the results it idles at between 37-41 deg. C although this is assisted by two system fans on the side of the case. This is a recommended upgrade for computer cooling. It runs at around 67 deg. C when running photo editing software in balanced mode which is fast enough.
Works well on my excellent MSI X470 GAMING PLUS MAX Motherboard with 16GB of memory. It has the MSI Centre control software to set the power required and reduce the noise of the fans.
Owned this for over a year now, around 2 years since it’s release; still amazing performance in any game or task I put it through, here’s a few average benchmarks with it;
(Partnered with a Radeon RX5700xt and 16GB of 3200MHZ RAM)
VALORANT – 250-350FPS – Max settings
GTA V – 144 constant – Ultra
GTA V w/ NVE Graphic Mod – 120+ constant
FiveM w/ NVE Graphic Mod – 70+
Minecraft w/ Shaders + Basic mods – 170FPS
Minecraft PvP – 400+ FPS
Forza Horizon 4 – 144FPS cap – Max settings
Renders amazingly in Adobe software as well as Sony Vegas, and allows flawless multi-tasking. 100% recommend if you can get it on a good price, however it is now 2 generations old so it’s more likely to become obsolete soon – But as of September 2021, it’s more than enough for almost all workloads.
I had to buy this as a replacement for the same model I already owned –
I upgraded my case and wanted to try a water cooler instead of the supplied Wraith Prism Cooler… read further below after the review if you want to know why I had to replace.
Review:
This is a great CPU which works very well with an ASUS TUF GAMING X570-plus mobo and 64GB RAM running at 40.00MHz constant with 2 high end 7.1 soundcards and a Nvidia graphics card. I have been using this model since it was first released.
Mainly used for music production and sound engineering so nothing too strenuous apart from rendering.
It works like a dream if you tweak the BIOS settings to match RAM, clocking and voltages. I have never had any issues.
Changing the CPU creates a BIOS nightmare which means it initially won’t start as it locks down for security, even after clearing and resetting, clearing security keys etc. to default settings. More tweaking required..
The reason for replacing is that the CPU was stuck firmly to the Wraith Cooler which I could not get free at all. After much pushing and pulling to try and free it from the already tricky AM4 clips the whole thing came out CPU and all, still attached. I had to prize the two apart with a long blade – not good and in all of the tugging some of the pins of the CPU were damaged. I was ever so slightly angry!!
After freeing the two said items I found the copper plate on the cooler had disappeared where the copper pipes go underneath it, you could literally see the pipes instead of a nice flat smooth copper surface. Once again, not good. I reckon now that it would have failed soon.
Now, I do not push the PC too hard by any stretch and max CPU temp was never more than 38- 42C as I tend to have the fans on full blast all of the time.
The thermal paste was the original which came with the unit and on inspection was spread well over the CPU.
Another reason for wanting a water cooler was I felt I could get the temps down further which they now have done – now around 30C, nice.
Finally, I am happy!!! (again) 🙂
Nope. R5 3600, stock cooler, AsRock B450 Pro 4, and 2x8GB DDR4 3200 Crucial Ballistix. Added a WD550 NVMe drive… So far, I don’t think anything I added was ever on a compatibility list for the board initially. The “Ready for 3xxx” label clearly added later on. Of course the drive didn’t boot so an SSD made do alongside. Things all set up again – Mint 20.0 and Windows 8.1 (the old offline version purely for old games and apps that just don’t work right anywhere else) – and benchmarks through Performance Test began… And ended as I watched the reported CPU temperature fly into the 80s and reach 90c within a couple of minutes. I checked everything was attached, no problems there….
Days later, armed with thermal paste, along with voltage offset, memory timing and fan curve knowledge, along with the eco mode (60w PPT) on the board, I got something workable. I wasn’t hitting specs on all cores with the stock cooler and I didn’t expect anything different but that temperature was INSANE to start with. I ended up with -50mV offset, the right memory timings, eco mode enabled and that was it. I extended the tests and watched the temperature reach the high 70s after half an hour, so that stock cooler needs to GO. That loses a star in my opinion, it’s utterly useless and after 2 years, the fact a substandard cooler is still supplied says a lot really… Two decades and this one has to be the most awkward CPU I have dealt with. The board got its BIOS updates which changed nothing. This CPU would be better off cooler-free and cheaper.
So, that was the crusty part of the whole shebang… And I haven’t even got to pushing it in games yet. However, the performance test results were a little surprising. I’d let one medium pass go before freaking out at the temps before I changed the offsets, timings and power limiter. The results I got after applying all the limits and changes was rather surprising. Single thread went up about 9%, multithread up about 3%. Ran the tests several times, pretty much the same results… How on earth did limiting and lowering settings make it run BETTER??? Confusing as it seems to me, it’s running much better now.
Shame about that horrible stock cooler, which is probably the reason for the bizarre benchmarks. But the PPT never goes over 60w, the temps mid to late 70s at worst under full loads and now I’m having fun with OC’ing the video card… Damn you, AMD, for making me geek again.
There is a good reason why the Ryzen 5 3600 highly recommended by basically everyone who has used one: because the price to performance ratio doesn’t get much better than this. For the price this CPU is going for nowadays, it’s really a no-brainer to get for any type of system.
Firstly, the performance of this CPU is great. The base clock speed is 3.6GHz, and when overclocked the clock speed can reach a respectable 4.2GHz. Personally, I haven’t overclocked mine; however, the chip has performed without a hiccup in multiple tasks such as video editing and some gaming.
The process of installation is rather easy. All you need to do is make sure your motherboard has the correct socket to support the CPU, then match the small triangle they have placed on one corner of the chip with a matching symbol on the motherboard. Importantly, a cooler is also provided in the box which conveniently has thermal paste pre-applied to it.
The only real con regarding this product is the cooler. If you are planning to overclock then this cooler is really not recommended, and people would advise you to get something with a better cooling performance. In addition, the noise of the CPU fan is not the most pleasant. If you were to swap the cooler with something else (which I plan on doing) it will result in a quieter system.
Overall, this is one of if not the best CPU option available at the moment when taking price-to-performance into consideration. The only thing I’d recommended is swapping the cooler if you are planning to overclock, or a quiet PC is a priority for you. Highly recommend.
Upgraded from a 2700X and machine is performing better.
This CPU does perform extremely well for many applications I’ve tried such as gaming and CAD although is not a worthwhile significant upgrade from my old 2700X. Having been in a situation where I needed a new CPU the 3800XT was chosen as it offered, at least on paper, a marked clock speed improvement on the 2700X and the CPU was on sale. I must say the CPU is hitting 4.7GHz single core boost straight out of the box and 4.5GHz multi-core boost. Paired with an AIO cooler this performance is not marred with high temperatures either – on multi-core boost it merely touches 72C. This CPU is designed for higher end machines and therefor requires an excellent cooling solution.
Overclocking? In my opinion you will yeald a performance boost in only particular specific applications. For gaming just set XMP on in BIOS and allow the single-core to boost to 4.7GHz. Manual overclocking disables the single core boost and therefor you will likely not get extra performance in gaming. Of course with next gen consoles utilising the same basic architecture as the CPU (8C/16T), in the future an overclocked multi-core setup may be beneficial.
This thing is a beast all round whether it’s gaming, multi-tasking or doing anything that is CPU intensive. I’ve thrown everything at it and it churns everything incredibly easily, the only thing that would hold me back is my other components. I don’t think I’ve ever had a CPU like this before, INTEL CPU’s have honestly never felt like this at all. I can have multiple screens with multiple applications open which helps do my work much faster and much more efficiently. Gaming is also a huge blast and I’m seeing top performance that is on par with INTEL’s top gaming CPU’s. Now the stock fan you get with it is quite good as it will keep the temps at around 30 to 50 degrees Celsius but it will get loud when running many things at once hence why I don’t use a stock cooler and I bought my own AIO CPU cooler and I recommend that for everyone looking to buy this. It’s a 100% recommendation from me and I honestly don’t think I will have to change CPU’s for probably the next 10 years.
100% Recommend this CPU; however,
I encourage you do your research before buying as you want to make sure you’re making the most out of your money and are putting it into the right product; you don’t want to put money into a product with a speciality in an area you don’t and/or aren’t going to use; so if you’re just gaming and nothing else, try looking at the Ryzen 5 3600x ( MSRP ~ $180 – 190 ).
But for those who need the extra background/computing capabilities for things like design/ animation software usage or streaming for example, this CPU is absolutely amazing I’ve not had any problem with it in any way at all. If you’re going to use it extensively, I would consider looking into an AIO cooler to keep the temperatures down and then you can also Overclock and enjoy the benefits of that; I have mine AIO cooled and idle usage at 32-36 degrees Celsius is 3-5% and when using demanding softwares/games I’ve not seen mine go above 50% usage.
I absolutely DO recommend this CPU, but please do your research before buying and take care.
The latest Ryzen 3000 processors (except APU models) differ from previous Ryzen generations in that they are no longer based on a single, large chip but use a multi-chip approach with smaller chips instead. Depending on the exact model there can be one (6 and 8-core models) or two (12 and 16-core models) actual CPU-Dies (CCD) on the package. Each processor also uses an I/O-Die (IOD), which contains things like the memory controller, PCIe controller, connections to the motherboard chipset and other functions. Because of this design change and the switch to a smaller 7nm manufacturing process, the heat distribution of the overall processor is much different from older 14nm and 12nm based single-chip Ryzen processors with a similar power draw.
Depending on the exact CPU model, its specified TDP value and possibly extended power limits (precision boost overdrive), a single CPU-die can create a heatload of up to 130W easily, whereas the I/O-die usually creates a heatload of about 10W. Due to the small size of the CPU-die, the heat density (W/mm) of this chip is very high. For example, a 120W heatload at a chip-size of 74mm results in a heat-density of 1.62W/mm, whereas the same heatload on an older Ryzen processor with a chip-size of 212mm gives a heat-density of just 0.57W/mm.
This large difference in heat-density is the reason why newer Ryzen 3000 processors become much warmer at similar heatloads than their predecessors.
Furthermore, Ryzen 3000 CPUs are using the rated temperature headroom (up to 95C) quite aggressively in order to reach higher boost clocks. As a result, it is absolutely no problem and not alarming if the processor runs into this temperature limit. The clock speed and supply voltage will be adjusted automatically by the processor itself in order to remain within AMD’s specifications and to prevent overheating.
Due to the higher heat density, higher thermal limits and more aggressive boost clock usage, it is perfectly normal that Ryzen 3000 CPUs are reaching higher temperatures than previous generation Ryzen CPUs with the same TDP rating. Higher CPU temperatures are normal for Ryzen 3000 processors and not a sign of that there is anything wrong with the CPU cooler.
I got this processor to replace my i5-9400F because I wanted to handle multitasking, resource-heavy scenarios and video production work and so far it’s just absolutely demolished any task I’ve thrown at it, at base clock speed without so much as turning on AMD’s automatic overclocking.
I’ve played games and recorded them at Twitch-compatible bitrates (x264 encoding up to 8,000kbps CBR) with a camera and leap motion doing face and hand tracking at the same time and it laughs at the workload. I’ve played games recording 1080p and 1440p video at CRF14 (variable bit rate ranging from 30 thousand to over 50 thousand kbps) on x264 fast, or 1080/30fps console footage at the same CRF on x264 slow (i.e. CPU not running a game) and it still manages without any dropped frames.
When using davinci resolve, using a ‘smart’ (automated) render cache is all I need for an almost entirely lag-free preview, no proxies / optimised media necessary. On the i5, rendering a 1080p video would take more time than the length of the video. The 3900 – assuming I largely leave the computer alone for the length of the render or just use it for light browsing – manages to render 1440p video at the ‘best’ preset (will vary depending on your source media) in faster than real time.
For productivity and general gaming, it’s an amazing processor. The only scenarios I’ve managed to scratch maxing it out – again, at base clock – are running CPU-heavy games, with face and hand tracking and two instances of CPU encoding at presets slower than necessary – unrealistic, intentional stress-test scenarios exclusively made to test its limits. At 250 cheaper than the 3950X, it’s honestly a great price per performance ratio for multitaskers.
The only other situation I find worth noting are a small handful of older games which were built intended to run on later hardware with much higher clock speeds that never came; like Guild Wars 2 and Planetside 2. Crysis would be another famous example of a game being built this way, where AMD’s general aim of lower single core clock speed and higher core count starts to cause some issues, but these games will *always* cause issues for people without a full engine re-write. In these instances, fast RAM gives a significant upgrade in frame count.
My cooler setup is 2 fans in, 2 fans out, one fan either side of a coolermaster hyper 212, Arctic MX-4 thermal paste. Idle, the processor sits around 40C. During games, it can kick up to high fifties, sixties. Under high, multitasking workloads with simultaneious gaming and intense encoding in OBS, or rendering in Resolve, it can move into the high seventies. Stress-test scenarios bring it up to 82C peaks.
Have been Intel since year dot.
Thought I would give AMD a go for a change and because they have been getting good reviews.
There were only three components I could use from the old PC because of the “progress” made over the years.
The case, power unit and because of the situation regarding shortages of gpu’s my old graphics card – it’s so old it uses pen and pencil to draw.
So having purchased all the bits and bobs needed chucked them into the case and by gum – it fired up first time.
As I said, I had plodded along with my ancient PC and had been happy with it.
But.
Crickey, have times moved on, it is sooooo fast.
The cpu runs a lot cooler than I expected and keeps up with anything I throw at it at an astonishing pace.
One happy little puppy – no I’m too old for that . , , a very happy old geezer.
This CPU is a powerhouse. I recently upgraded my PC for gaming / content creation / photography. I am running a 3900X 12 core Ryzen with 128GB G Skill 3600 RAM, and 10 HDD, and my old 1070 from previous build. This CPU is solid, and the stock cooler handles things well. It is a little “loud” out of the box because the fan is stock set to ramp up and down as CPU temps rise, but using the software / bios allows you to make a much better fan curve to keep the PC much more silent. (Probably should be like this as stock). My advice is to have a solid line on the graph until 62 degrees, then a steep line up to 75 degrees at which point max fans would kick in. This stops the fan ramping activity I saw out of the box.
All in all, solid and stable and blisteringly responsive and fast in all applications and gaming. The RGB cooler is…pretty cool too!
This CPU is Good at photo editing and rendering. It’s about 3.6x faster than my old AMD FX-8350 CPU.
If you just look just for gaming only with this 3700X then you will be disappointed as I found no difference in frame rate with an older FX-8350 as it clocks at 4GHz as well. I think that most of the Games I play are very GPU dependent.
The CPU runs at only 20% with the AMD Radeon R9 Fury GPU at 100% full load.
The CPU base speed is 3.59GHz, but when I started using the CPU it ran on the default setting with the X570 motherboard pro, which makes it clock at 4.3GHz makes it react faster with 2 or 3 cores.
The speed will drop to 4.05GHz under full load with all core running.
The downside that you get quick changes in temperature which can make the fan throttle up suddenly and make a bit of noise 88dB. But not as loud as my GPU fan on full load.
I have to manually change the CPU setting to get the static base clock speed of 3.5GHz. The scores on Cinebench R23 is 1009pts single-core and 9787pts multi-core.
Cinebench R23 gives the CPU a score of 1290 pts 10:15 sec for rearing and image for single-core and 12217pts and a time of 65sec per render image for the multi-core on default or Auto settings.
AutoTuning setting just keeps the clock speed at 3.99GHz regardless if the CPU is under load or idle.
The Scores were 1187 single-core and 11944 Multi-core, a little lower because of the lower clock speed.
But this mode was more stable with lower wattage and heat with the CPU fan not throttle up suddenly.
Bought this to replace my 2700X that i originally put into my PC build – lovely upgrade and at a decent price. Of course there are now more recent CPUs on the market that everyone is buying – but newer is not always better. I can run Cyberpunk 2077 with this in my build at high / ultra as well as stream twitch with numerous web pages open. It is solid – works great and with thermal paste applied it does not get much hotter than the 2700X before – maybe 3 or 4 degrees C. Arrived fast in the correct box with the CPU cooling fan (i do not use this as i have water cooling Corsair). Easy to fit as well. I do recommend you look up changing the CPU and make sure you are happy ion the correct method and what else is required before you swap parts however. This CPU will still pull its weight for years to come – and will no doubt be the best trade off value for money too.
Came well packaged. Installed CPU and cooler easily enough. Currently have it running at stock frequency and voltage, will try and remember to update if/when I mess around with OCs. Before doing so I will get a better CPU cooler – with that being said, the wraith spire does an excellent job with no OC. Never gone above 80 degrees celcius at 100% usage on Cinebench R20. Idles in 40s, but that’s likely down to my not-particularly-aggressive fan curve – I’m sure you could get it cooler, perhaps at the expense of quietness. For reference, I have it running in an NZXT H510 (so not the best airflow case) with two PWM purewings fans from bequiet as outtakes. I also currently have a GTX 560, which I’m using as a stop-gap card until my 3060 Ti arrives tomorrow.
To remind you, the 3600XT is not really worth buying over a 3600 or even a 3600X. I was previously going to get a 3600, but they were out of stock – as were the Xs – and the XT had just dropped to 195 IIRC (whereas the 3600 was something like 210). Performance will be virtually identical, so there’s not much point in the XT.
Bought the 3800x over the 3700x cos the price was the same at the time of order. Reading indepth reviews online suggest that this is only ever slightly faster than the 3700x. So far it’s working well paired with an MSI B550 motherboard.
One thing to bear in mind is unlike the Intel i5 or i7, the Ryzen 3800x (and 3700x for that matter) doesn’t have built in GPU, so any HDMI port on your motherboard isn’t going to give you a picture. You will need a separate GPU card to give you a video output. I didn’t realise this, and it meant having to buy an extra GPU card which I was hoping to put off until the Nvidia 3000 series becomes available.
Benchmarks suggest the Ryzen 3700 and 3800 series have now superceded by the Intel 10th gen i7. Whilst the Intel are more expensive, they do come with built in GPU which are sufficient for non graphics intensive users. You’ll have to get a Ryzen 5xxx series to beat the 10th gen Intel, unfortunately the 5xxx series is even more expensive at the time of writing.
I do like the included heatsink which uses heatpipe technology, and have built in LED lights.
I bought this CPU for a budget 1080p gaming pc for my nephew. Originally I planned to use the 3300x in the build but they have been unavailable for months. Anyway I built the pc around this with 16gb (2x8gb) 3200mhz corsair vengeance lpx ram, an Asrock B550m Pro 4 mobo, RX 580 8gb Msi Armour gpu, 1TB WD nvme ssd, 2TB Toshiba 7200rpm HDD, 500w Be quiet system 9 psu, GameMax Phantom Gaming Case with tempered glass side panel, all new for 600.
I’m really happy with the performance of this rig, as is my nephew. Getting a 4 core 8 threaded cpu for this money is superb (I paid 95), and it is an excellent performer. Even RDR2 chugs along nicely at 60fps with medium to high settings. My I7 7700k cost over 300 3 years ago and the performance isn’t far behind it.
There are a couple of things to note when building a PC with this chip. It has no onboard gpu so you will need a discreet graphics card otherwise you will not get a display. Secondly I initially had issues getting the new build to post. I turned the power on and the fans powered up but that was it. Luckily have built a few pc’s and thought this was a RAM issue. So I pulled out the sticks from slots 1and 3 and tried 2 and 4. Still no luck. I then put a single stick of ram in slot 2 and it posted. I then installed windows, shut the pc down and installed both sticks in their dual config and hey presto all worked fine. I did have a further problem as the I could not get the ram to work at it’s designated 3200mhz, I had to settle for 3000mhz, though I’m sure a bios update would solve this.
An included cpu cooler is also nice to see, and it works just fine, though if you like to overclock a beefier solution is recommended. It’s certainly a lot better than the old intel stock coolers. Anyway a great value cpu, well done AMD.
This CPU is brilliant, perfect for what I need and hardly goes under full usage on even some of my most demanding games. It did require a full motherboard change but luckily this CPU works well with the board and I didn’t require a BIOs update for it.
To add, in the box theres a small card that states if your motherboard is Gen 3 ready then the CPU will work no bother, which was true for me.
You also get a CPU air cooler which is a nice looking fan but I’ve went with my liquid cooling instead. I can’t review the stock cooler that comes with it as I haven’t used it. However, liquid cooling might be a bit OTT though as my temperatures are pretty low anyway which is another bonus to this CPU.
As for if this is better value wise over the Ryzen 5 3600X, I’m not too sure. Searching online the differences are slightly more in favour of the XT but for a few extra quid, I went with this newer XT.
Quite simply this CPU is perfect for both gaming and prodcutivity. I use this to play games with my 2080ti with no bottleneck and have no problem maintaining high framerate whilst recording footage. Having those 12 cores for rendering is simply fantastic, it will take me about 14 minutes to render out a 4k 10 minute video in Premiere which is brilliant.
If you are doing literally nothing but gaming then go with Intel as it can be at most a 10% increase in gaming performance with the 10900k over this 3900x but simply for this price having the 3900x is so much better value for your money because of those 4 extra cores.
I totally recommend undervolting this CPU, I managed to lower my max temps by about 20 degrees just by doing so (down to 1.18v) and still mantain a 4.3ghz all core clock (look for a tutorial if you don’t know how, it’s fairly simple) i also recommend that you go out and buy at least 3200mhz RAM as Ryzen LOVES fast memory and you can see decent percentages in performance gain just from a RAM upgrade, plus RAM prices have decreased quite a bit.
Overall i absolutely love this CPU and cannot recommend this enough to anyone looking for an upgrade. (Get Ryzen 5000 as of Nov-2020)
Well, i wasnt looking to upgrade my pc ,i just wanted to find a Intel cpu on monthly payments but could not find a 9th gen intel on monthly apart from the i3 9100f ,which i had .
So i found this Cpu with the Asus Tuf X570 mb .I use to have AMD cpu all the time but gave up when i had a athlon 2 and want impressed so changed but i thought with the good reviews AMD Ryzon are getting i would give them another go and jeeeeees ,im glad i did.
Without a doubt ,this is a beast of a CPU ,the Ryzen 7 3700x ,8 cores 16 threads on a rather reasonable price compaired to Intel prices for a threaded CPU .
Dont spend too much time reading reviews ,just buy the CPU and motherboard bundle ,the Asus tuf x570 is still good to go on the new ZEN 3 Amd family of chips (intel brings out a new MB chipset every damn gen release more or less) .
so recap ,dump Intel ,go back to AMD and gaming happily ever after !
The CPU itself works fine but that fan!
It’s got ever-so pretty colours but it repeatedly stopped. It did it a few times on install but recovered for several hours. During a BIOS update it decided to do it again. This finished literally as the CPU / Mobo decided the heat was too high and shut down. I was manually trying to spin the fan in a pathetic and rather panicky attempt to save the chip.
The update / BIOS settings had no effect on the fan and it just kept dying intermittently. The only way I could get the fan to work properly was to pump 12v directly to it through a molar connector straight from the PSU. This blew it’s ability to make rainbow effects but has cleared out whatever was causing the issue and now works as expected from the CPU fan socket on the board.
This appears to be a common problem with the stock Wraith fan – have a look on Google. If you get this and decide to use the supplied fan, test that it’s doing its job for at least a couple of days before trying anything scary! It’s an expensive bit of kit to knacker and you may be better off buying an OEM chip plus a fan of your choosing.
Upon complaining to Amazon, they sent out a new one. You can tell it was completely new as the box was not crumpled in anyway, and the wee sticker was in the box. The CPU was inserted into the motherboard without a problem and everything fitted without a hitch. The PC was built and everything ran as expected with no further problems. I just wish that Amazon would just not pass on damaged goods. It is a lot of of hassle for the customer and it really is a lottery whether you received something that is new or not, particularly for electronics.
1) 3.6 Ghz 8-Core processor with 16 threads. I remember buying my first 1Ghz Single Core AMD years ago, these modern processors are just insane!
2) Boosts to 4.4 Ghz when needed which is great for streaming and gaming
3) Comes with a more than sufficient cooler which has RGB that can be synced with most software tools
4) Price, yes this is good value. The rough equivalent of this from Intel is the 9700k, which most of the time costs more. There are times when the 9700k will do better, but in balance, you’ll nearly always be happier with a 3700x
5) Runs at less power than the Intel equivalent, so you’ll save money in the long term with energy bills.
My only complaint is that Amazon sent me the processor in a bag, rather than a box. I’ve ordered significantly cheaper stuff off Amazon and gotten way better packaging, so was disappointed at that. Plus, as you can see from the photos, the box arrived with some damage.
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away AMD finally get their sh!t together and
give Intel a roundhouse kick to the head.
Led by Princess Lisa Su and and her loyal engineers AMD have finally hit the jackpot with Ryzen, and
it’s aging like fine wine, architecture.
With more cores than a fruit and veg stall and enough speed to run the Kessel, the 3600 is the new Sandybridge!
The only thorn in the 3600 side is its low res gaming performance compared to some of it’s intel peers, but with a RTX3080 at 4kthe 3600 produces the same results as the fastest chips in the planet!! (See Hardware unboxed)
This, in its self, is a godsend for 4k gamers on a budget.
4k youtube with 30 tabs open?
Easy peasy!
Paint software and FL studio??
No sweat!
Need a bang for buck upgrade?
Look no further because this is the AMD you’re looking for.
Let’s hope this chip lasts as long as the previous bang for buck champ!
Fallout 4 as an example, I was currently in another playthrough when I did the upgrade. I went from getting like 20ish-30 FPS in the worst downtown areas (that’s with a lot of settings down to lowest/medium/off) on the FX 8350 build.
To getting 60FPS pretty much everywhere (With all max settings, except with Godrays OFF and shadow quality set to high and shadow distance set to 6000 in the .ini which is in-between Medium and High)
The worst places for performance loss no longer sent my FPS into the 20s and with the new build the lowest I got was 49fps when it was raining, but it was mainly 55-60 for the worst areas or full 60 everywhere else.
So the Ryzen 3 3100 running with 3200mhz DDR4 certainly improved FPS massively in Fallout 4 (happy about that as I mod the game a lot) this was at 1080p with my RX 480 4G.
I got improvement in others also, but like I said I haven’t really tested it much more.
When the Ryzen 4000 CPUs come out I will update the bios when it’s released then upgrade to a 8 core Ryzen 7.
Bought The 3900x on the pay over five months plan with an Asus x570 board-very handy. Included wraith prism is not bad at all. Will likely replace it further down the line but great that it was included free of charge. Video encoding on handbrake is night and day difference from the Haswell era i5 it replaces, as you’d imagine. Gaming is a doddle. Can run any game on my 2080 super @4k, like before…..but now the cpu usage is ridiculous. It’s got so much in reserve it’s just silly. Could realistically encode video whilst gaming. Temperatures hovering around 40c at idle and around 75c on included cooler. Geekbench 4 circa 5500 single thread and 42000 multi on included cooler. Is it worth the cost? Difficult to answer really. What do you need it for? If purely for gaming then I’d have to say no: the MUCH cheaper 3600x will do just as well or thereabouts. Heavy lifting, like video encoding, however, no doubt about it. I don’t regret the purchase for one second!
Ryzen 3 3100im in a pc with a Gtx 1060 3gb gpu , 16gb corsair Vengeance ram, msi b550 tomahawk motherboard, 850watt corsair psu.
This was 95.99 when I bought it and so fair its been beyond my expectations, from a phenom II x4 to this the jump is crazy for the price I had cpu usage always in the high 80 percents minimum in these games Ark survival, atlas online, destiny 2, gta, fallout 4 and everspace but now I sit in the 28 percents and 30s and I love it nothing I own is close to maxing it out.
The fan isnt the best for overclocking as my cpu temp rocketed in just the uefi bios causing me to drop it back to stock.
On normal clock speeds I think it’s fine, I was going to put my coolermaster 212 evo back on but I need an am4 bracket kit, this fan looks more subtle so I’ll keep running it untill I play stuff more taxing in it.
10/10 would buy again.
I have built a number of PC’s over the years but not for the last three and since then the technology has marched on considerably.
This time I was building a PC for my wife who uses Photoshop and needed a reasonably powerful PC to use the program fully. As such I got back into the weeds and started the upgrade to my personal memory module.
And I found that Ryzen CPU’s from AMD are currently the overall choice for performance vs cost if most of the online reviews, Youtube videos and magazines are anything to go by. Given that most of these views are held by people with far better technical knowledge than I, this seemed to be the way forward.
So, which CPU?
As ever with unlimited funds one would simply pick the fastest at the highest cost. However, back in the real world I figured two hundred quid or less was my target cost and this Ryzen chip fitted the bill perfectly. Without a doubt it hits the sweet spot and given it’s overall popularity I suspect most people making middle of the range PC’s feel the same as me.
This comes boxed with the cooler and fan which, is not overly large. I appreciate that power users and PC hobbyists may well want something fancier with flashing LED’s but what comes in the box works well, maintaining temperatures within spec and is also very quiet. Right now given that the PC I built is not for show I don’t see any need to change the cooling arrangement at all.
Paired with a decent motherboard this Ryzen CPU blows my old computer into the weeds. My wife is not a gamer but she does use Photoshop a lot as photography is her hobby and it can demand a bit from your PC when doing some tasks. Certainly her old computer struggled and often took quite a while to render some of the modified photographs.
Not with this sucker. Now every task is quick and seamless with no waiting around. It makes using heavy duty programs a pleasure not a pain and thus has ticked the main requirement for my wife.
Overall, I’m with the majority. AMD have nailed it with the Ryzen CPU’s.
After putting it all together it’s an amazing little pc. It runs basically all of my games at over 60fps in ultra settings at 1080p. It runs at 40 degrees idle and only 60-70 when gaming. For only 95 it’s an absolute steal, because I didn’t think I’d ever get the performance like I am out of such little money. If the Ryzen 3 3300x becomes available I highly recommend getting that, but if you’re looking at building a cheap gaming pc right now, the Ryzen 3 3100 is easily the way to go.
I ended up ordering a case, a motherboard, some ram, a CPU and an SSD.
I like to support the underdog if possible so I chose the AMD Ryzen 5 3600, from hereon the CPU, even if AMD is not a small company it is still dwarfed by Intel or “Chipzilla”. I know that this CPU is not the newest or greatest, but it always tops the “bang for buck” lists of the tech YouTubers so that’s what I got. I won’t be demanding too much from my PC, but I don’t want a machine that simply just gets by either.
It’s comes with a perfectly adequate cooler, which is easy to install, after who can’t tighten four screws at the corners… I may get a better cooler in time, but for now as I said perfectly adequate.
I tested the PC with cinebench and other benchmark software and of course it all falls within the range for an R5 3600, I know big surprise.
So to sum up, am I happy? Yes. ANY PC frankly would have been a step up from my old desktop, but to have this CPU instead of one of AMD’s APUs with the inbuilt graphics, I think will give me better options for the future. Although not too far in the future, since AMD will replace the CPU socket soon, maybe even this time next year…
(R7 3700x)
I was extremely excited to try out my first Ryzen chip. As someone who has used Intel for his entire life, it was going to be my first look into AMD life. Now I am an amateur builder, I had only build one computer prior to building the one this CPU was purchased for, so I was very nervous for a CPU with the pins on the chip itself.
I opened up the CPU and to my absolute dismay, the CPU had four bent pins. A few people online said to just bend them back but with my little experience I didn’t want to risk damaging it further or making me liable. Thankfully it and the bundled motherboard were returned with no issue (Thanks Amazon!)
I’ve given the CPU a 4 star as it is a very good CPU and my case was a very unlikely and rare case. Hopefully you aren’t as unlucky to get bent CPU pins, I wish AMD would adopt a Land Grid Array style for the Ryzen chips to avoid this sort of issue in the future.
I think this is what AMD intended Ryzen to be from the off, I have had the 1700X and the 2600 from previous gen. Both excellent in their own right and I learnt alot about Ryzen and it’s likes and dislikes, So coming from the Ryzen 5 2600 I wasn’t expecting miracles.
I got them though, let me explain, on paper the Ryzen 5 3600 has a slightly higher all core boost and double the cache, thats it oh and smaller fab at 7nm. What ever trickey they have going on is working I get a solid 15-20% FPS boost in all current tiltes and a solid 1500-2000 point gain in Firestrike, not earth shattering I admit but when you factor in I sold my 2600 for 100 this 3600 cost me 54 at the time I bought it. Along side that it seems to me at least way more tunable the any previous gen of Ryzen, old Ryzen was just a bugger to tune with RAM and overclocking got them hot if you wanted any meaningful speed say 4.2Ghz compared to 4.0Ghz which is what I settled on with the 2600 as 4.2 just got too hot even with an AIO. Now these Ryzen 3’s can run hot if you brute force the OC but instead of that and using the Precission Boost Overdrive and a bit of reading I have my 3600 boosting to 4.4Ghz on sinlge threaded workloads and averaging 4.3 on everything else all at less heat that if I dialed in 4.3 and static voltage. Now the CPU and it’s own limits are controlling the clock speed, much as it would if you just dropped it in stock and let it just run, but with a bit of reading and some time this processor will run so much better, much like GPU’s of today the cooler you keep them the faster they go within their limits.
So to summerise I’ll leave my specs here
MSI X470 Gaming Pro
Ryzen 5 3600 @ 4.4Ghz PBO max boost
Crucial Micron E die 3600 DDR 4 @ 3800 16-20-16-16-38
And an RTX 2060 under an H55 AIO that now boost’s to 2Ghz now that it is no longer thermally limited.
Folks overclocking for me at least just became fun again, more like tuning a muscle car than just slapping on some NOS and cooling and seeing how fast she’ll go.
I upgraded from the R5 1600x on a B350 motherboard to the R7 3700x with the B450 MSI Carbon Gaming with an NZXT Kraken x73 AIO with 360mm rad, and kept my 1080Ti on both systems. I set up the board, CPU and RAM as a test bench first with the standard AMD Wraith cooler, after using Flashback on the MSI Bios to install a 3000 series compatible Bios on the B450 chipset.
All worked, so I released the locking catch to remove the Wraith cooler to install the NZXT AIO. When I lifted the unhooked cooler free of the motherboard it actually ripped the CPU out of the socket because the standard thermal paste on the Wraith had set like glue, and the CPU was still stuck to the bottom of the cooler even though the retaining bar was still fully locked against the CPU socket on the motherboard. I had 6-7 bent CPU pins, which I was fortunately able to bend back without any snapping, and the CPU still works.
Be aware of this if you fit the included cooler and intend to replace it with something different later. If you wiggle the cooler loose instead of pulling it off it shouldn’t be an issue. I really wish AMD took notice of Intel and put the data pins on the socket, not on the chip.
All the benchmarks I’ve used of the last week show a great improvement from the old CPU, so I’m happy with the purchase. Even with liquid cooling the CPU can still get to 66 C in games, and 71C under a full load stress test on an overclocked profile.
For starters it is really easy to install it if you place it properly on the slot it just slides in, if not it doesn’t, so you don’t have to fiddle around with finding that really little triangle to find how to orient it.
This was an upgrade from a i5-3750k so a very big one.
I’m using it with a Noctua NH-D9L with two fans so I get awesome cooling.
It reaches 4.2-4.3 Ghz easily.
I’m getting really good results in cinebench, the only one that beats my score, within the same price range/generation, is another 3600x that looks like it has better cooling.
The advantage of this CPU is that the more cooling you give it the better it works so your millage is very dependent on the cooling you can provide.
I’ve even tried to stream with it to test see how it goes.
Playing BF2 which is a pretty intensive game.
It can handle streaming without a problem, doesn’t drop a single frame and stays at around 70ish degrees, considering the max temp is 95 there is still allot of room for usage, even though it reaches 4.3 Ghz which seems to be the max frequency I can squeeze out of it.
They say it can reach 4.4 but I didn’t see it, so maybe I’m not pushing it hard enough.
Ryzen Master, a must have software, has the ability to tweak it without going into bios, for some simple overclocking.
If you want to play it safe you can just run it in one of two modes.
Gaming – This reduces the amount of cores while pushing higher frequencies.
Creator – This pushes more cores while running at a lower frequency.
I thought i wrote a review already and sadly cant find it. Running at 4000mhz base, i score 7002 on Cinebench 20 all cores, just below half on running a single ccd (the 12 cores are split in to two groups on this chip), with one being a higher clock base than the other (hence me setting all of them to 4000). Im undervolting by 0.00675, with ram latancy at 15 15 15 36 (courtessy of excellent Patriot Viper) with my 2080 standard GPU ruinning smooth and trouble free at a 20% OC (Afterburner yay).
Im not a professional by the way, my first overclock attempt 🙂 Using liquid cooling (self contained) and it runs at 49C or thereabouts which i love. It also released the power of PICIE x4 for me and around 20FPS bump in the likes of Tombraider – though this likely due to it recognising PCIE4 on the GPU.
Awesome bit of kit, i ummed and ahhhed at buying then thought sod it, if i wait and wait i will only waste time not having it. Recommend pairing with decent ram (Viper is sooooooooo cheap presently) and a 570 mobo.
This processor is right up there amongst the best on the market for gaming pcs. It’s lightning quick and can handle pretty much anything I throw at it. I have coupled it with an RTX 2080S and 16GB of RAM and I am able to blitz through some of the most intensive games (such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider and AC Odyssey) on maximum setting with no issues what so ever.
The only thing I would keep an eye out for is the temperatures. The side panel spends more time off my pc than on just so my CPU can cool, and even so it’s not uncommon to see my temps hitting 90 Celsius when in game. It’s worth noting that I am using the cooler that comes with this processor, which itself is pretty great. While the temps do climb (sometimes a little higher than I would like), the stock fan does its job which, to say it comes with it, is pretty good indeed.
If you want to keep those temps down, maybe look at a water cooler, but for all intents and purposes, there are few CPUs that can top this one for the price point.
When trying to remove the cooler from the CPU, the paste had stuck like glue, which tore the CPU which was locked in its socket out of its socket, and then required an implement to seperate the fan and CPU.
Now this isnt right, after years of building my own rigs I have never seen this, usually the cooler and CPU seperate really easy for maintenance. Now I dont know what damage it may have caused to the MB or CPU in the future but for you this might save you making the same mistake, ditch the pre applied paste.
I’ve upgraded from an Intel 4790k and whilst still a solid chip its time was up. My system was, I started to notice, struggle in a few little areas. Started being less ‘smooth’. With the current aggressive pricing on the 3600 I decided to invest and then when the 4000 series comes out, I’ll pick up a cheaper 3900x or something.
To go with my 3600 I bought an MSI B450 Tomahawk Max, 16gb crucial Ballistix ram @ 3600 MHz and a new m.2 ssd. I reused my old case and seasonic psu. Unfortunately my Noctua U12s didnt have the correct bracket but more on that in a bit.
So, using the stock cooler I set about installing and building it all. It all went very easy and the stock cooler is the easiest I have ever installed. Quick trip into the bios to update it and set the ram to 3600 and I was soon installing windows.
Two immediate observations, its very fast, and the stock cooler is not great. It turns out AMD have removed the copper plate and the stock cooler really should only be a stop gap. Quick check online and Noctua will send you a free AM4 bracket for the U12s so that was ordered.
Once back up and running everything is smoother. And I attribute that to the extra cores as the system can handle so much more. Even if your game isnt optimized for multi-core you will see a benefit as the system isnt dragging that one core down.
Temps wise, as mentioned the stock cooler is not good. After a gaming session HWMonitor reported it had hit peaks around 95c. Whilst it can handle that the noise was terrible and the chip likely started throttling. It idled around 50 too.
Performance is all relative but paired with my 1080 on a GSYNC 144hz monitor everything is much much smoother.
After receiving the bracket and then installing the Noctua U12s temps dropped dramatically. Idle around 35 and even though my office is in the attic I haven’t seen it go about 79. I’m very happy with that against a higher ambient air temp.
Where this chip really flies is productivity. To be honest for the price its a steal. and clearly at the time of writing the best bang for buck.
We bought this processor for a recent mini pc build for my son. The 3200g was chosen for the following reasons and has delivered in every aspect:
– Value. Offering the perfect balance of cost & performance for most day to day tasks. My son would be using his pc primarily for homework, so has plenty of office documents and webpages open, something that this quad core chip will handle well.
– Graphics. Its an APU, offering integrated AMD graphics. This makes it a very versatile choice for budget or ultra small builds where the addition of a dedicated graphics card would increase cost and require significantly more space and air-flow. In my opinion, this CPU is not designed to be used for gaming, but could be the perfect budget chip to be partnered with a ‘stream’ gaming service like geforcenow or stadia.
– Socket. It’s AM4, and AMD have continued to produce a long line of very competant processors using it. This might offer some options for upgrade in the future.
The build was made using Amazon & Scan parts, and included: Asrock Desk Mini A300, 16GB Corsair Vengance 3000Mhz RAM, WD Blue M2 NVMe & Noctua 9a chromax cooler. Picture included for reference to size.
I highly recommend this CPU, save your money on other parts and don’t bother about 3700 or 3800. This CPU is all you need unless it’s a heavy multi-core capable stuff, like massive Adobe Premier/Lightroom export, then yeah, go for 3900x or 3950x, but don’t waste your money on those middle steps, they’re just useless IMHO.
Ah, I forgot about gaming- I only play Battlefield 5, and I honestly, haven’t noticed any difference at all, the same fps I had with my 3900x. With BF V it’s still a GPU that bottlenecks the system, this CPU is enough unless you’re pairing it with 2080 Ti on 1080p resolution, which is probably a very unlikely scenario.
This CPU is amazing value, and more than able to handle any modern game without being anywhere near approaching a CPU bottleneck. I opted for the X variant simply due to the higher clock speed, and the unwillingness to overclock the 3600 to the same values. Call it the want for simplicity, along with a nice discount at the time of purchase. The Ryzen 3600X is extremely capable, and assuming the socket remains the same as it has for three generations, the upgrade path is clear, which puts it at a clear advantage over the Intel i5 competitor for this performance level. Even if this upgrade path is halted by a change in socket, the price was lower than an approximately equivalent Intel CPU at the time of purchase in February 2020.
Albeit replaced soon after purchase, the included CPU cooler was actually quite impressive for a stock cooler, and if overclocking isn’t on the cards at all, it is more than adequate assuming a decent case air flow.
I would not hesitate to recommend this CPU for hefty desktop work, and of course nearly all gaming setups in the mid-range category.
To be honest I’ve been holding back my review till this point I don’t really know my reason for doing that… Anything could be it to tell your the truth.
Anyway now my mind mind is set and my eyes have seen the truth, I have been a Intel fanboy for many years cursing the name “AMD”, like if it was a sin and why would people build an epic computer with a “AMD” CPU is everyone and idiot…
I am happy to inform everyone that I shall be cursing another name that would INTEL as there high prices and the disregard to customers needs in the past years have lead them to this point which is overwhelming defeat by the amazing and so apologetic to have ever had doudted they would pull it off.
THE AMAZING AMD EVERYONE *CLAPS AND CHEERS*
Now if your still backing the wrong team ill give you some advice stop what your doing join the once underdogs and now kings in there own rights
Now let’s talk serious.
My device.
AMD Ryzen 9 3900x
Asus x570-e
G.Skill F4 16 GB X2
NVIDIA GEFORCE Gtx 1080ti Hybrid
Samsung M2 SSD 500gb
WD 1tb ssd
1000w Corsair
80+ FPS on all titles I play even new releases
7700k Intel build under 60 FPS most
So work it out hope you do
I’ve only ever really owned one Intel CPU, a 286 I don’t remember, and a DX2-66, ever since then I’ve gone with AMD. I’m not saying they’ve always been the best or most efficient, but if you wanted performance for a price that didn’t sting, AMD was the way to go.
With this generation of chips it really seems like AMD have caught up with Intel in almost every way, and they are still significantly lower in price. Maybe I’m biased, but reviews seem to agree that these processors pound for pound match or beat their Intel cousins. I upgraded from a AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, so let’s be honest, any of the current generation would seem like voodoo in terms of performance increase, but this just feels so fast. Seems to compare favourably with the 3800X and a good bit cheaper. If the 7-2700X (which can be had quite cheaply) and 5-3600X just don’t seem enough, and the price tag on the 9-3900X is just too hard to look at, the 7-3700X is probably the one for you.
The fan… It’s not so quiet, it does light up if powered, and I’m running with the sides of the case open right now so I’m not sure how effective it is at cooling, some of the reviews suggest swapping it out if you’re over locking and I’d probably agree, but as a stock cooler it seems to do the job well enough. One more thing, clipping the heat sink + fan to the processor/board has always been my least favourite part of a build, but this seemed to take way longer to fit than on any of the others I’ve built recently, maybe it was a defect, but if not, be patient and it does clip on in the end.
Overall, very pleased with this.
I got this from Amazon warehouse to knock an extra 5 off the price, but it took them about 10 days to dispatch it and so I didn’t get it for about 2 weeks. And then, since it was a warehouse deal, the heatsink had no thermal paste on it!
But obviously that has nothing to do with the product itself, which is what these reviews are about, so you can’t really knock stars off for that. That’s an issue with the seller themselves, nothing to do with the actual product.
Anyway, I’m loving the 3600. Install went without a hitch. I’m using a custom watercooling loop, so I just switched the Intel mounting bracket for the AM4 one, and so I can’t really vouch for the temps with the stock heatsink. With the loop my temps don’t really go above 40c in normal use, and 60c in benchmarks and heavy loads.
I had it overclocked to 4.3Ghz for a few days at about 1.37v, just messing around, and had no problems with it. I’m running at 4.2Ghz at the moment at about 1.35v on 3600Mhz non-QVL memory with no problems.
But, I must do some proper tests and measurements as it seems that performance can decrease, but still be stable, at lower voltages; It’s like, you’ll be delighted that you can boot into Windows and be stable at 1.32v, but then you realise your performance has gone through the floor!
All in all I’m quite happy playing around with my new toy.
TL;DR at bottom. Honestly blew my mind with how powerful this little thing is. Paired with a GTX 1060 6GB, I am able to comfortably play any game 60fps 1080p mid-max settings, with the cpu only being about 40% load (meaning that my GPU is holding it back by a lot). Photogrammetry and other mathematically intensive tasks are a breeze when it comes to this CPU, and path tracing in blender is reasonably fast for a CPU of any kind.
The temperatures I would say are a little high when using this cooler, although during a stress test I was unable to get it above 93C. I idle around 50c and game at around 65-70C, which is fairly reasonable considering the high voltage (1.444V I believe) and 7nm architecture. I have not experienced any thermal throttles
Installing is a piece of cake, with the mark indicating the correct rotation, and the CPU cooler (with pre – applied thermal paste) is as simple as tightening it down.
I would fully recommend this CPU to anyone looking for a mid-high performance machine in the range of 500 to 1100, as it will not be bottlenecked by almost any GPU.
TL;DR
Very good value, very good gaming and worksation performance, temperatures reasonable with included cooler, incredibly hard to bottleneck with any modern GPU (within reason). Would recommend.
Once games start actively using all these extra cores that are now available, it’ll be like having a new processor all over again with the speed-ups we can expect from properly scaled division or workload. Great value compared to the Intel offering, and if you pop it into an appropriate PCI-e 4 equipped Mobo with some decent RAM, you’ll be glad of the upgrade.
Really nothing to complain about, it does what I expected from it.
Had some fears regarding gaming performance, but after running my own Witcher 3 benchmark, I was amazed to get 11 frames extra average, and 13 frames better lows, compared to my to the limit 4.7 ghz overclocked old 4790K. Did not expect that, so very happy (with Vega 64 as GPU). General Windows experience is butter smooth now, not that it was slow on the 4790K, but its feels much snappier.
Gobbled up my 3333 mhz memory kit, runs like a champ with the same kit at 3600 with tweaked timings.
One thing that I initially did not enjoy was the fact that you cant really overclock it, it runs almost close to max in stock settings, but that’s an ex Intel user fake issue, no more delidding needed, no more days of OC testing, is clearly better at stock without any fuss. Only thing I settled on is a -50mv on the core, did not like the 1.47v it was pushing by default, so now its max 1.4 and boosting to 4375mhz, it did 4.4 ghz easy with stock voltage, even 4.425 ghz on some cores with PBO, but don’t thinks its of any use.
Wanted to go back to an AMD cpu, very very happy with my 3600X. Love it!
Anyway, I ended up cancelling my 3900X in September and re-ordered again from Amazon US when they became available a week ago. It’s probably for the best, because I get 4.2GHz all core boost and single core boost of 4.65GHz (on stock BIOS settings), now that AMD has learned from all of the complaints about boost clocks and released the ABBA AGESA, and perhaps started binning 3900Xs a little better to save face.
Multi-core performance is very impressive, I’ve tried compiling Rust projects and compressing large number of files with 7-zip. Now here, it’s a night and day difference compared to my macbook pro and Ryzen 3200G.
The CPU temp goes to 75C after a few minutes at full load (Blender Classroom rendering), with NH-D15S as a cooler. I used Noctua’s thermal paste that came with the cooler, pressed the heatsink against the CPU, removed to check thermal paste covered the whole heat spreader, then screwed the heatsink on.
If that helps, I’m using Aorus Elite x570 board, Micron’s Ballistix DDR4 3200 RAM CL16 (4 sticks) and Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD.
So there you go, I guess, this is 2 reviews in one. Looks like you can’t go wrong with AMD’s new CPUs. Buy with confidence!
Just make sure you update the bios via your X400 or X300 series from your board manufacture website along with the relevant chipset drivers and you will be set to go or ignore all the above and pay the piper and just go with the X570 series Motherboards to save the hassle.
I use Adobe Photoshop and the odd game every now and then and I went from an Intel i5 6600k to an AMD Ryzen 2700X and now Im on the Ryzen 3700x. In Photoshop I do Long Exposure Seascape images, When I Photo Stack anywhere between 5 and 15 images together, Photoshop turns to the CPU to do this and from the i5 to the 3700x there is a vast difference in speed thus making use of the 3700x cores and threads. Every time I take 1 RAW Image its 50mb in size, so if you increase that by 15, the image being processed is 750mb in one image saved as layered .TFF file.
Im so glad of the Ryzen 3700x as it cuts my Photoshop time in half.
A Sweet Purchase at a lower cost for the same performance from Intel.
First off the installation to the board itself couldn’t be easier, drivers and software is all in one handy zipped file on the AMD Support page, one click and a restart and that’s it. I like experimenting a little with Ryzen Master and squeezing a little more performance out of it – conveniently on the new version of RM, there’s actually a ‘Precision Boost’ & ‘Auto Overclocking’ presets which gives worry free improvements as they’re all customised by AMD themselves.
So with the overclocking max set to 4.26Ghz, RAM boosted to 3,266Mhz and my 980Ti on stock, the gaming experience is definitely worth the 188 I paid compared to my old 1700x (170).
Already off the bat, the single thread speeds were very noticeable providing even better performance in my games but without sacrificing much of the Multithreading speed of the 1700x. I play all of my games on 1080p 60fps, Very High with some 2xMSAA(sometimes 4x if the game is well optimised) and it handles it all really well, give or take a few frames dropped here and there but nothing to frown about considering you’re paying less than 200!
Temperatures of my 3600 at 4.25Ghz paired with my Hyper Evo 212(With AM4 adapter) idles around 34-40 degrees and is around 65-70 under full load but mostly towards the 60 degrees side and less than 70 Watts of power consumption.
I’m planning to upgrade to an RTX soon though because my 980Ti is almost 5 years old so it is starting to feel a little slow and could possibly be holding the Ryzen back a little. Anyway, I digress, for 180-190 this is the closest you’re going to get in terms of performance to an Intel i5 chip at a competitive price point!
AMD have hit the jackpot with these chips and I can’t see why anyone would turn their nose up at the price:performance ratio you can get with a Ryzen!
EDIT: I was checking a few recent reviews on here and people complaining about the AMD Rewards as a scam? NOT TRUE AT ALL!
I was able to redeem my 3 months of Game Pass back in July with no issues after installing the product verification tool from the site. Apparently a lot of people don’t understand how to use computers on here and blame the hardware ignore all of the one star reviews.
As by the fact ive now bought 3 Zen2 CPU’s its pretty obvious i like them.
The Bad.
The boosting obviously and im going to have a dig at online reviews where single thread performance is still a big thing for them (but not for us real world users) So yeh it boosts to x mhz, but for how long, how many cores, whats the spread? I dont know and i dont have time to work it out. Go away single core, we are not interested.
Then the voltage and temps, even after several bios revisions the cpu calls quite a lot of volts running the stock algorithm which i just dont see the need for. Especially on idle!
Ultimately because of the above ive fixed both my 3700 and 3900x at 4.25ghz and 1.29 and 1.25v respectively. I get the same low core performance and better all core. And lower temps to boot.
The 3600 ive left at stock, as mine wont ‘overclock’ to any benefit where the other two do. Note, imo an ‘overclock’ is worth trying as most online reviews are testing single core on PBO, where in the 3900x there are 10 cores between 1 and 12….. testing single or all is a bit daft and doesnt make sense.
The good, these CPU’s are incredible performers for the money. We are getting near premium performance across the board from the super cheap 3600. The 3700x is really all youd ever need for maintstream price. And the 3900x, 12 cores for 470quid? thats just mad. And you get PCIE4 with them so im now running tripple nvme in my boxes.
I heard there another company making CPU’s but i forget there name but apparently they are trying hard to catch up. Oneday we may have an alternative to compare to this fantastic range of cpu’s. Roll on Zen3
Original review: I have replaced a 2700 with this, and while some may believe I am mad, I think I have made the right choice. It is faster in (most) games, and though not faster in all productivity suites, it is pretty close, and much ahead in HEVC encoding (about 50%, despite the fewer cores), which was of paramount importance for me. The only reason i gave it 4 stars because the acclaimed auto-overclocking is far from being flawless, and BIOS updates are still rolling out every two weeks. Still, with manual setting it humms along nicely at 4.1 GHz on all cores, with 1.25V vcore (with auto, it was fed 1.4V and sometimes even higher at heavy all-core load, while hovering at 4050-4075 Mhz). Stock cooler is OK for everyday use (gaming included – and it even will hit 4.2 most of the time!), and it is not too loud either, but if you want to utilise all 6 cores heavily (like I do with video transcoding), you may want to consider aftermarket cooling (H212 or similar will absolutely do). Overall, a fine product, at a fair price, and I am happy with it 🙂
Hasn’t been a smooth ride however, mostly my own fault for going with a previous gen mobo (it was way cheaper than even the most basic 570)… BIOS flashing my MSI B450 Carbon Pro was a piece of cake using the Flashback+ feature (I’ll admit that experiencing performing a flash without having to get my hands on an older chip was something I was interested in doing and contributed to my purchase of the board.)
However the current BIOS is far from perfect, when the rig is up and running it’s a peach…but restarting the machine is a nightmare and usually involves between 4-20 attempts before it actually boots.
Still, none of that should reflect on the chip, which is a beast for the money…it was my choice to pair it with a previous gen mobo, it didn’t expect it to be quite as problematic as it has been though.
Balls in Intel’s court now…let’s see some price cuts lads. Red or Blue doesn’t really matter to me, I’ve had great AMD chips and great Intel CPUs too. Competition is a win for all consumers.
I upgraded to a 3900x. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks and l’m loving it. A few things to note for those of you Ryzen 3rd Gen. users and prospective buyers:
1. Voltage offset is your friend. In my case and with my specific MOBO (Asus C6H – x370) the different Ryzen CPUs I had (3600x, 3700x and now 3900x) behaved in the same way:
– High voltage at idle up to 1.5V
– (Thus) ‘high’ idle temps: around 37-45C
– Around 1.2-1.3V at load, temps around 60C (ranging from 55 to 65C on a Corsair H150i Pro, quiet pump and all fans spinning around 800 RPMs).
I don’t care what “Robert” from AMD says and I surely don’t trust him; I trust the numbers I get on my PC. So, if you want a quieter, more efficient, longer lasting (probably) Ryzen 3rd. Gen. CPU, I advise to go the ‘voltage offset’ route. Personally, I have my chip set to -1.0V so the 3900x never has more than 1.4V fed to it (I did the same on the 3700x; l actually had this CPU with a 1.250V undervolt and it did just as good as stock. I haven’t tried to go so ‘low’ on voltage on the 3900x yet. I bet it’ll work just fine, but until I try it I won’t know for certain). I have run benchmarks (games, Cinebench) and I get slightly better results with the offset voltage. YMMV.
2. If you want a totally silent PC experience (and have the appropriate components you’ll need for it), I suggest you set a fan curve where fans won’t spin up until the CPU reaches 62-63C AND you set the fans to have around 3 to 5 seconds response delay (you can actually set normal fan curves as long as you have a 5 seconds response delay. Just observe the CPU behavior and you’ll understand the *rational for this).
*This is all about trying to get around the ‘low usage’ and ‘high voltage’ Ryzen 3rd. Gen. behavior. Open an app and it’ll boost up to its max., having the voltage fed to it to its max., too. This causes the temps to go much higher than at idle but just for literally a couple/few seconds. I’ve noticed the CPU won’t care whether my fans are spinning at 2000 or 700 RPMs: it will still reach such temps. and settle there.
Thus, the way to go is what l mentioned above. That way, your fans won’t bother what the CPU is doing and will only spin up when the CPU truly needs it (beyond 62-63C). Funny enough that will hardly ever happen (almost never in my system) as, unless you don’t have the appropriate airflow, your 3rd Gen. Ryzen CPU will hardly go beyond the aforementioned temps. Sure enough, again, your temps will vary according to the airflow in your case and ambient temps.
3. I don’t think l have noticed a significant improvement when going from the 3600x to the 3700x and then to the 3900x (as expected). All these CPUs are pretty snappy and a joy to use (once it’s all properly configured). Unless you have a workload that requires more than 6 cores OR you are an enthusiast like me who gets thrilled just by thinking you have a 12 cores and 24 threads CPU, you’re probably better off with the 3600 (even the non x).
If you aren’t planning to change the CPU until 3 years or beyond (and you like gaming) l’d probably buy the 3700x. Games like Battlefield V do use those 8 cores and even 12! I’ve seen “BV” using 54% of the 3900x (that’s using those 12 cores fully and some of one thread) and I see up to 64% usage when ‘loading’ the game “COD MW 2019” or the next level. That is insane.
If you aren’t a gamer, an enthusiast and/or you won’t utilize applications that take advantage of extra cores, then, really, go and get a 3400G. It’s an excellent CPU (on daily, ‘normal’ usage you wouldn’t notice a big difference between that one and the 3900x. Of course there is a difference, but not the one you may have in mind; not a 4 VS 12 cores difference.
I got a 3400G for my wife and she can’t be happier. Mind you, l would’ve gotten her the best available in the market had l thought a difference was to be found (for her PC usage). The 3400G will save you money (cheaper, no GPU needed, less powerful PSU required… even the electricity bill will be cheaper… 😉
Girls and boys, if you have questions, down in the comments. I hope this helps!
Update 1st October 2019:
I switched to a 3700x. The only difference l notice between the 3600x and the 3700x is when looking at MSI Afterburner OSD overlay while playing Battlefield V. Now, CPU usage is a lot less than before. If you’re just a gamer you should be more than fine with the 3600x, l surely was. It just that seeing that high CPU usage while playing BV was bugging me (YMMV, as ever).
The 3700x at stock (PBO off) is hitting advertised clocks in most cores. More importantly, idle voltage and temps are now settled after upgrading to BIOS 7501 (on an Asus C6H x370). I’m using Ryzen Balanced Windows Power Plan.
So yeah, so far so good. Boy this’s been a journey!
I guess l’ll now wait for an offer on the 3900x, not because l need it (not by any means!) but because l can and l am a PC enthusiast. Having 6 cores is good, 8 is great and 12 is awesome. 16 cores, l hear you say? Yeah, bring them on baby!
Update 18th September 2019:
– Upgraded to 5 STARS. At this price (I paid GBP 220, bought from Amazon), this CPU is amazing.
– Added picture showing 2 cores reaching 4468MHz (HWinfo).
– Waiting for BIOS update of 30th September.
I continue being very happy with this CPU. It’s snappy and fast. I have observed games like “Battlefield V” using it up to 90%. The game runs as smooth as you would want it (paired to a MSI RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio) and it’s a joy to play.
Now, my plan is to upgrade to a better Ryzen CPU next year and hopefully keep it for a few years (I’d buy an 8 cores minimum). If you buy a CPU having in mind to keep it for 3+ years, and you like playing games that utilize 8 or more cores if available (like “BV” does) then I would suggest you going for a 3700x instead. It’ll be a better buy in that case scenario.
Update (a week after purchase):
I got into terms with this CPU and decided to keep it.
After a week of daily usage l can tell this processor is faster and snappier than the one it’s replacing, a [email protected].
The only problem I found is the idle temperatures are ‘somehow’ hotter than the 1700x (even when OC). Basically, when idling, the 3600x temperature jumps from around 35C all the way to 60-63C. It is a strange, ‘restless’ behavior (see my system’s specs at the bottom).
I have come into terms with this by readjusting the fans’ curve. In any case, the fans every now and then rev up to speeds they never reached before (past 2000Rpms in the case of the CPU fans when the latter occasionally reaches 73C for a few seconds while loading a game). This happens rarely, but I’ve seeing it.
In most cases, while gaming or stress testing, the CPU tends to sit at 60-63C with an ambient temperature of around 20C. For example, playing Battlefield V (3840×1200@120Hz), as you can see in the (lousy) uploaded pictures. I’d happily say this CPU is pretty cool under load.
Another ‘weird’ thing I observed is the voltage. At idle, 1.4V; under load 1.3V. I think this is why the CPU is hot and jumpy when idling VS cooler and more stable under load. I researched online and found that the higher idle voltage is meant to ‘assist’ the 1-2 cores higher clock speed, whereas the lower voltage under load is because of the slower 6 clocks core speed.
Speaking of clock speed, my processor has no problem reaching the advertised 4.4Ghz and even 4.450Ghz occasionally. While playing games it sits at 4.275-4.3Ghz, often speeding up to 4.375Ghz. I used “GPU Tweak II” to see the CPU’s behavior ‘while playing games’ and “HWmonitor” to monitor it in general.
One thing to notice is the CPU cooler l’m using: an AIO 360mm Corsair H150i PRO with 3x Be Quiet Silent Wings 3 fans. Keep in mind your clock speed and you temps may vary when pairing the 3600x with a different, less efficient cooler.
I’ll try to take and add new, more informative pictures when l have the time.
All in all, if you’re coming from a 1700x/2700x or slower, I’d recommend the upgrade if you’re looking for a faster ‘Single Core (SC)’ speed and a snappier feeling when using the PC (e.g. opening programs, loading websites, etc.). (Bear in mind, around half a year ago I tried the 2700x on my rig but l sent it back due to not noticing any improvement compared to my 1700x.)
I keep the 4 stars rating due to the ‘weird idle behavior’. Otherwise this CPU would completely deserve 5 stars. Price to performance it is a 5 stars CPU.
My rig:
– 3600x
– C6H (x370)
– RTX 2080 Strix
– Corsair H150i PRO (with 3x Be Quiet Silent Wings 3)
– NVME Samsung 960 PRO
– 3200Mhz — 16GB RAM — Corsair Dominator Platinum
– EVGA T2 – 850w
– Be Quiet Dark Base 900 Pro
.
(*As a side note and in order to help prospective buyers decide between this CPU and the 3700x.)
If your usage is like mine (Word, 20+ tabs/two windows internet browsing, gaming AAA games, listening to music and watching movies) then this CPU will surely serve you very well. I would certainly also explore Intel options (specifically the 9700K if on offer).
I’ve had an 8 cores CPU (the aforementioned 1700x) and trust me, if you want a fast, snappy feeling on your PC, you want high SC performance. Leave all those 8 cores for ‘video editors’ and other users of applications that utilize a high core/thread count.
‘Future proofing,’ I hear you say? I laugh at that concept. My beloved 1700x bought in the best region of the world (Cambridge, Massachusetts) in May 2017 (yeah, I was a Zen early adopter) is already outdated by a 6 cores CPU, 2 years later. There is no ‘future proofing’ in technology. Now, if you can’t afford an upgrade every 2 years or you just don’t bother, then surely, aim at the best you can buy today. I would then pay the extra 80 GBP and get the 3700x because those extra 2 cores may come handy in the coming 4-5 years. If your PC usage is like mine and you’re like me in that you’re already thinking of the new Ryzen CPU (Zen 5?) then get this one and save those 80 GBP for the next Ryzen generation.
‘Some games use 8 cores,’ you say. Well, check games benchmarks and tell me what the difference is: 5fps? 8fps in the best case scenario? Will you notice that? I surely won’t.
.
(Initial review.)
I have mixed feelings about the 3600x.
On one hand it ‘feels’ snappier and faster than my old and trusty 1700x (even when OC to 3.9Ghz), on the other hand the 3600x runs hotter when idling.
My PC was silent until upgrading to the 3600x. I can now hear the 3x Be Quiet Silent Wings 3 fans revving up (installed on a 360mm AIO Corsair 150i PRO) at idle. Ambient temperature: 19C.
The CPU reaches the advertised speed and l have seen it surpassing it, too (see pictures attached). When all cores are in use it seats at 4.09 while aleatory changing the speed of 1 core to 4.124Mhz (when benchmarking Cinebench r15 MC).
So far it gets 4 stars because it runs significantly hotter than the 1700x (3.9Ghz OC) at idle. When gaming (BV) it sits at around 63-65C (see attached pictures) (Front door of my case opened, 3x 140mm Be Quiet Silent Wings 3 located at the case front running at full speed).
Conclusion, after a few hours of testing (To be updated):
– It feels snappier/faster than a 1700x (OC to 3.9Ghz) when opening programs and ‘normal usage’. This time it’s not only about ‘numbers’ (benchmarks) but you can ‘feel’ the difference.
– It runs hotter than a 1700x (even when OC to 3.9Ghz).
– Metro Exodus Benchmark: l get the very same results with the 3600x and the 1700x on this benchmark. I guess l’m GPU limited/bottlenecked (but just to say).
One star off because of the temps at idle. l’ll conduct further testing and come back to update this review in a week.