AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Review: Best All-Round Value CPU

[Nobina]

Watch as Intel sells shitloads of 9600K regardless.

 

[Evernessince]

Common misconception: with the new bios the 3900x can now boost 1 core to 4.6ghz at a time whereas before, it wasn't able to. In no way can a 3900x hit 4.6ghz on all cores at the same time.
I believe the reviewed 3600 was able to hit 4.2ghz all core with an after market cooler which is very good.

Hmm, yes I think it was unreasonable to expect an all core overclock of 4.6ghz now. I guess Intel CPUs in recent years will hit their boost on all cores automatically with sufficient cooling so I kinda expected the same. Do these things still boost one core to 4.6 if you manually overclock to 4.2? If they don’t then it would be interesting to see if manually overclocking actually has a negative effect on applications that are often bottlenecked by a single core.

But I don’t think 4.2ghz is all that impressive, it’s not much of an improvement over the previous gen and way short of Intel’s stock clocks. The performance numbers make do up for it, the IPC is clearly here on Ryzen 2 which makes it more disappointing, if these things could sustain an all core overclock of 4.6/4.7 then they have matched or even beaten Intel’s single core performance. However, these CPUs are still clearly better buys than the Intel parts and perform faster in most cases. Must say this 3600 is the one I’m most impressed with, the more expensive Ryzen 2 parts only seem to offer more cores for quite a bit more money and I don’t think most users really need more than 6/12 at the moment.

Um no, Intel CPUs DO NOT boost all cores to max turbo clock. If they did Intel wouldn't need to release a more expensive 9900KS to do just that

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14402/intel-announces-5-ghz-all-core-turbo-cpu

That's the keyword, leaks. There is no claim from AMD where the CPU can boost to that clock. Check Techspot article about that: https://www.techspot.com/news/80241-amd-announces-ryzen-9-3900x-flagship-desktop-cpu.html

Always take leaks with a grain of salt! Hopefully, you won't have an unreasonable expectation for unreleased products, then complaining when the product doesn't meet your "expectation".

Actually, it was the published spec from AMD, who didn't clarify that it wasn’t an all core boost, something they conveniently didn’t tell us. Although in fairness to AMD for the 3600 the advertised boost was only 4.2. I don’t think it was unreasonable to assume it would be an all core boost as Intel chips and previous Ryzen chips will overclock all their cores to the advertised boost clocks.

And actually, these CPUs did mostly meet and actually exceed my expectations, with the exception of gaming, where I expected Ryzen to overtake Intel in ultimate performance. Which I can’t help thinking would have been met had it been possible to get all your cores up to 4.7ghz or so. However for all but users with more money than they know how to spend (people who buy 2080ti’s & Titans etc) these new Ryzen parts are clearly better buys for gamers. Especially this 3600, which comes remarkably close in gaming to its much more expensive 8 and 12 core brothers.

Yes, AMD "conveniently" left that out exactly like Intel did. Neither company published all core turbo clocks.

If you have a problem with a practice that's fine to point it out but to crap on AMD for something Intel does as well? Double standard.

 

[Vulcanproject]

I'm impressed with the box performance but also in a way disappointed that they don't clock as high as I had hoped.

I didn't have extremely high hopes like some, I felt 4.5-4.6GHz would be a good target but it seems they just can't do it. It is a very small minor complaint given the IPC advances made. A little extra clock speed would have erased any last performance gap to the highest end Intel parts though, especially in gaming.

Maybe AMD can work with TSMC and refine the steppings a bit, maybe 7nm+ will be ready within a year and give them a little extra push. In the meantime AMd have delivered parts that are going to sell very well and eat up more market share, for sure.

 

[Capaill]

And I can assure you, it would end up in the e-waste bin if I bought it and I do believe many others wouldn’t use it either, especially with temps in the 80s.

I also wouldn't bother with a packaged cooler if I intended to get close to a max OC, unless the cooler was really special. But when AMD released the 1600, they also released the 1600X and one of them had no cooler. So let's wait and see what options AMD give us as we haven't even seen the 3600X yet.

 

[meric]

I'm impressed with the box performance but also in a way disappointed that they don't clock as high as I had hoped.

I didn't have extremely high hopes like some, I felt 4.5-4.6GHz would be a good target but it seems they just can't do it. It is a very small minor complaint given the IPC advances made. A little extra clock speed would have erased any last performance gap to the highest end Intel parts though, especially in gaming.

Maybe AMD can work with TSMC and refine the steppings a bit, maybe 7nm+ will be ready within a year and give them a little extra push. In the meantime AMd have delivered parts that are going to sell very well and eat up more market share, for sure.

Process tweaks may increase clock speeds but it seems this is an architectural issue with zen/zen 2. Probably cache and memory latency is the culprit for "inferior" gaming performance. IPC is very good though, zen 2 still performs very nicely even with a clock speed deficit.

 

[Fergutor]

I'm actually running a Ryzen 1600 on a MSI B350 Tomahawk and I'm glad to see that I can have a significant upgrade with no need to replace the whole thing. As usual, great review

Same, but there's a problem: no bew BIOS for our motherboard model for the moment. There was one but they removed it. And apparently the new ones, due to limitation in eeprom size, will come with many features removed (if they ever release one for our model) https://www.techpowerup.com/257201/...ail-amds-zen2-backwards-compatibility-promise

 

[NotABadSlime]

Best deal you can get here, effectively $150, with $50 mobo discount.

https://www.microcenter.com/product...-am4-boxed-processor-with-wraith-spire-cooler

But bang for the buck, the R5 1600 is still a much better value at $50 ($30 mobo discount):
https://www.microcenter.com/product...-am4-boxed-processor-with-wraith-spire-cooler

At 3x the price, there is no way it can even do 2x the performance over a R5 1600.

 

[NotABadSlime]

Why does AMD always have way high jacked up price only to see stuff fall by 50% or more a year later? What incentive is there for people buy at release day prices?

 

[NotABadSlime]

The 2600x was at $240 only 9 months ago, and now it is half that:
https://www.microcenter.com/product...-am4-boxed-processor-with-wraith-spire-cooler

$110 with the $30 mobo discount. Why does AMD think they can keep trying to fool people to pay more?

 

[Markoni35]

It would also be interesting to see how sensitive the chips are to Spectre, Meltdown and other security holes.

 

[texasrattler]

So AMD is better at stock but Intel beats them when OC'ed? That's what I get from this.

Ryzen 3600 is comparable at stock to a 9600K but a OC'ed 9600K would just beat it.

Looks to me Intel again wins if you after overclocking or going for a K model.
At this time, the only thing AMD is winning is productivity, shocker there and in pricing. Funny, they always had that and still haven't done much.
Zen 2 will be good for AMD as it's their best yet, I don't see them doing much to Intel, other than getting Intel to drop prices. As a consumer we win but for business, I still say Intel wins as AMD just hasn't done enough to make enough people switch.

 

[texasrattler]

It would also be interesting to see how sensitive the chips are to Spectre, Meltdown and other security holes.

Does AMD even have those issues?
Just like Intel 9th gen and up doesn't have those issues supposedly. Maybe Zen 2 doesn't either.

 

[dirtyferret]

Giving the results a quick glance over on my phone, it seems the amd 3600 is a slight notch above gamersnexus result with the same chip while the 9600k is a slight notch below their results. I'll have to check them out side by side when I'm on my PC.

 

[Lew Zealand]

The 2600x was at $240 only 9 months ago, and now it is half that:
https://www.microcenter.com/product...-am4-boxed-processor-with-wraith-spire-cooler

$110 with the $30 mobo discount. Why does AMD think they can keep trying to fool people to pay more?

They're moving out old stock at a discount to replace it with new stock. This is an everyday, ages-old business practice, have you seriously not seen this before?

Business 101.

 

[InTents]

Watch as Intel sells shitloads of 9600K regardless.

Yes they will. It's still a good CPU.

 

[Nightfire]

Looks like a solid CPU for anything short of a RTX 2080 build.

The 8700k still a good choice for many, as the price increase is not as bad if you factor in all of the components. It really is the 2600k of this gen.

Those that buy the 9600k might have some buyers remorse. BFV results look to be a sign of the times.
It is the 2500k of this gen.

 

[PetrolHead]

Based on the results so far by Hardware Unboxed, Gamers Nexus and der8auer, it looks like the official boost clock is more or less the limit for the all core boost and since PBO + AutoOC does such a good job, there's not much fun to be had with these CPUs. Based on TechpowerUp's memory scaling article, memory scaling isn't too exciting either. A bit boring for us enthusiasts, but good news for the average consumer.

Since overclocking headroom is practically zero, the 3600X with its advertised 4400MHz boost clock seems to break the old rule where you could just buy the non-X variant and overclock it to get the same performance you'd get by overclocking an X-series CPU. The price difference seems to be ~20% around these parts, so the 3600X is definitely worse value when looking at the clockspeed delta alone, but just like with R5 1400 and R5 1500X, the X variant of the 3600-series comes with the Wraith Spire cooler instead of the Wraith Stealth cooler. This might matter to those that are going to stick with the stock cooler for the foreseeable future.

By the way, since the R5 1500X cost 190 USD at launch and is thus closer to the launch price of the R5 3600 than the R5 1600 (which cost 220 USD), it would be fun to include it in some of the coming benchmarks to underline how much more 200 USD buys you today than it did in 2017. Well, maybe not fun for Steve, but probably fun for all of us that went ahead and bought the 1500X...

Common misconception: with the new bios the 3900x can now boost 1 core to 4.6ghz at a time whereas before, it wasn't able to.

Gamers Nexus saw very little difference between the different BIOS versions and their take on it was that it wasn't just a BIOS issue but a combination of several things, silicon lottery included.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

You’ve not read the article then;

“You can enable PBO with the box cooler, but it won’t do much as you’re already near the thermal limit. Basically we gained 25 MHz for a 4 degree increase in temperature... needless to be said, we don’t recommend using PBO with the box cooler.”

It’s e-waste to me. This wraith stealth is not good enough for me, if I bought this CPU it would go in a box for a few years and inevitably end up in the e-waste bin at work. Looking at the temps in the article there are some huge temperature improvements to be made from using better aftermarket cooling.

I don't think an extra 50-75MHz from PBO when using an $40+ aftermarket cooler (or 100-125MHz if you are using an expensive cooler) will make much of a difference. You are essentially getting the most of your CPU stock.

TL;DR it's not e-waste.

The only reason to get an aftermarket cooler is if you plan on doing manual all core OC. You will sacrifice some single treaded perf, but you might gain in multithreaded perf. Or maybe you just simply want better temps.

When literally everybody is praising AMD for including what is essentially a $20-$30 stock cooler with decent coper heatpipes, design and noise levels, here you are not happy about it.

Could you put a better fan on the wraith cooler, higher static pressure say? Or is it a fixed unit. I'm not really going to worry about OC'ing too much, but I'd like my CPU to run cooler especially when summer arrives. If I could just get a better fan that would be nice, otherwise I'll get an aftermarket cooler, but just not a monster like I have in the past like the Noctua NH-D15.

 

[Evernessince]

So AMD is better at stock but Intel beats them when OC'ed? That's what I get from this.

Ryzen 3600 is comparable at stock to a 9600K but a OC'ed 9600K would just beat it.

Looks to me Intel again wins if you after overclocking or going for a K model.
At this time, the only thing AMD is winning is productivity, shocker there and in pricing. Funny, they always had that and still haven't done much.
Zen 2 will be good for AMD as it's their best yet, I don't see them doing much to Intel, other than getting Intel to drop prices. As a consumer we win but for business, I still say Intel wins as AMD just hasn't done enough to make enough people switch.

The same could be said of the 9700K and 9900K. If you overclock the 9600K you can surpass their performance as well, after all it's not that big of a gap to begin with.

That said overclocking requires a Z class motherboard, a decent CPU cooler, and a decent power supply as OCing that 9600K is going to increase the CPUs power requirements. You are also going to need a case able to take care of all that hot air, especially during the summer. I've had customer builds before that would max out at 63c with a moderate overclock when I was testing them and at their house during a hot summer day the motherboard CPU temp warning beep would go off (old school ASUS Sabertooth P67).

Point being, you are looking at a lot of added cost for a CPU that is already $50 or more then the competition. Not to mention, the convenience factor of simply installing the CPU and it's included cooler, which is exactly what people buying at this price point want.

Going along with the budget theme of this processor, are most gamers at this price point even in a position to take advantage of any potential FPS increase from overclocking? Given that in order to get those extra FPS you need a 2080 Ti, I'm going to say no. The number of budget gamers with 2080 Tis is 0 because you are not a budget gamers if you are dropping $1,200 on a video card alone. A majority of people running these budget CPUs will have GPUs that bottleneck in a majority of games before the CPU ever does. That's not even considering if they have a high refresh rate monitor when needed to see the extra FPS.

All of these factors are important to budget oriented customers, as is convenience. Of which the 3600 has in spades over the 9600K.

 

[hahahanoobs]

When I kept seeing the 3600 within 10fps of the 3900X, I cringed, because that's not how it's supposed to work. Flagships are supposed to be the far better performer. 3900X is $500 ffs! The only conclusion is 12 cores are too much for gaming. The 3900X should be an HEDT part. If the 9700K was within 10fps of the 9900K there would be pitchforks, but it's AMD so they get a pass? Um, okay.

Example: If the $200 3600 is doing 60fps and the $500 3900X is doing 70fps, what does that say about every chip in between? Why should anyone buy anything but he 3600 and 3900X for the foreseeable future? How is this going to help AMD dominate if they only have two chips for consumers worth buying?

Yes, the 3600 is awesome, but mistakes were made when designing Ryzen 2.

 

[AwperX]

Its really sad to see that you people copy pasted everything from hardware unboxed youtube channel and did not even give any kind of credits. Even the benchmarks are pure copy paste. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves..
Edit: My bad, I did not know this site was under hardware unboxed . Apologies

 

[Puiu]

When I kept seeing the 3600 within 10fps of the 3900X, I cringed, because that's not how it's supposed to work. Flagships are supposed to be the far better performer. 3900X is $500 ffs! The only conclusion is 12 cores are too much for gaming. The 3900X should be an HEDT part. If the 9700K was within 10fps of the 9900K there would be pitchforks, but it's AMD so they get a pass? Um, okay.

Example: If the $200 3600 is doing 60fps and the $500 3900X is doing 70fps, what does that say about every chip in between? Why should anyone buy anything but he 3600 and 3900X for the foreseeable future? How is this going to help AMD dominate if they only have two chips for consumers worth buying?

Yes, the 3600 is awesome, but mistakes were made when designing Ryzen 2.

What are you talking about? The benchmarks put the 9700K well within 10 FPS of the 9900K and it actually wins in some of the games. I suggest you revisit the 3900x review and check the numbers. Shadow of the Tomb Raider has the biggest difference between them and that's still sub 10 FPS (114 vs 123), the rest are basically equal. It's pretty much why ppl recommend the 9700K as the sweet spot for gaming.

I can only answer your question with a question: why would anyone buy anything besides the 9700k/9900k? Intel needs to cut prices sharply if it wants to compete beyond the ultra high end stuff (kinda like what AMD did with the new GPUs). At the 200$ mark you have the 3600 and sub 200 you have the 2600/2600x (for now)

 

[RageofThunder3]

When I kept seeing the 3600 within 10fps of the 3900X, I cringed, because that's not how it's supposed to work. Flagships are supposed to be the far better performer. 3900X is $500 ffs! The only conclusion is 12 cores are too much for gaming. The 3900X should be an HEDT part. If the 9700K was within 10fps of the 9900K there would be pitchforks, but it's AMD so they get a pass? Um, okay.

Example: If the $200 3600 is doing 60fps and the $500 3900X is doing 70fps, what does that say about every chip in between? Why should anyone buy anything but he 3600 and 3900X for the foreseeable future? How is this going to help AMD dominate if they only have two chips for consumers worth buying?

Yes, the 3600 is awesome, but mistakes were made when designing Ryzen 2.

Absolutely hilarious to see noobs like this guy can still whine about "cut and dry" great products like 3600.
There is ALWAYS a premium to be paid for the flagship products. Do I have to remind you that you beloved Intel 9900k is within 10fps of 8700k.
https://www.techspot.com/review/1730-intel-core-i9-9900k-core-i7-9700k/page4.html
Conclusion: 8700k is awesome, but mistakes were made when designing 9900k.

 

[Badvok]

Have you read the second paragraph?
"Direct competition for the R5 3600 should come from Intel's Core i5-9600 which is listed at $213, but we don’t have that part on hand and it doesn’t appear to be on sale either, so the more expensive 9600K will have to do. It costs $255 and doesn’t include a box cooler, so it's not the exact match we were going for, but it will be interesting to see how they stack in terms of raw power."

Yeah, I skipped mentioning that totally ridiculous statement. How can a 6-thread CPU be comparable with a 12-thread CPU?
I was referring more to the use of things like, for example, the i7-8700K + 3rd party cooler in the comparisons rather than the much cheaper i7-8700 with included cooler. In fact there isn't a non-K part used in any of the comparison tables.

 

[CheekyP]

When I kept seeing the 3600 within 10fps of the 3900X, I cringed, because that's not how it's supposed to work. Flagships are supposed to be the far better performer. 3900X is $500 ffs! The only conclusion is 12 cores are too much for gaming. The 3900X should be an HEDT part. If the 9700K was within 10fps of the 9900K there would be pitchforks, but it's AMD so they get a pass? Um, okay.

Example: If the $200 3600 is doing 60fps and the $500 3900X is doing 70fps, what does that say about every chip in between? Why should anyone buy anything but he 3600 and 3900X for the foreseeable future? How is this going to help AMD dominate if they only have two chips for consumers worth buying?

Yes, the 3600 is awesome, but mistakes were made when designing Ryzen 2.

Gaming performance hits diminishing returns once you get past 6 cores, so its no surprise that a 12 core part from the same CPU family, at similar clocks, doesn't really outperform the 6 core variant.

That is no fault of the 3900X, apart from the handful of games that can actually take advantage of the extra cores/threads, the only way it would drastically outperform a 3600 is by higher clocks, and we already know that Ryzen 3000 has a clockspeed ceiling of 4.2 - 4.3GHz, maybe 4.4GHz if you get a golden sample chip like Gamers Nexus's 3900X.