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AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Review: Why Is This Amazon's Best Selling CPU?
- solotronics 6y agoPrice for performance. It plays the latest games at high resolution without being a CPU bottleneck. In gaming benchmarks the 3600 is usually within a few fps of the 3800x. https://youtu.be/9OXbhgnHvXQ https://youtu.be/9OXbhgnHvXQ
- onli 6y agoIt's more than price for performance. It's also a very high absolute performance. Especially in games, where something like a Threadripper processor is not faster.
- sahoo 6y agoCoz I have one.
- rb808 6y agoThe bundled cooler with the Ryzen helps a lot as well, as those low tech hunks of metal are crazy expensive.
- hailmike 6y agoI find the included cooler for the 3600 not so great. I bought one the month it came out, and was hitting pretty high temps when creating h264 using only CPU. I tried applying paste before buying a better cooler. I think 3600x and up have much better coolers.
- techntoke 6y agoFor most cases on the 3600, you need a separate cooler to get longer life from the CPU. I was getting warnings when playing some games with the stock cooler. Good thing they only cost about $30.
- vvillena 6y agoDo modern CPUs fry themselves like the ones from 15-20 years ago? I thought they just throttled down when approaching their limits, and extra cooling is helpful for allowing CPUs to boost clock speeds for longer.
- mrguyorama 6y agoAMD seems to design their components to get all the way up to 95 and sit there. It happened in the stock cooler for the 3600, and it happens on my 5700xt, even though I went for one of the nicer cards. It's still below the safe junction temperature, and it won't fry, and it can even run just fine like that for several hours. The downside is that there is evidence that such high temperatures increase electron migration (or something similar) in the chips themselves, leading to not infinite lifetimes. I want this computer to last 10 years, so I bought an aftermarket CPU cooler for $30 to keep temps closer to 50 degrees
- volkl48 6y agoNot generally in the short term, but over the longer term increased heat is going to make it more likely that the chip fails prematurely. Of course, if you do something like not attaching the heatsink at all, it's plausible that heat could spike fast enough to cook the chip before throttling or overtemp protection can kick in/shut the system off.
- baylessj 6y agoYeah, the X series processors come with the Wraith Prism which is a really nice cooler. My processor isn't overclocked but the fact that I've never seen it get above 55 degC with the prism is impressive.
- Havoc 6y ago>never seen it get above 55 degC with the prism is impressive. Pretty sure I've seen 75+ on mine 3700x
- blattimwind 6y agoThermalright coolers are sleepers; not well known, but superb performance and price-performance ratio far superior to anything else. You can basically get something that gets close to a 100 € Noctua NH-D15 for less than half the price.
- fomine3 6y agoAlso check Scythe
- CSDude 6y agoI have an 3900x and in gaming it easily hits 80-90C. In 100% load it gets 97C and throttles. I switched to Noctua D15 and it does not go past 70 on full loa dand 60 on gaming. Higly recommend it, its so silent.
- zlynx 6y ago"throttles" Are you certain you don't mean "stops boosting" when you say that? I'm running exactly the same: a 3900X with the default included cooler. Yeah, it hits 95C and at that point it's running at 3.8 GHz instead of 4.4 (I never see 4.6 unless I boot Linux in single user mode). But 3.8 is the base clock speed, so I don't think "throttle" is the right word for "running at base clock."
- sq_ 6y agoEspecially in super-budget builds. The extra $30 that you save by getting a reasonably good cooler with your CPU versus needing to replace the stock Intel one can be huge for someone building in the $500 range.
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- iagooar 6y agoIt is easily the best bang for buck CPU on the market, that allows pretty much 99% of workflows that require a PC. Gaming? Check. Programming? Check. Graphics design? Check. Video editing: also check (but on the lower end, true that). It has also some really fantastic thermals, it does not produce that much heat. I use it in a fully fanless / passive cooling setup and it works great.
- thoraway1010 6y agoIntelliJ stuff is usually slow (I like smaller form factor machines). Finally with the 3600 performance is at least reasonable and not annoying. It took forever to get bundled, but you can get Lenovo and I think HP prebuilt machines for this as well - for work I don't like handbuilding a machine.
- topbanana 6y agoI built a new PC around one just this weekend. Turned out I'd forgotten to plug in the CPU cooler fan and it ran great. Big cooler though
- blattimwind 6y agoI don't have first hand experience with higher spec build on the single CCD Zen 2 chips, but the dual CCD chips are not particularly good in terms of thermals. Only the very best of air coolers can handle them, and are not particularly quiet doing so. Idle CPU power consumption is unimpressive and at 50-70 W exceeds what older systems achieved for the entire system.
- iagooar 6y agoI had more problems with the 3700X although on paper it is 65W TDP (same as the 3600). In practice it gets much hotter and draws more power. The 3600 never gave me any problems.
- threentaway 6y agoWhich case (and GPU) did you go with?
- vdfs 6y agoAMD is making good CPUs, but i had an issue with Ryzen 5 1600 that left me with a bad experience with AMD. It's was my first ever build and i used this CPU, all good, but from time to time the Linux Desktop i use will freeze, hard reboot is the only fix. I noticed that this happen when i left the PC idle and the screen turn off, i tried everything and just accepted that this is a bug in KDE/Ubuntu/Kernel/Motherboard/RAM or GPU, not in my wildest thinking thought it would be the CPU. Turns out it was the CPU and how crappy AMD handle C-states that save energy, i had to turn them completely off and that resolved the issue (In AMD defense, freezing the entire OS do save a lot of energy) This was exactly 2 years ago, and i had the issue for almost a year before figuring out the fix. I wonder if the new generation have this problem too?
- Koshkin 6y agoI have seen this when running Linux desktop on older AMD CPUs.
- darkteflon 6y agoI’ve just been through this exact thing with a 3200G on Ubuntu 19 and 20. Took months to disgnose. Extremely painful. Ended up replacing the RAM and motherboard before finally determining the problem was with the CPU. Disabling C-states helped but didn’t resolve the issue. Tried a bunch of other things too, none of which ultimately worked. In the end I switched to a 3700X; so far the problem hasn’t reoccurred. No doubt it will now that I’ve posted about it (fool me twice, shame on me).
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoI've been running a 3400G since last fall on Debian with a custom kernel to get the latest video drivers. It's been stable until a few freeze ups in the past week. I'd pin the blame on Ubuntu.
- blattimwind 6y agoWorth pointing out that 3xxxG parts are Zen+ and not Zen 2 like all other Ryzen 3000 parts. So the CPU in the 3200G is very different from the one in a 3700X.
- scrooched_moose 6y agoDoes AMD have any plans for an integrated GPU? They make great stuff, but the value proposition disappears pretty quickly if you aren't building a gaming rig/workstation that already requires a dedicated GPU.
- frei 6y agoYes, they call them APUs https://www.amd.com/en/processors/athlon-and-a-series https://www.amd.com/en/processors/athlon-and-a-series An 8-core zen 2 APU is expected https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-7-4700g-desktop-apu-pic https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-7-4700g-desktop-...
- jdhawk 6y agoand the Ryzen 3 & 5 with a "G" label.
- squaredpants 6y agoYeah, apparently the 4700G[1] has already been spotted in benchmarks. Basically their 8-core ZEN2 APU. [1] https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-7-4700g-8-core-apu-pictured https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-ryzen-7-4700g-8-core-apu-pic...
- vdfs 6y agoRyzen 3/5 have variants with integrated GPU: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3402056/amds-new-ryzen-3000-apus-give-budget-gamers-an-affordable-taste-of-radeon-vega.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3402056/amds-new-ryzen-3000-...
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- amarshall 6y agoYes, look for CPU models suffixed with “G”. Unfortunately typically only available on the lower-tier models.
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- hailmike 6y agoIt's a pretty awesome chip. I bought one the moment they came out with a B450 motherboard. It sounds like I won't be upgrading to Zen 3 with it, but that's probably fine. It's more than enough for the tasks I do. With that said, once the 3300x is out, I would likely go that route with a cheaper a320 motherboard. This would bring the cost of the cpu/motherboard to about $175 which is terrific value, and leaves you with more money for other components.
- stepbeek 6y agoI'm in the same boat with a 3700x. I'm pretty sure the 3950x will be available at a good enough price that I jump to that before needing a motherboard upgrade.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago3300x won't work on anything lower than b5xx, afaik.
- greggyb 6y agoRyzen 3000-series will run on B450+ and X470+, based on current specs. Obviously, at some point there will be a future motherboard release that will change the +'s to ranges. https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press%20Deck_NDA%20Until%20May%207th-page-008.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press... Motherboards don't need to have the xx. There is only B550. There is no other B5xx.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoBut B5xx I also meant X570. Anyway, I am almost 100% sure, it won't work on A320, as the someone in the message abovedesired to run it on. And it is unclear if there will be updates for the BIOS for cheaper B450s.
- greggyb 6y agoAgain, https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press%20Deck_NDA%20Until%20May%207th-page-008.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press... A320 supports Ryzen 1000-series, 2000-series, 2000-series APUs, and 3000-series APUs. A320 does not support Ryzen 3000-series, and future Ryzen processors. I can keep reading the linked chart for you, if you'd like.
- soygul 6y agoIt is absolutely on top of the Performance/$ chart on PassMark: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html It offers exceptional value. Pair that with a GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER which is at the top of Performance/$ chart for GPUs: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html And you have a champion of a workstation right there.
- rcthompson 6y agoWow, looking at the XY scatter graph there shows a pretty stark contrast.
- willis936 6y agoIt's neat to see that the 3900X is on the zen 2 threadripper price/performance line, but is available at mortal consumer prices and on the low end platform (B450). The numbering scheme makes sense in the context of this plot, even though the 3900X is not threadripper while all other 39X0X parts are.
- alpha64 6y agoThe 3950X is also an AM4 part (non-threadripper).
- blattimwind 6y agoThat's roughly equivalent to Cinebench points per dollar, which is unrelated to gaming performance, if you want that. Doesn't mean the 3600 is bad, but it does mean that these kinds of synthetic benchmarks tell you very little about gaming performance, which is less about the speed of the cores themselves but rather memory latency, something all current Ryzen CPUs are architecturally very bad at (20-50 % slower than Intel).
- Uehreka 6y agoThis is true, I’d say the build GP describes would probably be good for someone who is short on cash and wants to build a machine that is OK/Good for gaming and Good for things like programming or photo/audio/video editing. It’s true that that build won’t knock anyone’s socks off and isn’t optimized for anything in particular, but the fact that you can make a build like that with such good parts at that price is a net positive for consumers.
- sub7 6y agoThe 3700X is very slightly lower on performance per $ but it does have 8 cores and 16 threads so if you're going to be compiling code it's totally worth it. The 3900x has been selling for $400 which is also amazing value. Intel CPU market is behind after many years. Long live AMD design + Taiwan manufacturing.
- blattimwind 6y ago> Intel CPU market is behind after many years. Long live AMD design + Taiwan manufacturing. Except Intel still delivers better and more consistent gaming performance largely based on better overall architecture (L3, IMC and what connects these). Both Intel and AMD are billion-dollar publicly traded companies. I don't get why people would fanboy either of them. I don't want AMD to win, because then they are going to abuse their position, just like Intel did. Conversely, I don't want Intel to win. Two players in a market is already problematic; trying for one player is just suicidal.
- kbenson 6y agoI don't think anyone actually wants AMD to "win", regardless of how they express themselves. What they want is AMD to have a lead on Intel, since it's been so long since that's been the case, and we'll all benefit from Intel not being continuously in a hefty lead, like it has been for decades.
- iphone_elegance 6y agoEh intel messed up a node, I have no reason not to think they won't surpass amd/tsmc in the future it's not like they aren't capable
- mamon 6y agoI'm still thinking about my cheap Ryzen-based PC only as a stop-gap solution, until the "real deal", aka Intel 7nm CPUs, premieres in 2021 (fingers crossed) .
- 6y ago
- sandGorgon 6y agoVery unfortunate that no ML/math acceleration works with these chipsets. The standard on the software side is CUDA..which is nvidia only.
- mathisonturing 6y agoCould you expand on this? I'm looking to gift a laptop that's good for ML stuff. What features should I be looking at? Any specific recommendations?
- Havoc 6y agoYou'd be looking for something with a discrete Nvidia graphics card with as many CUDA cores as possible. Recommendations...depends on $$$...high end laptops are expensive as hell. Maybe something like a 1660 Ti? Broadly I'd avoid ML work on a laptop though due to thermals
- sandGorgon 6y agoGet anything with a nvidia GPU. Without a nvidia GPU, it's pretty much dead
- numpad0 6y agoI wouldn’t go for a laptop for ML and I don’t care if CPU is Intel or AMD... parent commenter is mixing up CPU and GPU
- londons_explore 6y agoUnless you're trying to do ML with real time video or audio feeds, I'd just get a random cheapo laptop and do all your stuff remotely with something like jupyter notebooks (eg. Google Colab). Having a remote GPU which is 10x more powerful than you can afford to buy yourself, and you can scale up to 50 GPU's at the click of a button is a far better workflow than spinning fans on your laptop overnight, only to wake up in the morning and realise a code tweak is needed and then you have to wait another 12 hours...
- Havoc 6y ago>The standard on the software side is CUDA..which is nvidia only. I was under the impression that AMD gpus had achieved some modest level of compatibility with the major frameworks?
- jjice 6y agoBought one for a new PC back in January. The value is great and I haven't noticed a single bottleneck. I don't do anything too intensive, and the games I play haven't stressed it that hard. The best part of the upgrade has been Rust compile times. Coming from an older ThinkPad, it's a huge change.
- bluedino 6y agoI find it more interesting that AMD Ryzen chips are the top 6 best selling CPU's.
- jklinger410 6y agoI have the 1600. When comparing it to an i7 from a few years ago, although PassMark says the 1600 is faster, the i7 with integrated graphics on a laptop feels much snappier against my desktop with an NVIDIA GPU and twice as much RAM using Manjaro XFCE. Just anecdotal but I'm still on the fence between Ryzen vs I series.
- jrockway 6y agoMaybe slightly off-topic, but how do y'all feel about the Epyc for workstation-type workloads? I really want ECC for my next workstation, and my understanding is that Ryzen/Threadripper ECC support is very hit or miss (the common failure mode is that it will claim it's on, but not actually detect or correct memory errors). But on the other hand, these Epyc chips sure seem slow on paper compared to consumer-grade stuff. I am not sure it matters, though, and am interested in what HN's thoughts are there.
- aidenn0 6y agoAsus has an X570 with supported ECC don't remember the exact middl model name, but it had WS in the name. I do wish memtest86 had a rowhammer style test, as that should tell if ECC is working
- londons_explore 6y ago> I do wish memtest86 had a rowhammer style test Send a PR...
- jrockway 6y agomemtest86 (the non-open-source one) has a rowhammer test. It passes on my non-ECC machine though. https://www.memtest86.com/tech_individual-test-descr.html https://www.memtest86.com/tech_individual-test-descr.html
- greggyb 6y agoOverclock the RAM for the test?
- dwohnitmok 6y agoAFAIK The Ryzen/Threadripper CPUs are all support ECC perfectly fine. Where things get shady are with motherboards that advertise support but don't quite do it right. Make sure you get a reputable motherboard and you should be fine.
- 6y ago
- ksec 6y agoAnd despite all these amazing reviews. AMD still isn't selling much CPU or APU at all. I am wondering why. On Steam Survey [1], AMD grew from November 2018 at 17.5% to April 2020 at 21.9%. That is less than 5% increase in total. ( I was actually surprised it had ˜18% in 2018 ) And despite EPYC offering, [2] it barely make 5% of the Server market even if AMD had zero revenue from console. Why is that? Enthusiast has been overly excited they ignored the actual reality? Or what other factor at play? Inertia ? [1] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw... [2] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15754/amd-reports-q1-2020-earnings https://www.anandtech.com/show/15754/amd-reports-q1-2020-ear...
- jdashg 6y agoMost people don't buy new processors every year, and pre-built machines (especially laptops) are slower to switch from Intel. Slow adaptation is part product lifecycle (laptop lead time is on the order of a year) and part customer demand: Non-enthusiasts consumers still want their i7, and businesses will often have requirements for Intel specifically, and will have to work to change that, if anyone internal even cares to.
- filoleg 6y agoThis. Some of my friends are still running Intel's 4690k, which was released all the way in 2014, as that suffices for most of their basic tasks and games at low-mid settings, as a lot of gaming is GPU-bound. With the typical 5-year upgrade cycle on CPUs for most non-hardware-enthusiast gamers and general-purpose users, I would expect the AMD share in Steam stats to drastically increase by about 2022. Also, mind you, Steam numbers are not really representative of the overall market. Most online hardware retailers reported 50%+ of their high-end CPU sales to be AMD in Q1 2020.[0] 0. https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-market-share-gain-q1-2020/ https://www.pcgamer.com/amd-market-share-gain-q1-2020/
- bwat49 6y agoBecause the DIY market is reletively small. Intel still has huge sway with OEM's (and mindshare with consumers). It's difficult for AMD to overcome that even with a better product
- rubyn00bie 6y agoFor several (3) years now I have had no reason to update my desktop with a i7-6700k because single core performance has remained relatively flat (in fact my particular processor has quite good single core rating still). I would have liked increased cores but the reduction in single-threaded performance wasn't worth it. Zen 2 changed all of that... Now EVERY single Zen 2 chip is at least smidge faster than my 6700k in single threaded benchmarks AND close to 100% faster in multi-core benchmarks. So for $180 I can buy something that takes a huge meaningful shit on my (fairly nice at the time) 6700k (~$350 when I purchased it). That's just crazy to me how much performance I can get for so little. I'm going to buy something beastly with at least 16 cores, but! I also plan on building a little cluster using mini-itx B550 boards and the 3300x. In fact, I'll probably build the little cluster first, because each 3300X is still faster than my 6700k and the total cost per system will be like $450!!one! It hasn't been since the orig Core-2-Duo days I've gotten such a meaningful upgrade for so little. Plus, when Zen 3 comes out it's a drop in upgrade. AMD is delivering insane value to their consumers, and I love it. I just wish I could buy a Zen 2 chip in a laptop that doesn't look like it was made for a fourteen year old (no offense to any fourteen year olds). I heard someone say the lack of 4k and more professional style laptops could be Intel back-channel fuckery, but... there's also a chance no-one expected AMD, in a single fucking generation of CPUs, to sweep every single market.
- edraferi 6y ago> I just wish I could buy a Zen 2 chip in a laptop that doesn't look like it was made for a fourteen year old (no offense to any fourteen year olds). I heard someone say the lack of 4k and more professional style laptops could be Intel back-channel fuckery, Lenovo just released a couple ThinkPads peered by AMD Ryzen 7 Pro CPUs: T495, T495s and X395. They don’t have 4K screens though. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/05/lenovo-adds-amd-ryzen-pro-powered-laptops-to-its-thinkpad-family/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/05/lenovo-adds-amd-ryze...
- BoysenberryPi 6y ago4K screens on laptops don't make sense to me. They are too small to get maximum value out of. 1440p is more than enough.
- erichocean 6y agoI built 5 workstations with these CPUs and RTX 2060 Super GPUs last Friday. Love the price/performance and power usage. Would have went with the GTX 1650 Super but wanted the raytracing and tensor cores (we use both).
- aidos 6y agoI’ve been looking into building a pc this last week after almost 2 decades on Mac laptops. My motivation is that I’m playing around with Blender and my old MacBook is not having a fun time with it. It looked to me like a modern AMD combo is the way to go - is that the general thinking these days? Are there issues you need to watch out for if you’re going to use them with Linux?
- tmpz22 6y agoI built my first gaming computer two years ago and have been ravenously following the scene ever since. In my opinion, AMD is the best price for value in both single and multithreaded workloads, and becomes only slightly outclassed in single threaded workloads at the extreme high end ie 9900k+ models. AMD seems to be particularly good in high end multithreaded workloads like graphics processing. It’s important to note most CPU benchmarks are utter trash and many are on the payrolls of intel including CPU benchmark.net (thanks google for granting them incredible SEO). My current build is still an 8700k but my next will most likely be AMD for a mostly gaming workload.
- aidos 6y agoThat’s excellent info thanks. Would you mind sharing ballpark figures on how much it cost? How did you go about choosing motherboard etc? I haven’t built a pc from scratch since the late 90s, so I’m a bit lost with it these days! Back then it was a matter of what compatible components you could even source...
- tmpz22 6y agoOne thing to checkout is YouTube build videos, you can often find ~2 minute shorts of a professional installing your exact part into your exact motherboard. This really removed a lot of the anxiety and trepidation I had while installing parts (it was my first time ever). Funny enough I plugged my monitor into the motherboard directly (when you’re supposed to plug it into the GPU) and had a black screen panic until I figured it out. As far as figuring out what parts I would recommend three strategies: 1) start at reddit.com/r/buildapc and reddit.com/r/buildapcforme and checkout some of the threads at price points you are interested in. These builds will include pcpartpicker lists which are a tool that checks compatibility and general prices for you through a web ui. These builds are not perfect but will give you a general idea for how people are commonly building for the given ~6 month cycle. They all have their own biases, some like to save costs by getting a slightly weaker CPU, some spend more on the motherboard for future proofing, some need more storage so they throw in a giant SSD etc. 2) once you get a feel for the common components you’ll want to pick out your main two items: the cpu and gpu. You’ll already know your options from step one, so this step will be the icing on the cake. As long as you get a powerful cpu and gpu you will most likely be thrilled with your build (also an SSD and decent monitor for completeness). The cpu choice will also help you select a motherboard since that is really the biggest compatibility check throughout the whole process. Watch a video or two if you need help making a selection and to understand how to get your best value. I strongly recommend Paul’s hardware videos or Linus tech tips for a little more entertainment value. 3) now you’re ready to go on pcpartpicker and pick your full parts list with all the secondary pieces that complete your build, first the motherboard, your ram, SSD, psu, and case. From 1 you already have an idea of what you should go for, but now is your chance to tweak things around. If you don’t understand the difference between an nvme SSD or a sata SSD look it up, just like with software development, and you’ll find it easy to make an informed decision. Remember your cpu and gpu were the biggest difference makers so all of these decisions are relatively minor as long as you stick with reputable brands. Iterate with 3 as much as you’d like. Post the build and see what people say about it. When you feel satisfied buy it and build it with the short YouTube videos demonstrating the exact parts you selected.
- exdsq 6y agoI bought the Ryzen 9 3900X (12-core) for my new work PC and it absolutely blows anything I've previously used out the water. I was considering a top-range i9 but for the price and performance I'm happy to have gone with the Ryzen and am now an AMD fan.
- ZacharyPitts 6y agoLast summer, the 3600X was my move away from Intel after 20+ years of building strictly Intel machines at home. Here the build: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/p9D2FT https://pcpartpicker.com/b/p9D2FT
- acount6672 6y agoThe newer AMD machines are amazing. Its the second coming of Moore's law, but for core counts instead of clock speed. I just put together a machine with a 3900x at home and it is about 2/3 the speed of the three year old Intel Xeon machine with dual processors and 28 cores I use at work. The 3900x was around $450; the processors in the Intel machine were around $8k. I only wish the AMD desktop and workstation machines could support more RAM. I have 256GB on the Intel machine, whereas 128GB was the max for the 3900x. I think the threadripper line only goes up to 256GB, which seems a little low for machines which such a large core count.