Product Showcase - Ryzen processor

Product Showcase

Alright, it's time for some photos. We received the two Ryzen 2000 Series processors. Once you have one in your hand you realize these actually are a little heavy. 
  

The Ryzen 5 2600X processor clocks in at a base-clock of 3.6 GHz, yet can Turbo to 4.2 GHz depending on load levels versus active threads. The Ryzen 7 2700X clocks in at a base-clock of 3.7 GHz, yet can Turbo to 4.3 GHz depending on load levels versus active threads (with the right conditions). These are considerable boosts over the previous generation.
 

 
Given it's an 8-core architecture, AMD is really nicely managing that clock frequency. The Ryzen 5 2600X is the 8-core part, it simply has two cores disabled. So, it has two CCXes, and each CCX has one core disabled, which makes it a 3+3 core configuration. Not bad for 229 USD!
 

 
For best fine-grained Turbo support, we do recommend a series 400 motherboard, X470 of course. Tweak it a little, pop in a mainstream graphics card and you'll have a very sweet gaming rig. Mind you that with a BIOS update the 300 series chipsets will work well. So yes, you can use an X370 motherboard. However, Turbos are more precise on the new X470 series, as well as XFR2.

 
We test with X470 today on the Ryzen 5 2600X, this is the Gaming M7 from MSI. We'll use a stock air cooler on this CPU, however, we'll show liquid-cooled results with the Ryzen 7 2700X review.