MSI X370 XPower KRAIT Gaming review - The Ryzen procs

Ryzen 5 and 7 Processor Series

We’ll start off with the Series 7 processors first to get you an understanding what you can use on these motherboards. You all know the upcoming AMD processor as ZEN. That is a codename for the new architecture, and as such AMD figured they need a proper final name for the product series. However with ZEN pretty much sticking in everybody’s mind, AMD made the rather sensible decision to name Zen to something similar sounding. Yes, the Zen and thus Summit Ridge product series officially will be named AMD RYZEN, kind of extrapolated from 'risen' I guess. Compared to an 8-core Intel Core i7-6900K processor the RYZEN 8-core part is pretty darn fast alright.
  

You have seen the reviews, compared to Intel Core i5 and i7 the Ryzen processors are multi-threading beasts and pretty darn fast alright. Ryzen has launched with three primary 8-core models, accompanied by multiple six and four-core models. As time passes there will be three tiers with the Ryzen 3, 5 and 7 denominators comparable to Core i3, i5 and i7 for the Intel product range. Let me reiterate and make clear that ALL Ryzen processors are unlocked, that entails all Ryzen 3, 5 and 7 processors. The motherboards need a chipset that is unlocked as well though, but the B350 (mainstream) and X370 (high-end) series are covering all of that.

All these processors will fit Socket AM4 and thus you can use the same motherboard. Some models will be bundled with a Wraith 95W cooler. We’d recommend you to look at a nice LCS kit or some sort of cooling from Noctua, as a little extra cooling performance can do magic to your boost frequency and tweaking experience.
 

 
In the upper table you can see the available SKUs (at the time of writing this article) as well as an overview of what to expect in the coming months processor wise. It has been a busy year with AMD processor reviews alright. And in the summer of 2017, we need to add enthusiast class processors with up-to 16 cores / 32 threads enabled as well as an APU series later this year! You will have noticed that some models end with an X, while others do not. It remains simple, the X models are a little more special in the sense that they will have a higher base and boost clock frequency as well as an increased XFR range. We'll talk a little more about XFR (Extended Frequency Range) on the next page but basically look at it as a bit of an extra on top of the boost. Also, all X model processors are binned. This means that the processors are tested on ASIC quality and then sorted from good to better and often will clock higher on the XFR range and yes, X models could be / should be more easy to tweak as well.

For our review today we will use that true value 219 USD Ryzen 5 1600 processor.