Conclusion
Final Words
And there you have it, the six-core part, easily impressive in gaming priced 299 USD. The Ryzen 5000 (Zen3) architecture is very satisfying. It is just swaying to see that AMD manages to get IPC up again, moving to a single 8-core architecture per die, tackling that last bit of uncertainty, gaming performance. And yes, all die's are the same, so in this proc 2 cores are simply disabled. Which was a bit of am Achilles heel on Rzyen in CPU limited game performance. There's no doubt that AMD is now offering the fastest processor series in the consumer market, and it is imposing to see what they managed in just three years. Now, we're not going to recommend you to upgrade if you are on Ryzen 3000. But on series 1000/2000 .. well, why not? The good news is that the Series 400 motherboards will support these CPUs starting January 2021 with selected motherboards. And yeah, AM4 has come a long way, alright. With future changes coming up on DDR5 and PCIe gen 5.0, we see perhaps one more refresh series (ZEN4, a refresh of ZEN3) to be AM4 compatible, but thereafter surely AM5 will be introduced.
Price and value
Gaming performance
Last-gen Zen2 Matisse based processors already made up for a lot of the deficiencies in gaming compared to Intel. Right now, with ZEN3, that challenge has vanished. We state this in all our Ryzen 5000 reviews, but individual wins per brand and processor segmentation (mainstream, high-end, and enthusiast). So that means that with a mighty graphics card, this processor on average can feed frames as fast as Intel's equivalent. Even at six cores, your gaming experience will be great, albeit we feel that 8-cores is the norm these days for a properly nice gaming PC and overall PC desktop.
DDR4 Memory
Short answer, with up to 4000 MHz DDR4 memory, you're good/optimal to go. Memory compatibility should not and likely will not be an issue as long as you stick to recently released DIMMs. I'll keep reiterating this, but there are some good Ryzen optimized kits out there. With ZEN3, you can go higher in DDR4 clock frequency if you want to. We stick to our advice that you are good to go with up to 3600 MHz and CL14 or CL16 or lower. If you want to go a notch higher, up to 4000 MHz is what you could do best. After that frequency, a 2:1 divider kicks on the interconnect that will affect the Infinity Fabric bandwidth; even then, the perf differential would be modest but optimal up-to 4000 MHz, the best bang for buck = 3600 MHz. Oh, and yes, lower latency memory is always better, e.g., CL14, but more expensive.
Energy efficiency
These processors are fabbed at 7nm; you may see some exceptional energy efficiency; the 105 Watts listed for the 5800X, 5900X, and 5950X was not necessarily something we could measure anywhere and thus remains relative; of course, that is marvelous all by itself. The Ryzen 5 5600X, however, is a 65W TDP based processor. And albeit TDP is a rather fluent thing these days, that remains impressive.
Conclusion
Yeah, even the six-core part will be a feisty product in overall PC Desktop performance, but just as well in PC gaming. You get your 12-threads, and most games dig that. Albeit we would like to steer you towards an 8-core processor, we surely also understand that not everybody has got the budget for that. That budget became more difficult with the price premium of 50 bucks per ZEN3 processor, especially with the latest consoles available. However, ZEN3 is a process or series that is hard to argue with. Don't forget that AMD also offers an infrastructural advantage with full PCIe Gen 4.0 compatibility throughout the eco-system. If you do not require a many-core processor with heavily threaded tasks and workloads, then the 5600X can make a lot of sense. The increased IPC, simply put, makes everything faster. That goes from browsing Guru3D towards editing in photoshop towards gaming. As such it's difficult to argue this processor series. We feel a 6-core 5600X or 8-core 5800X are that sweet spot procs to get. Pick up a compatible B450 (BIOS support in January 2021) or B550 motherboard, and for not too much money, you can build yourself a fantastic performing PC with a whole lotta gaming oomph. Highly recommended, for sure.
If you have not done so, you can read up on Ryzen 5900X (12c/24t) and 5950X (16c/32t) right here. The Ryzen 7 5800X should be ready by Friday as well.
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