
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Review: Why Is This Amazon's Best Selling CPU? - greendave
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15787/amd-ryzen-5-3600-review-amazons-best-selling-cpu
======
rubyn00bie
For 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.

~~~
sandworm101
>> 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 just wish I could buy a decent motherboard that doesn't look like a 14yo's
first attempt at drawing an f-35. My current rig does this weird glowing thing
at night when it is supposed to be off. For my next machine I would honestly
pay more to NOT have RGB support.

~~~
vetinari
Check Asrock Rack series motherboards, like
[https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X...](https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X470D4U)
(am4) or
[https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X...](https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X399D8A-2T)
(tr4). It is minus the RGB and plus IPMI.

~~~
sandworm101
Those are server boards. They lack some basic 'desktop' features like AIO
control. I also need more than a pair of USB connections.

I did get a laugh out of the integrated graphics, probably the lowest specs on
the market: "DDR4 16MB" \- that's not a typo. I'm a little interested in how
that is accomplished. Can one allocated a 16MB chunk of DDR4?

~~~
vetinari
Server or workstation; AIO falls gently into RGB gamer territory.

The integrated graphics is for BMC, not for the console.

------
soygul
It 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.

~~~
justQandA
Does anyone know if the GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER, combined with a 3600x, is able
to power a 4k monitor at 60hz?

Note: this is NOT for gaming. Just everyday workflow and dev environments in
4k, 60hz.

~~~
zitterbewegung
If you go on NVIDIA's website you can find the specifications of the card
where it states the maximum resolution and refresh rate is as follows:

7680x4320@120Hz [1]

[1] [https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-
cards/gtx-1650...](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-
cards/gtx-1650-super/)

------
iagooar
It 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.

~~~
fetus8
I just built a new machine around this CPU back in March too. I built a new
machine specifically for playing Half-Life: Alyx, and couldn't be happier with
this CPU.

My thermals were pretty great with the stock CPU cooler, but I ended up going
with a Noctua NH-U14S which might be a little overkill, but when playing Half-
Life: Alyx, I stay between 45-60c which seems pretty good to me. The game runs
at a perfect framerate on High settings with the AMD 5700XT, 32GB of DDR4 RAM
on the Vive Pro.

I may end up upgrading to a Ryzen 7 4XXX series when they come out, but for
now, this CPU is performing great. Def best bang for your buck.

~~~
greggyb
> but I ended up going with a Noctua NH-U14S which might be a little overkill

Yes. I have the same cooler* on a Threadripper 3970X with 280W TDP. The only
thing that it can't handle is a sustained all-core load for >10-15 minutes.
Even at all-core load it still turbos above base clock (but less than max
turbo).

Technically a different SKU with a larger base plate, but otherwise the same
design.

------
solotronics
Price 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
It'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.

------
sub7
The 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
> 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
I 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.

------
jjice
Bought 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.

------
vdfs
AMD 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?

~~~
darkteflon
I’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).

~~~
takeda
I stopped using Ubuntu 10 years ago, when I had a weird issue. Out of nowhere
computer locked up and required a hard reset. It took a while when I figured
out that issue originated with Intel WiFi card. I eventually found the bug, it
turned out that kernel crashed whenever the adapter sensed an 802.11n packet
(the protocol was very new at the time so it wasn't everywhere yet). Ubuntu
still decided to go ahead with the release, yet hold off on including freshly
released major version of Open Office (I think version 3), because of
stability. This was extremely frustrating, because there was no fix and no
option to rollback to older version. So that was when I dropped this POS and
used a different distro. I'm wondering if that's again Ubuntu issue and not
CPU.

~~~
darkteflon
Yeah. Who knows. It’s just an anecdote, really. But one that hopefully saves
someone months of tedium.

~~~
takeda
There were more issues, but that one was what pushed me over the edge.

I constantly had problems when attaching/deataching external monitor to my
laptop, once in a while it wouldn't switch, or various parts of desktop (like
task bar etc) would move around.

When they introduced PulseAudio, it wasn't ready at the time, so there were a
lot of audio problems back then.

Overall the experience with Ubuntu was that every new release was taking some
old bugs away and replacing them with new ones.

I hope things improved since then.

------
hailmike
It'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.

~~~
SomeoneFromCA
3300x won't work on anything lower than b5xx, afaik.

~~~
greggyb
Ryzen 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...](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press%20Deck_NDA%20Until%20May%207th-
page-008.jpg)

Motherboards don't need to have the xx. There is only B550. There is no other
B5xx.

~~~
SomeoneFromCA
But 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
Again,
[https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press...](https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15774/Ryzen%203_B550_Press%20Deck_NDA%20Until%20May%207th-
page-008.jpg)

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.

~~~
junar
Some A320 boards actually do support Ryzen 3000 with a BIOS update, like the
one below. I wouldn't really recommend getting them because you'll probably
need to flash the BIOS, but they can be used.

[https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/A320M-GAMING-
PRO#sup...](https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/A320M-GAMING-PRO#support-
cpu)

~~~
greggyb
MSI seems to have committed to different support than AMD has. Gamers Nexus
has covered the AMD chipset stuff recently to great detail.[0]

There are several issues that come together to make it difficult to support
all AM4 CPUs across all the AM4 motherboards. MSI seems to have committed to
their AM4 motherboards supporting all AM4 CPUs, and they are having to perform
some gyrations (and potentially some reverse-engineering of AMD-supplied
binary blobs) to meet their claims.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5X-8vZtml8&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5X-8vZtml8&t=0s)
and
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JluNkjdpxFo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JluNkjdpxFo)

------
exdsq
I 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.

------
rb808
The bundled cooler with the Ryzen helps a lot as well, as those low tech hunks
of metal are crazy expensive.

~~~
hailmike
I 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.

~~~
baylessj
Yeah, 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
>never seen it get above 55 degC with the prism is impressive.

Pretty sure I've seen 75+ on mine 3700x

------
bluedino
I find it more interesting that AMD Ryzen chips are the _top 6_ best selling
CPU's.

------
ZacharyPitts
Last 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
The 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.

------
scrooched_moose
Does 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
Yes, 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-...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-
ryzen-7-4700g-desktop-apu-pic)

~~~
jdhawk
and the Ryzen 3 & 5 with a "G" label.

------
jrockway
Maybe 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
Asus 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

~~~
jrockway
memtest86 (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
Overclock the RAM for the test?

------
aidos
I’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
I 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
That’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
One 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.

------
jklinger410
I 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.

------
erichocean
I 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).

------
sandGorgon
Very unfortunate that no ML/math acceleration works with these chipsets.

The standard on the software side is CUDA..which is nvidia only.

~~~
mathisonturing
Could 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
You'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

------
ksec
And 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-
Softw...](https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-
Survey-Welcome-to-Steam)

[2] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/15754/amd-
reports-q1-2020-ear...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/15754/amd-
reports-q1-2020-earnings)

~~~
jdashg
Most 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
This. 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/)

