AMD Ryzen 7 3700X & Ryzen 9 3900X Processor Review

Peter Donnell / 5 years ago

AMD Ryzen 7 3700X & Ryzen 9 3900X

There’s a whole host of new hardware launching today. From the massive number of X570 motherboards we’re reviewing today, to the brand new 7nm Radeon graphics cards. All those are linked below, and on the last page of this review for your reading pleasure. However, the key ingredient for today has to be the new Ryzen 3rd Gen 7nm CPUs. We’re fortunate enough to have both the Ryzen 7 3700X & Ryzen 9 3900X in the eTeknix office today. There are more CPUs too, which we’re not reviewing for launch, and you can find out about those here.

Features and Specifications

The Ryzen 7 3700X is the sweet spot that AMD are pushing for enthusiast gamers. It features an 8 Core and 16 Thread design much like the last two generations; the 2700X and the 1700X. It features an impressive 4.4 GHz PB2 Clock, and a lower TDP than the old models. Plus, AMD have been claiming their single core performance has seen a huge boost across the entire 3rd Gen CPU range.

What’s super exciting though is the new Ryzen 9 series. From this, we have the 12 Core and 24 Thread Ryzen 9 3900X. Built for extreme gaming workloads, as well as heavy lifting tasks such as rendering and editing. This is basically faster Threadripper in a tiny package; now who doesn’t love that idea!

The two CPUs we have aren’t even the flagships in their respective classes either. That honour goes to the 3800X and the 3950X.

Ryzen 9 3900X

Cores/Threads – 12/24
Base Clock/PB2 Clock – 3.8/4.6
TDP – 105W
Price – $499

Ryzen 7 3700X

Cores/Threads – 8/16
Base Clock/PB2 Clock – 3.6/4.4
TDP – 36W
Price – $329

Motherboard Support

Keep in mind, the new CPUs are not compatible with all motherboards, such as the A320, or some X370 and B350 motherboards without a BIOS update. Nor will you get PCIe 4.0 support outside of the new X570 motherboards. There may be other B-series and A-series boards with PCIe 4.0, although they’ve yet to be announced so I’m literally just guessing. Check out our motherboard buying guide here for more information.

PCIe 4.0

The new motherboards (X570), as well as the new CPUs launching today, unleash PCIe 4.0 to the world. This means support for the upcoming Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSDs which can operate at up to 5000 MB/s read and write. Now, that’s not the only thing, albeit it is so far. There will no doubt be other innovations in the coming months, and even years, that take advantage of the massively increased bandwidth. No doubt GPUs will adapt to this soon enough too.

Stock Coolers

For reference, we just wanted to show you what’s included. Of course, we’ll be using our Noctua NH-D15S to keep things fare with previous CPU reviews.