AMD Ryzen R5 1600X 6-Core AM4 Processor Review

Introduction With our reviews of the Ryzen R7 1700, Ryzen R7 1700X, and the Ryzen R7 1800X already under our belt, today we celebrate the launch of the R5 series of AMD processors! If you haven't seen it already, we've got our review of the R5 1500X here too, as well as one of the latest B350 motherboards from ASRock here! Clearly, it's been a busy few weeks for AMD, and we've been having a lot of fun testing their new hardware. I loved the R7 series, so much so that I bought an AMD R7 1700X for my own system. However, the 1600X that I'm reviewing today is the one most people should be excited about, as it's positioned as a powerful 6-core 12-thread CPU for the mass market. If you're building a gaming rig, this will likely be the one you're looking at, and we're eager to see what kind of performance it can deliver given that it's around £100 cheaper than the Intel Core i7-7700K, which only has 4-cores and 8-threads! As with every other Ryzen CPU, the 1600X is fully unlocked, allowing you to overclock it on any B350 or X370 motherboard; so long as you have a decent cooler to deal with the extra heat. Both the 1600 and the 1600X feature the same core and thread count, but the "X" means that this version has a higher stock speed and higher extended frequency range, allowing the chip to overclock its self as high as 4 GHz in demanding tasks as long as you have the thermal headroom to do so. Number of CPU Cores: 6 Number of Threads: 12 Base Clock Speed: 3.6 GHz Max Turbo Core Speed: 4.0 GHz Unlocked: Yes Package: AM4 Default TDP / TDP: 95W Important notes for this review! Our previous reviews of the R7 had been done at launch, with launch BIOS and the 16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport XT (2 x 8GB) DDR4 2666MHz memory kits Running at 2400MHz due to BIOS issues. They have also been tested on the MSI X370 Titanium motherboard. Today's R5 testing will be using a much faster memory kit on the more affordable B350 chipset motherboards as they're a more natural fit for these mid-range processors but may get a boost in performance due to faster memory speeds, which are vital for Ryzen to reach its full potential. We are looking into retesting our R7 series in an upcoming feature to reflect the updates to BIOS, games, memory compatibility, etc, in the near future. Test System and Methods Test Procedure Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose key information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their own hardware. When it comes to CPU reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Please note, we prefer to re-test each CPU within a product's performance range to ensure the results are completely accurate and reflect any changes to our samples over time or enhancements via graphics drivers. This means we now include fewer results, but they are more accurate and easier to decipher. As always, your choice of motherboard, the silicon lottery and other factors can yield different numbers, and there's always a margin for error when using software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Saying that, each benchmark is run at least three times and the average figure is taken to try to reduce the effect of hardware variation. Any important details regarding the benchmarks will be listed below. Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage. This particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps and uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820x2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the "normal" profile. Test System AM4 Ryzen R5 Motherboard - ASRock Fatal1ty B350 AM4 Motherboard RAM - GEIL Evo X DDR4 3200MHz CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AM4 Ryzen R7 Motherboard - MSI XPower Titanimum X370 RAM - Crucial BAllistix 2666MHz (Soon to be upgraded and retested) CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z270 Motherboard – Combination used to determine widespread performance RAM – Crucial Ballistix Elite 16GB (2x8GB) 2666MHz (16-17-17) CPU Cooler – Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card – Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X99 Motherboard – ASUS ROG STRIX X99 GAMING RAM – 32GB Crucial Ballistix Sport (4x8GB) 2400MHz (16-16-16-39) CPU Cooler – Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card – Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z170 Motherboard – ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ RAM – Crucial Ballistix Elite 16GB (2x8GB) 2666MHz (16-17-17) CPU Cooler – Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card – Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z87 Motherboard - ASUS Maximus VII Ranger RAM - 16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport XT (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1866MHz (10-10-10-30) CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Games Used Ashes of the Singularity (DirectX 12) Rise of the Tomb Raider (DirectX 12) Shadow of Mordor Tomb Raider Test Software Cinebench - available here 3DMark - available here AIDA64 Engineer - available here CPUID HWMonitor - available here CPU-Z - available here Handbrake - available here WPrime - available here Thank you Noctua, Crucial, ASUS, Gigabyte, Lian-Li, be quiet!, OCZ, for providing the hardware that helps makes these tests possible! CPU Benchmarks Ashes of the Singularity The 1600X does a pretty good job here, still behind some of the Intel offerings, but it's beating out the 1700X at stock, which indicates the improvements to Ryzen hardware support since the R7 launch. Cinebench R15 An impressive score for the R5 1600X, beating out the Intel 7700K at both stock and overclocked values; the two extra cores really do help! Handbrake Handbrake was certainly better suited to the R7 series, but the R5 still puts up some good figures for what's basically an affordable gaming chip. WPrime That 6-core design pulling its weight again, beating out the overclocked 7700K by a staggering 20 seconds in WPrime! Memory Benchmarks Memory Bandwidth Very impressive scores here, with only the much more expensive Intel Extreme processors taking the lead in our tests. We've started to include the overclocked scores on a per review basis too, and you can see that pushing the speeds up on Ryzen actually dropped the scores a little. I'm not sure why, but it's certainly not a cause for concern as the figures are still very good. Memory Latency Memory latency is quite high on all Ryzen hardware, it doesn't seem to have much real world performance impact, but getting this improved would not be a bad thing. Again we see a slight overclock actually increased the latency ever so slightly. Discrete GPU Benchmarks 3DMark A respectable scorew for the 1600X, as it actually beat out the R7 series of processors. It's clear that 3DMark still needs some tweaking to support reliable Ryzen testing, and while this score is still fantastic, the i7-7700K still holds the lead on AMD. Rise of the Tomb Raider Synthetic benchmarks are one thing, but gaming is what we really want to see. The 1600X absolutely destroys it here, clocking in extremely close to 1800X in our tests, and that's very impressive indeed! It may only be 1FPS ahead of the 7700K, but it's cheaper too, so that's certainly a big win. Shadow of Mordor Competitive figures once again, but as seen with almost all Ryzen testing, overclocking actually lowered the score. This may be the last time you see Shadow of Mordor in our benchmarks, at least until this performance bug (while overclocked) is ironed out. However, let's not detract from the fact that these are still competitive scores. Overclocking The fact that the 1600X can basically overclock its self when you need it to is a huge bonus for most consumers. If you push the chip hard, and you've been wise to fit a decent cooler, it'll work out the best ratios to give you the performance you need when you need it. However, if you're eager to overclock it yourself, then you'll rejoyce at just how easy it is. We managed to hit 4.1GHz with ease, but long term stability wasn't perfect. I suspect our X370 boards would keep it there, but who spends £200 on a CPU to put it in a £300 motherboard... Taking the clock speeds back to 4.05GHz, and upping the voltage to 1.424v kept everything stable, and no other settings had to be adjusted to get it there. As you've seen in the benchmarks already, this resulted in a huge performance increase, and who doesn't love a free performance boost! Power Consumption and Temperatures Power Consumption With 6-cores, the 1600X is a little thirst on power, but that was to be expected. Intel still have the more efficienct chips, but for this price range AMD are doing a fine job of turning that power into performance. Temperatures The good news is that the R5 series runs quite a lot cooler than the R7, which means they're much easier to keep cool during overclocking. Our Noctua NH-D15S had no issues keeping the chip within tollerable limits even when the overclocks were pushed past 4 GHz. Final Thoughts Pricing At just $249/£200, the AMD Ryzen R5 1600X is one of the most disruptive hardware releases in recent years. Not only does it offer more cores and threads than similarly priced Intel solutions, it manages to give some of Intel's much more expensive solutions a thrashing too. It keeps a good pace against some of the R7 series solutions too, and given the Ryzen 7 1700 comes in at £332.60, that's a lot of performance for a lot less money. Of course, if you're rendering, or doing other heavy workloads beside gaming, then the £360.57 1700X or the £488.99 1800X may be best for you, but that's a big step up in terms of cost for most consumers. The 1600X represents the best balance between price and performance for AMD right now. Overview The Ryzen 5 may not be the most hyped of the Ryzen range, andI'm sure many are more excited about the 8-core R7 series. However, we shouldn't dismiss these more affordable chips just yet. At just £200, the R5 1600X is an absolute bargain, given the cheapest Intel unlocked quad-core is the i5-7600K for around £220, and the R5-1600X thrashed it in almost every benchmark. Even the £300 i7- 7700K had trouble keeping up at times. There's only one way this can go now, Intel is going to have to drop prices by quite a bit to level the playing field, and that's a win-win for consumers. Without a doubt, this chip is one of the best Ryzen offerings so far. It offers impressive multi-tasking capabilities thanks to the 6-core 12-thread design, which will bring tangible benefits to those who not only play their games but who also need the extra CPU cores to deal with streaming their games, chat applications and much more. A comparable Intel chip that's well suited for high-end gaming and streaming can mean digging very deep into your wallet. Since they have lower power requirements than the R7 series, the R5's tend to run much cooler than the rather toasty R7's. This means you don't really have to go shopping for a flagship AIO cooler to get the best performance. Of course, if you are planning to overclock, just remember that you must have a B350 or X370 motherboard to unlock that feature, despite the fact all Ryzen chips are actually unlocked. Now that AMD has launched their AM4 hardware, which introduced features; DDR4 memory, M.2 storage support, improved overclocking, more cores, more threads, and fiercely competitive prices. I can safely say that the CPU market is being dragged out of a long and rather boring slump of pitiful performance improvements and high prices. Pros Best price vs performance Ryzen chip to date 6-Core w/ 12 Threads AM4 Platform and features XFR overclocking Easy to manually overclock Beats out many more expensive Intel products Great for gaming/streaming Cons None Neutral Memory latency is still a little high but it has improved since Ryzen launched "If you're eager to invest in Ryzen but don't need the more expensive 8-Core R7 chips, then the 1600X is the best that R5 has to offer. It's perfectly suited to those building a new high-performance gaming rig, and you won't have to spend a small fortune.