AMD Ryzen R7 1700X 8-Core 16-Thread CPU Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Ryzen 7 1700 comes in at just £332.60, while the 1700X comes with a small premium on top at just £360.57. If you want the best Ryzen has to offer, however, you’ll have to step up, as the 1800X still costs £488.99. That makes the 1700X around the same price as the Intel Core i7-7700K, and makes it a damn good value option for AM4, almost the same performance as the 1800X at a much lower price.

Overview

Ryzen has made quite an impression since it launched. The 1800X is a very strong contender in the high-end market, and while it’s robust enough for gaming, it decimated in multi-threaded tasks. The 1700X is a lot less expensive, but it was giving us performance figures that were incredibly close to that of its big brother, making it extraordinary value for money for anyone investing in the AM4 platform.

Ryzen isn’t perfect, although I’m struggling to think of a platform or hardware launch that ever was! There’s still a few issues with memory performance, and how Ryzen handles that in regards to memory speeds, but more and more memory manufacturers are now approving memory kits for optimal Ryzen performance, and a few BIOS updates and tweaks as the platform matures will help iron out the rest. Either way, we know that Ryzen has more performance to offer, but we may not see the full benefit of these fixes right away.

The 1700X is a strong contender at the same price of the 7700K, but there’s hidden value to the AM4 platform that you rarely, if ever, get with Intel chipsets. A new AM4 motherboard will work with Ryzen R7, R5, and the little detailed R3 series down the line. They’ll also work with the upcoming Vega/Ryzen APUs, so your board is future proof, and that’s perfect for those who want to upgrade their chip a couple of years down the line. With Intel, every new gen pretty much means a new socket, forcing you to change motherboards.

Now that AMD has a board and chip range that supports DDR4, M.2, improved USB connectivity, overclocking on all chips, and so much more, they’re able to appeal to a much wider range of consumers. We’ve enjoyed checking out what the R7 range has to offer, and we’re looking forward to trying out the much more affordable 6-core R5 range in the coming weeks and months too.

Pros

• Great value for money
• 8-Core w/ 16 Threads
• Latest AM4 platform
• Incredibly easy to overclock
• Performance similar to the flagship 1800X
• Automatic overclocking
• Good overall performance
• Robust gaming performance

Cons

• None

Neutral

• Memory performance still has a few bugs, but we expect these to be fixed with a BIOS update
• Like all 8-core chips, it can get quite warm, so a powerful cooler is recommended
• Still a little more expensive than the 7700K.

“The Ryzen R7 1700X gives you almost all of the high-end thrills of the 1800X, but it is much kinder to your wallet. It’s the best of both worlds for AM4 adopters.