AMD Ryzen 5 3600X Processor Review

By Nathan Kirsch

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The AMD Ryzen 5 3600X and likely the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 offers tremendous value to mainstream desktop PC users and gamers. You can drop one of these processors into a cost effective AMD B350/B450 motherboards and have a solid performing platform for $260. Yes, that pricing is correct as AMD B450 motherboards can be shipped from and sold by Amazon.com for $59.99 shipped and the Ryzen 5 3600 is just $199.00 shipped.

The Ryzen 5 3600X that we tested in-depth today ran circles around the Intel Core i5-9600K in the vast majority of the non-gaming benchmarks that we ran here today. When it came to 1080P gaming performance the Ryzen 5 3600X was slightly behind the Intel Core i5-9600K in the game titles that we tested. The difference between the Ryzen 3000 series and their Intel competition in gaming is getting really close at 1080P. If you game beyond 1080P and/or crank up the image quality settings in the game you’ll become more GPU bound than CPU bound. Meaning the FPS performance in the game is essentially the same when gaming at 4K and to a lesser degree 1440P. If AMD could get their gaming performance on par with Intel they would have an unreal platform here.

AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen CPUs

We really wish AMD would have sampled us the Ryzen 5 3600 to review in conjunction with the 3600X now that we are done benchmarking. For $50 less the Ryzen 5 3600 seems like it would be ideal for enthusiasts. It’s only 200MHz lower on the clock speeds and that can easily be made up by manually overclocking the processor. Besides most enthusiasts use AIO liquid coolers on their CPUs and won’t care about the retail boxed CPU cooler. Getting the Ryzen 5 3600 for $50 less and investing in water cooling for overclocking seems like the best bet for those that want to get their hands dirty and do some overclocking. For those that don’t want to mess with overclocking the Ryzen 5 3600X seems like it would be the chip for you. At the end of the day it feels like a factory overclocked 3600 with a better air cooler included.

  • Ryzen 9 3900X – $499
  • Ryzen 7 3800X – $399
  • Ryzen 7 3700X – $329
  • Ryzen 5 3600X – $249
  • Ryzen 5 3600 – $199

At the end of the day the AMD Ryzen 5 3600X processor is a solid choice, but we are missing the Ryzen 5 3600 in our performance charts and that really stinks. It almost feels like AMD didn’t want to send out the Ryzen 5 3600 as they didn’t want reviewers to say not to buy the Ryzen 5 3600X. Now we have a review going up saying the 3600X is solid, but man for $50 less that 3600 is super duper appealing and should be just 5% slower at stock clock speeds. So, the bottom line here is that AMD has some damn good looking chips in the $199-$249 market and Intel should be concerned. AMD has some very appealing chips with solid performance and a ton of board choices to boot!