AMD Ryzen 5 2600X – the CPU that does all the work for you

Leo Waldock April 22, 2018 Component, CPU, Featured Announcement, Featured Tech News, Featured Tech Reviews, Reviews

Testing
We tested the Ryzen 5 2600X and Ryzen 7 2700X along with Ryzen 7 1800X and Ryzen 5 1600X and for comparison we used Intel Core i7-8700K and Core i5-8600K CPUs.

AMD test system:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
RAM: G.Skill SniperX 16GB DDR4-3400MHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi with BIOS F4c
Graphics: EVGA GTX 1080Ti SC
SSD: SK Hynix SC311STD
Coolers: Fractal Design Celsius S24
Power supply: Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000W

Intel test system:
CPU: Intel core i7-8700K
RAM: G.Skill SniperX 16GB DDR4-3600MHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming with BIOS F8
Graphics: EVGA GTX 1080Ti SC
SSD: Samsung 960 Pro
Cooler: Fractal Design Celsius S24
Power supply: Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000W

All four AMD CPUs were run on the Gigabyte X470 motherboard which means the choice of chipset plays no part in the proceedings. For AMD CPUs we used G.Skill SniperX DDR4-3400MHz with XMP enabled while the Intel CPUs were paired with G.Skill SniperX DDR4-3600MHz, also with XMP.

We overclocked by increasing core voltage to 1.35V for the new CPUs and 1.4V for the older models, increasing load line calibration and raising the core multiplier before testing with Blender to check for stability.