AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Detailed Review 2020

AMD's Ryzen 5 3600 replaces the 2018 Ryzen 5 2600, bringing even more performance and options to the mid-range CPU market. It is located just below the Ryzen 5 3600X, which is essentially a slightly faster version of the same processor.

Where the Ryzen 5 3600 shines is the desktop of the frugal players. Overall, it has a performance below its faster siblings, but its lower specifications and lower price do not translate as directly into game performance. And, the extra savings can also go to a better graphics card or additional RAM, making the Ryzen 5 3600 an extra convincing option for players who want to optimize for value.

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Detailed Review 2020

Price and availability

The Ryzen 5 3600, with its Wraith Stealth cooler included, will give you $199 (199, AU$315) if you fail to catch it with any processor agreement. But, that still makes it one of the cheapest, newest and mid-range processors on the market. It undermines the 3600X by a considerable gap, but still offers an identical set of features.

When it comes to competition from Intel's Core i5 Coffee Lake Refresh processors, the Ryzen 5 3600 keeps prices lower against all but the cheapest SKUs. It also offers higher base clock speeds (with the exception of the Core i5-9600k) combined with simultaneous Mutithreading, a Core i5 desktop chips feature are simply not supported. All that plus a free refrigerator make a solid value package.

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Detailed Review 2020

Features and chipset

While upgrading the Ryzen 5 1600 to the Ryzen 5 2600 may have been iterative, the Ryzen 5 3600 is a bigger leap thanks to AMD's Zen 2 architecture. The change moves the CPU from a 12nm manufacturing process to a 7nm process, allowing AMD to improve efficiency, increase instructions per clock (or IPC) and increase clock speeds. It causes these jumps to stay in the 65W TDP trisium of the Ryzen 5 2600.

Helping to further boost performance are increases in memory immediately available to processor cores. AMD has uploaded the cache with 384 KB of L1, 3 MB of L2, and 32 MB of L3 cache, the same as the one found on the Ryzen 5 3600X. That cache lump can have an impact on both system responsiveness and game performance.

The Ryzen 5 3600 also makes the move to the X570 chipset, which comes with support for the new PCIe 4.0 standard. This offers a large increase in bandwidth for PCIe SSDs and the latest AMD Navi graphics cards. But, for computer users who do not need the additional features of the X570 chipset, older motherboards are a viable option thanks to the Ryzen 5 3600's ongoing support for the AM4 CPU socket. In other words, upgrading from a PC with a Ryzen 1000 series processor will probably be as cheap and easy as simply installing the new processor without the need for motherboard exchange.

SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS

CPU: 3.6GHz AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6 cores, 35MB cache, up to 4.2GHz)

Motherboard: Aorus X570 Master

RAM: 16GB HyperX Fury RGB @ 3,000 MHz

SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 250GB

GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

Power supply: Phanteks Revolt X 1200

Case: Praxis Wetbench

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Detailed Review 2020

Performance

Overall, the Ryzen 5 3600 shows that it's a more modest processor than other Ryzen 3000 series chips, but it still has a taste that can compete in some way even with the Intel Core i7-8700K.

Unsurprisingly, the Ryzen 5 3600 lands just below the 3600X in single-core or multi-core performance, though its performance in our Handbrake benchmark was seen to offer close match for the X variant. That said, its performance remains strong. Trade swipes with the 6-core / 12-core Intel Core i7-8086K, beating it in the Cinebench R15 multi-core test and nearly tying up single-core speeds. It doesn't hit the Core i7-8086K in the GeekBench 4 single-core test, but it jumps above that chip in the multi-core test.

Another good part of its performance is efficiency. Thanks to the switch to the 7nm process, the Ryzen 5 3600 handles a substantially lower level of power consumption under load than the Intel Core i7-8086K and Core i7-8700K, which reached 110.68W and 100.63W, respectively. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5 3600 pulled just 86.17W off the wall in our tests.

Where the Ryzen 5 3600 really shows that its mettle is in the games, with some results that even trample on the greats. Running Total War: Warhammer II at 1080p on our test system, which uses an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, the Ryzen 5 3600 achieved a minimum of 78 fps and an average of 101 fps. Those scores simply crush the 8-core / 12-thread Intel Core i9-9900K that costs more than double. He even beats his three top tier siblings. At 4K in the same game, it loses ground for its siblings, but it mostly stays ahead of the same three Intel chips.

In Middle Earth: Shadow of War, a game with different demands, the Ryzen 5 3600 averages performance levels in 1080p and 4K that almost coincide with those of the Intel Core i9-990K, Core i7-8086K, Core i7-8700K and even the Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X.

AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Detailed Review 2020

Final verdict

The Ryzen 5 3600's price-for-performance value is crazy, especially when compared to CPUs more than double its price in gaming. All the new Ryzen 3000 series CPUs we've tested have offered similar levels of gaming performance, and the Ryzen 5 3600 is the cheapest yet.

So if you want to build a computer from scratch or have an AM4 motherboard waiting for an upgrade, the Ryzen 5 3600 is a powerful option. The Ryzen 5 3600X gets a little extra performance for a small premium, but going with the 3600 will offer additional space in your budget if you need to upgrade a different part of your gaming gear, like your gaming monitor or graphics processor.