Overall and Final Verdict

Well after a week and a half of testing, retesting old CPUs, testing motherboard, photos, videos, editing, and of course writing here we are. Now that I’ve had some time to live with the Ryzen 2000 Series CPUs I first have to say that AMD continues to improve on what they put together for last year. Both the 2700X and 2600X that they sent me to test are solid performing CPUs. The 2700X in almost every case and the 2600X in most tests outperforms every single Ryzen CPU launched last year and managed to do it will running cooler. For the most part in the non-gaming tests, the 2700X actually sticks close to the $469 8 core Intel i7-7820X and in a shocking number of tests the 2600X is right with the 8700K. The efficiency improvements that the 12nm process improvement brings helped lower cache and memory latency and I think most of you know just how important memory performance is for Ryzen CPUs. Add to that the new more linear boost clocks and overall higher clock speeds and it all helps these two CPUs perform well in all of the tests.

The temperature testing really blew me away with the 2700X and 2600X both being near the bottom of the charts, even with higher clock speeds. The die shrink helped, but sticking with a soldered heatspreader also plays a big role here when compared to the Intel i7-8700K and i5-8400. The new cooler included with the 2700X is also really amazing. I plan on taking a closer look at it in the upcoming weeks, but let's just say it performs really well and that RGB lighting on top looks great. Adding a cooler was a big value adder overall, but this one specifically is going to be sought after by AMD fans for sure.

Now the power draw on both CPUs was a little high, even when ignoring the weird Coffee Lake results I had in my retests. But they weren’t anything I would be overly concerned about, especially with the CPUs still running cool. The gaming performance was also another concern going into this. I know I listed it as a con in the images down below, but I had originally planned on having it as a pro as well. AMD has made big improvements in gaming performance from the original Ryzen launch until now. Add to that the new CPUs are noticeably faster in game than the first gen Ryzen CPUs. But even with those improvements, in two of the four games I tested, I would have liked to see better performance. Last years Intel i5 was running with the 2700X in TF2… This was only a four game test, hopefully, I will be able to do most tests post launch like we did with the 1700 vs the 7700K last year. That said performance was still more than worth it when considering the performance in all of the other benchmarks.

So should you be jumping on the Ryzen 2000 Series ship? Well, it looks like AMD is going to continue to get more and more competitive in pricing. Last years Ryzen pricing that wowed everyone at the time looks expensive when compared to the pricing of the four new CPUs now. I know a lot of people are going to be eyeing the 2700 over the 2700X but I will say if you plan on air cooling for a while the 2700X will be worth stepping up too just for the improved cooler. The Wraith Prism should hold most people over until they jump to a large air cooler or water cooling, it even has enough headroom to overclock on it. But for me the R5 2600 is looking like a sweet deal, imagine that CPU paired up with one of last years B350 motherboards. You can find a few great B350 boards for less than $80, you could toss a case in with those and still only cost you what the Intel 8700K does. Hell 16 gigs of memory is nearly going to cost as much as this 6 core CPU with a cooler.  

fv52700xrecommended

Live Pricing: HERE

fv52600xvalue

Live Pricing: HERE

Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

Log in to comment

We have 1912 guests and no members online

supportus