AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

As Alan Dexter discovers, this chip may be the runt of the Zen 3 family, but it delivers where it counts most: gaming.

-  Alan Dexter

So far, the one serious criticism of AMD’s Zen 3 has been that the chips are on the pricey side. This is less of a problem at the high-end, where time is money and high performance can claw back time, but as you head down the stack and focus more on gaming, the pay-off needs to be more immediate.

Enter then the 5600X. While you couldn’t really call £299 a budget CPU, it’s a more manageable mainstream price point that has historically seen plenty of competition. Currently, you’re looking at the likes of the Core i7 10700K, which can be had for around £350, while a more direct comparison can be made with the Core i5 10600K that will set you back £240.

The Ryzen 5 5600X is a six-core, 12-thread processor with a base clock of 3.7GHz and maximum boost of 4.6GHz. It’s built up of a single core complex that has 32MB of L3 cache to call its own, and the same I/O die that can be found in Zen 2. If you want the full lowdown on what makes Zen 3 tick, then it’s worth taking a look at the Zen 3 architecture section of our Ryzen 9 5900X review in LXF271.

Going beyond the threshold

As with the other chips in the Zen 3 family, you’ll often see the boost clocks rise above the official 4.6GHz limit. Using the Wraith Stealth fan cooler will result in the cores running at 4,650MHz, and with a water cooler 4.7GHz isn’t unheard of. If you’re using a fully threaded application – where all the cores are maxed – you’ll see them top out at 4,175MHz, which is pretty healthy, too.