AMD Ryzen 5 2600

The perfect hex core for the tinkerer

- Zak Storey

AMD’S RECENT SUCCESS in the processor market has been staggering. With Intel expecting big losses in the server segment, and AMD pulling back market share elsewhere, too, Big Blue definitely seems to have been caught off guard. But if we’re honest, as much as it’s good to see Team Red get back on its feet after a rather disastrous few years, especially in the enterprise domain (which is where the vast majority of the money lies), it’s the midrange computing segment that interests us the most, and in particular, finding that sweet-spot chip that represents the perfect balance between price and performance. Typically speaking, as you go further down the product list, you eventually reach a point where that bang for buck figure starts to decline, and you begin to see an overall decrease in value per dollar. For Nvidia, that’s anything below a GTX 1050; for Intel, the Celeron series; and for AMD, well, it was the Ryzen 3 series—at least, before this generation anyway.