Ryzen 5 1600X: Building a versatile work-and-play PC with AMD’s 6-core CPU champion - tschidayouseks97

The Ryzen 5 1600X is hither, and AMD's low-cost mainframe is but as disruptive A the high-end Ryzen 7 CPUs. Hell, maybe even more so.

While the 8-core-well-appointed Ryzen 7 serial publication trades blows with Intel's $1,000 Core i7-6900K for as little as a third of the price, it lags significantly behind the quad-nucleus Sum i7-7700K in many pure gaming workloads. The Ryzen 5 1600X's value proffer is much clearer. With 6 overclockable cores and 12 togs, its competitor would be the $420 Core i7-6800K, in a vacuum—but we don't current in a vacuum. Here in the real world, the 1600X's $250 price tag puts it toenail-to-toe with Intel's Core i5-7600K, a ferocious gambling chip but one limited to just cardinal cores without any hyperthreading.

Sure, the 1600X nevertheless isn't quite as fast equally the 7600K in some games, simply Ryzen still games like a champ when opposite with a decent graphics poster. And with three times arsenic many threads as its rival, AMD's processor absolutely burns the Core i5 to the ground in multithreaded applications. Seriously. It's a mow down.

You'll want to read PCWorld's comprehensive Ryzen 5 1600X followup for the detailed take up on its functioning. Here, we'atomic number 75 going to build one Scheol of an all-around system that basks in the Ryzen 5 1600X's position As the jack—nay, the king—of all trades, and the best mainstream Central processing unit powerhouse you can grease one's palms.

What's wrong the Ryzen 1600X PC

While our Ryzen 7 1800X build celebrating the apex of all-AMD power controlled various indulgences (the closed-loop ice chest and premium exponent supplying alone be over $500), this build's a trifle to a greater extent restrained. Put on't get me wrong: At a hair over $1,500, this isn't a inexpensive PC. But it's unmatched designed to offer damned fine (though not best-in-class) carrying into action in all computing areas—gaming, streaming, audio/video redaction, programming, you name IT—with a price-to-performance ratio that ISN't horrific.

Got it? Good. Net ball's entrench.

Processor: The $250 Ryzen 5 1600X, duh. Haven't you been heedful? The 1600X's 6 cores and 12 threads hum along between 3.6GHz and 4GHz, and since it's rocking an "X" assignment, AMD's stretched Absolute frequency Range technology can upfield that top speed by another 100MHz if you're rocking a particularly beefy Mainframe cooler.

CPU ice chest: …which we're not. Instead, this build utilizes the Wraith Max, the almost potent (and RGB-laden) member of AMD's Wraith cooler lineup, which the company transmitted us for testing. Intel stock coolers can't hold a candle to this thing. Note, however, that while the Specter Max leave transport with select Ryzen models, it does non come bundled with the 1600X at this time.

ryzen 1600x build 17 — couSpoiler alert: AMD's Wraith Max in action.

Since you'll need to pick up your possess cooler for the Ryzen 5 1600X, we take over a few recommendations: The Cooler Headmaster Hyper 212 Evo ($30 on Amazon) is our go-to for folks who want a solid CPU cooler without breaking the bank, and Ice chest Overcome will send you an AMD AM4 motherboard bracket if you ask. If you want to push the fastest overclocks affirmable, the superb Noctua NH-D15 air tank offers an AM4-specific variant for $90 on Newegg, while Corsair—alike Cooler Schoolmaster—will send you AM4 mounting ironware for the popular Hydro H100i v2 closed-loop liquid cooler ($120 on Amazon) if you ask for trouble.

amd ryzen 1800x build 6 — The Gigabyte Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 motherboard.

Motherboard: Later careful consideration, I decided to live with the same Gigabyte Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 motherboard ($195 on Amazon and Newegg, though a great deal sold out) used in PCWorld's previous Ryzen 7 1800X build. As I explained in PCWorld's Ryzen motherboard breakdown, the X370 and B350 chipsets for AM4 motherboards are largely corresponding, but the little extras institute in high-death X370 boards make sense in a versatile bod like this. Compared to a B350 panel, X370 offers two extra SATA connections, two additive PCIe lanes, quatern more USB 3 ports, and CrossFire/SLI support for systems with multiple graphics cards.

Next page: Parts, continued.

If you get into't think over you'll need those perks, consider swapping this out for a B350 board to save a sizeable lump o' cash. I've had good experiences with Gigabyte's GA-AB350 Gaming 3 ($110 on Newegg), and rival boards like the Asus Prime B350 Plus ($100 on Amazon) and MSI's B350 Tomahawk ($110 on Newegg) sell for roughly the same price.

Soh wherefore'd we side the Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 in particular? Already having it on hand certainly didn't injured. But beyond that convenience, the Gaming 5's an early star in the AM4 motherboard lineup. It's attractive, loaded with all the features you could ask for (including M.2 and U.2 SSD support), and includes nifty extras like RGB Fusion and Smart Fan 5 technology baked right into the BIOS. Speaking of the BIOS, that's another Gaming 5 strength. Many an Ryzen motherboards lack polish and stability in these proterozoic years of the whol-new AM4 platform, but Gigabyte's motherboard has been solid as a rock in my extensive testing.

ryzen 1600x build 16 — Those lit-functioning Geil Evo X RAM sticks sure look soundly.

Memory: AMD sent Geil's Evo X 16GB DDR4 kit out ($125 along Newegg) on with the Ryzen 5 review kit, clocked at 3,200MHz. We decided to use it for a couple of different reasons.

Depending on the application you're using, Ryzen performance can respond greatly to memory speed—but in these youth, memory support is finicky on many AM4 motherboards. The content is right the money, too; you could get by with 8GB if you're gaming and slinging Bureau docs alone, but 16GB is Sir Thomas More welcome in productivity and editing machines. Oh, and I'm a sucker for RGB lighting, and Geil's RAM rocks LEDs that can illuminate your slip.

That said, Geil's Evo X North Korean won't be for everyone even if you dig RGB. Those lights require additional cables that feature film red wiring rather than all-black sleeves, which can be an eyesore if you're an aesthetics freak. The cables add some additional frustrations likewise, which we'll cover in the physique guide. The Evo X sticks are absolute massive, too, which could be an subject if you plan on using a CPU cooler with a large heat sink. They sure do bet pretty though.

If low-profile RAM—in some stature and aesthetics—is more your taste sensation, Corsair's Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 kit bequeath lot you back the same $125 happening Amazon.

Graphics: Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition ($380 on Amazon River) delivers tremendous 1440p and 1080p gambling prowess at significantly less toll than the GTX 1080 surgery 1080 Ti, along with great graphics power for project and telecasting redaction. It's what PCWorld's video Guru uses in his personal rig, and that's good for me.

Nvidia partners like EVGA, Zotac, and MSI offer tailor-made GTX 1070s with higher time speeds and beefier coolers, which many gamers prefer. Those graphics card game exclude hot air backwards down into your system, however, whereas the Founders Edition uses a electric fan-style cooler that pushes the heat out the I/O ports on the rear of your organisation. That makes the Founders Edition card game much persuasive if you're exploitation a tiny material body.

Coddler warning!

Lawsuit: We're using a tiny chassis. In fact, we're using the synoptic Corsair Carbide 400C ($100 happening Amazon) featured in our Ryzen 7 1800X construct. Stuffing so so much power into a puny suit is fun! I'd reasoned using a luxurious Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Tempered Glass ($190 on Amazon) that I wear helping hand, precisely to idle words things heavenward a moment, but then I remembered that this build revolves around smart buying decisions to put up as a lot all-close to performance every bit possible. (You'll see where the extra money went in a bit.)

The Barbary pirate 400C it is, and without regrets—it's a damned good mainstream case.

Power issue: PC hardware doesn't demand anywhere near as much electricity as it used to, only I'm still a steadfastly believer in buying an economical power issue from a reputable brand name. The EVGA Supernova 650 P2 ($110 on Amazon) fits the bill nicely. It's 80 Plus Platinum certified, and you don't need more than 650 watts in a modern system with a CPU and a single graphics carte du jour.

ryzen 1600x build 6 — The Samsung 960 Pro.

Memory board: Here's the ironware we splurged connected with the nest egg in other areas. The 512GB Samsung 960 Pro ($330 on Amazon River, but provided away AMD for this build) doesn't ejaculate punk. Nor should it; it's easy the speediest SSD to ever so cross PCWorld's lab. Information technology's ludicrously fixed.

While near-fast boot multiplication are nice happening whatever system, the Samsung 960 In favou's speed would be skeletal if you more often than not contrive on gaming, slinging Office docs, and other everyday tasks. This beast Robert Burns direct large file transfers, though, making it a worthwhile—if dear—investment for notional professionals, streamers WHO edit video files, or anybody else doing asset-sized work on the regular.

If that doesn't sound like you, consider pick finished other drive instead. We still like Samsung's 850 EVO for unspecific use, and at $178 on Amazon for the 512GB model, it's just about half the price of the speedy 960 Pro. Other SSDs derriere be found for even less if you'Ra not picky.

The extras: Add it all ascending and you're looking at a grand total of $1,520 for this Ryzen 5 1600X system. That doesn't let in the cost of Windows 10, keyboard and mouse, surgery a monitor even so—establish guides equivalent this by and large feign you have those available to bring over from some other system. If you don't, however, expect to drop a bit more.

You can pick dormie a radical mouse and keyboard pretty cheaply if you neediness, Beaver State if you're looking for nicer pitch to meet the boilers suit quality level of this build, PCWorld's take to the incomparable gaming mice and best gaming keyboard fire help. Windows 10 Home costs $119, (the Pro version is $199), though you can much find product keys available for under $30 on Kinguin, which is kind of like eBay for software. And if you'Re into hardcore audio editing, a dedicated top-end sound card like the Sound Blaster ZxR will set you back some other $233 connected Amazon, operating room less if you don't require altogether the ZxR's bells and whistles.

Enough chatter. Let's get down building!

Succeeding page: Building the faun

Building the Ryzen 1600X PC

If you've never crafted a computer, PCWorld's comprehensive guide to building a PC can walk you through the mental process. We're just going to go complete the broad strokes and aspects unique to this particular build here.

As always, I started by building out the motherboard first—it's easier to install the major components before your motherboard's in the case.

Samsung 960 Pro M.2 SSD — The Samsung 960 Pro blends right in on the Aorus Gaming 5 motherboard level ahead you add a graphics card.

Since the Samsung 960 Pro's an NVMe SSD, my very opening move was slotting that into place and shag it in. GB's Ryzen motherboards slap the M.2 slot under the prototypical PCIe time slot, which means your SSD is covered by your graphics card. It's not ideal—I choose the M.2 connector over the PCIe slot, to keep your GPU's tropic air from exhausting onto your M.2 SSD—but I've ne'er noticed performance loss from placement look-alike this.

Installing the Wa was a bigger headache, and a major bummer. (Be sure to read your motherboard manual to make sure you install your modules in the optimal slots for your contour!)

ryzen 1600x build 18 — Come. On. This electric cord is useless.

The Gambling 5 includes an RGB header to sync RGB-equipped devices with the motherboard's lights victimization G's BIOS-based RGB Fusion software. The Geil Evo X includes a cable to connect the memory to an RGB header. Odorous, satisfactory? Nope. The RGB cable bundled with the Evo X is incredibly short—far too short to reach the RGB header on the left side of the board, where Gigabyte and most other motherboards place it. So rather than syncing the Random memory's colours with the motherboard, I instead had to economic consumption a secondary cablegram (with the said ugly red wires) that connects to a organization winnow header for power. Doing so limits you to using the Evo X's native red, blue, Beaver State green lighting presets.

Ugh.

ryzen 1600x build 19 — The Ryzen 5 1600X in the motherboard.

Installing the Ryzen 1600X itself was simple. Just match the quoin with the Triangle on the bottom of the C.P.U. with the twin triangle along motherboard socket. It should slip by right in, and so you secure it in situ with the retention lever. Easy-peasy!

Setting up the Shade Soap cooler verified largely straightforward atomic number 3 well. It uses a retention scheme that clips onto to the AM4 socket's indigene mounting computer hardware, and then you South Korean won't need to swap anything out or muck around with bolts.

ryzen 1600x build 22 — The Wraith Max's RGB effect is subtle, classy, and completely optional kind of than o'er the upper side. (But blue RGBs in an AMD build seem so WRONG.)

That said, this installation reminded Pine Tree State how untold I prefer bolt-based CPU coolers. The heatsink at the top of the motherboard doesn't leave much room to get your fingers in in that respect to secure the Wraith Max's clipping, so the Wraith's heat sink moved around a lot as I struggled to secure IT—which meant the pre-applied thermal paste didn't make up a solid seal with the processor. I wound functioning having to uninstall the Wraith Max completely later on construction the PC to reapply new thermal glue after seeing extraordinarily high temperatures after my initial installation.

The Wraith Max packs RGB lights of its own, and like the Geil Evo X RAM, information technology includes a cable that connects to an RGB header to co-ordinate the colorize with your motherboard lights. That cable suffers from the antonym problem as Geil's, though: It's too long.

Most motherboards position their motherboard header precisely underneath and to the far left of the CPU socket. The Wraith Scoop's RGB connector is at the rump-left of the fan; at that place's maybe an inch of physical space separating it from the motherboard RGB header. Simply the RGB cord AMD ships with the Specter Max is roughly a foot long. That means you need to find something to do with all that cabling, but the duration is too short to, say, flawlessly route it out to a motherboard cut-out so back in from another.

wraith max wire — I leave ne'er be able to NOT see this wire for the Wraith Easy lay's RGB firing.

I coiled up having to loosely tie the cable television together and trail it crosswise the heart of the motherboard, which doesn't expression horriblein the final build, but definitely isn't ideal.

Those are all nitpicks though. I love the look of the Wraith Goop in practice, and it didn't get hold of long-acting to get it in situ. Information technology's leaps and bounds better than stock Intel coolers.

ryzen 1600x build 21 — The Corsair Carbide 400C makes cable television service management a breeze.

The rest of the Ryzen 1600X build went together quickly and easily. Despite its tiny stature, the Corsair 400C includes rich space above the motherboard to route your topmost cables, unlike some other cases in this monetary value ambit. Information technology also features nice rubber grommets in each of the motherboard cut-outs, and a power supply cover that hides the mess of wires snaking out from your PSU—not that at that place's many in this build, arsenic the EVGA Supernova 650 P2 is fully standard.

Next page: Brief performance results and final thoughts

Carrying into action results

Everything worked right fine the first time I booted up the Ryzen 7 1600X rig. Sweet, sweet relief.

ryzen 1600x build 1 — Nvidia's glorious as "Team Party" in the GPU wars, merely on the CPU side, that's AMD's nickname because of old branding colors.

After flawlessly installing Windows—for unsurpassable performance happening a Ryzen system, you don't want to reuse a Windows image from an Intel car—I hopped backward into the BIOS to configure the system's RGB ignition and activate the memory's XMP visibility, which hit those lofty 3,200MHz speeds without a preventive.

So, beingness PCWorld's resident gaming editor, I slopped up whatever games for a quick await at the rig's carrying into action.

I tested iii games, all at 2560×1600 resolve and Squealing nontextual matter presets, with V-sync disabled. The Partition's a gorgeous open-world loot shooter that can lend underpowered systems to their knees. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is some other exacting game, but it plays well on Ryzen systems, peculiarly if you crank your system's retentiveness speeds. Ashes of the Uniqueness: Escalation is DirectX 12's flagship and the first game to ship Ryzen-specific performance optimizations, which I definitely loved to render out firsthand. I tested that pun in both DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 modes.

Hera are the results:

As you can see, the results were stellar even at 2560×1600 resolution. All the games hovered around the golden 60 frames per second authoritative—regular the notoriously strenuous Deus Ex. It's worth noting that I didn't test these with AMD's emotional new Balanced power plan, or any of the another tricks recommended to hike up the break off's performance. Following PCWorld's guide to 7 tips and tricks to maximize your Ryzen PC's functioning would no incertitude push frame rates regular further but I wished-for to show out-of-the-box results here.

Overclocking can add a good deal of pep to the Ryzen 7 series chips' step, and since the Ryzen 5 series uses the same chips but with cores out of action, it seems likely you'd personify able to push the 1600X to the same 3.8GHz-to-4GHz overclocks of the pricier chips. PCWorld's guide to AMD's Ryzen Master copy overclocking software can help on that front. The Ghost Max ran quiet and kept temperatures reasonable even subordinate heavy gaming loads, but if you'ray sounding to crank time speeds to the max, I'd decidedly recommend investing in an aftermarket cooler.

For many information on the anatomy's processing and file transferral chops, be sure to check out PCWorld's Ryzen 5 1600X review and Samsung 960 Pro review for the laden low-down on that hardware.

ryzen 1600x build 14 — The completed Ryzen 5 1600X build.

All altogether, I consider this physical body a rousing success. It's small, it's clean, it's relatively quiet, and information technology's incredibly versatile. The sole part I'd change is the RAM—non because it's underpowered, simply because the situation with the RGB header cord irks me so much. (Hey, I'm vain when it comes to my builds.)

A Microcomputer built around a Center i5-7600K might amaze this system in pure gaming carrying out, but not away much with a GTX 1070 in tow, and Intel's chip wouldn't come close to this Ryzen 1600X PC's productiveness prowess. Herald to AMD's young midrange ace.

Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.