AMD is on a roll this year, new releases one after the another and too in style! During Computex 2019, they launched the Zen 2 line up which offered some insane performance at a very compelling price point. Till date, the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 has been the darling for those seeking superb all round performance without having to break the bank. It seems that AMD wasn’t content with that. They have now launched the Ryzen 5 3500 which is a 6 Core/6 Thread part which obviously is aimed directly at the extremely popular and budget friendly Intel Core i5 9400F. We spent some time with this CPU to see what’s what. Does it have what it takes to carry on the onslaught started by the Ryzen 5 3600 ? Let’s check out!
Test Setup:
Gaming System:
AMD Ryzen 5 3500 Processor (6 Core/ 6 Thread)
Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming Motherboard (Updated to latest available official BIOS)
ADATA XPG Spectrix D41 RGB 3000MHz 8GB x 2 Memory
Coolermaster Masterliquid ML360R ARGB 360mm AIO Liquid
Coolermaster H500 White Chassis
Coolermaster V1000 80+ Platinum Full Modular PSU
Kingston A400 240GB SATA SSD
Toshiba 1TB SATA HDD
Overclocking System:
AMD Ryzen 5 3500 Processor (6 Core/ 6 Thread)
Asus ROG Strix B450-E Gaming Motherboard (Updated to latest available official BIOS)
Crucial Ballistix Elite 3600 MHz 8GB x 2 Memory
Custom Water Cooling Loop Open Test Bench
SuperFlower Leadex 80+ Gold 1600W PSU
ADATA XPG SX900 SATA 128GB SSD
Gaming Performance:
Overclocking Performance:
PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) Performance: Memory @ 3600MHz 16-18-18-38 1T @ 1.35V
CPU @ 4.1 GHz / Memory @ 4000MHz
CPU @ 4.3 GHz / Memory @ 4000 MHz
Observations:
Strong gaming performance in popular E-Sports titles.
No limits or restrictions on Memory frequency. If using high speed memory, there is substantial performance boost to be had.
Our CPU managed to pull off 4.3GHz easily but didn’t scale at all beyond that. We shall try more CPUs to find out whether the same behaviour is observed.
The results above are quick results to showcase OC potential of the CPU and therefore, we didn’t spend time Optimizing the Memory timings and FCLK speed which would have improved the performance even more. Unfortunately it is a time consuming process and have reserved it for later.
Bundled with a nice B450 chipset motherboard, this can be an absolutely VFM combo for mainstream and E-sports gamers and content creators with extremely light workloads.
Very pleased with the overall performance and the value proposition for this CPU.
The biggest plus point for this CPU over the 9400F is the possibility of CPU overclocking. Sadly,the 9400F is locked but Memory frequency can be higher if you choose to use a Z370 or Z390 motherboard which I think very few would do for obvious reasons.
That’s all for now. Thanks!