AMD Ryzen 5 1400, 1500X and 1600X CPU Review

AMD Ryzen 7 Processors Review

Introduction

Since the launch of the FX8 series of processors AMD have fallen into the sector of the market that is best described by the old “good value for money” adage, which is usually a pejorative way of saying that the performance wasn’t all that but they’re cheap.

With the release of the Zen architecture, and the Ryzen 7 CPU range, such cliché expressions were consigned to history because they might have been aggressively priced but they had performance out of the wazoo, easily matching up to the Intel models AMD were targeting.

However, despite the Sunnyvale CPUs being much cheaper than their Santa Clara counterparts, we know that the high end Intel CPUs are way beyond most of us, thus the Ryzen 7 CPUs were still reasonably pricey, despite being cheap. Which is where the Ryzen 5 CPUs we are testing today come in. We’ve got the 1400, the 1500X and the 1600X on hand, and can’t wait to discover whether the Quad and Hexcore versions of the Ryzen CPUs are as impressive as their big brothers.

Technical Specifications

If you only looked for the specifications of the Ryzen 5 on the AMD website you would come away being none the wiser. Apparently they all have performance gaming and lots of processing power, but 66% of the facts are the low TDP – something that is meaningless to the majority of customers – and what cooler it has in the box. The cooler part is equally pointless because there are hitherto undiscovered tribes in the Amazon who know not to use a stock cooler on their CPU. So what we’re left with is clock speeds, which generally follow the “the more you pay the faster it is” rule that applies to all of life.

Hardly shouting from the rooftops there, AMD. So for the rest of you, the 1400 and 1500X are quad-core CPUs with threading, whilst the 1600 are six-core with threading. There, that wasn’t too complicated now was it.

AMD Ryzen 5 Processors 1400, 1500X and 1600X Review

AMD Ryzen 7 Processors Review Of course we all want to know how they overclock and perform, so let’s get down to brass tacks. Â