****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
So it seems AMD's official policy with the 5600X and higher processors is that the new chips handle a higher temperature better and for longer. Unfortunately, they've pushed this too far and I think it probably means they won't last as long as most of us would probably want but also means they make insane amounts of noise on the stock heatsink. Basically if you buy one of these, expect that you're going to have to tweak this thing to keep it. First of all, you absolutely need a better heatsink. Many people go to all-in-one water-cooler solutions, but I don't think you should go that far. An AIO cooler versus a good air-cooled heatsink will produce fairly close effects on this particular processor if you do it right and really are more applicable to higher end CPUs than this. Though you may potentially get better overclocking from an AIO if you want to go that route. (But there isn't much overclocking headroom on the 5600X for most anyway so it probably makes a lot more sense just to get a faster CPU rather than buying extreme coolers and trying to overclock this one to the max.) Actually, I was a bit disappointed how little headroom the 5600X apparently has in this regard as I originally bought it planning to someday do overclocking. I guess this comes down to AMD having already tweaked it pretty close to the max most of the chips can handle anyway with PBO (you're going to want to learn how PBO works and how to tweak it if you buy this.)Now, first of all I want to say the stock cooler is terrible for this CPU. Actually, I never realized just how little aluminum is actually in the "Wraith Stealth cooler" HSFs until I really looked at it with this chip. My previous CPU was a 2600, which never went significantly over 65C on the stock cooler, so I never looked at it carefully, but the exceptionally thick fan hides that there is very little actual metal in there. Rather than being as stealthy and silent as a wraith, when you fire up a game with this chip, what you're going to hear is a tornado raging inside your case when that thing starts spinning up the very instant you start the game (it doesn't even take a while -- it's instant. Actually, I worry especially how fast these CPUs thermally cycle with an almost instantaneous jump to maximum temperatures under load and then almost instantaneous jump to minimum the moment the load decreases. This generally isn't good for the lifetime of any silicon. Actually, heavy thermal cycling isn't great for anything as a lot of PS3 and Xbox 360 users could testify to...) Basically if you buy this chip or the next ones up, you either will be buying a new HSF, or you will probably end up giving up and going to Intel. I have to knock off a star from the total and two from value because a stock consumer CPU (as opposed to a more minimal OEM model) should come with a heatsink sufficient to handle it and no matter how you look at it, these CPUs do NOT do this. A CPU should not require you to have to buy a separate HSF for stock settings to be reasonable. You can technically put it in and it will work without immediately burning out, but you'll be driven crazy by the noise and I honestly doubt it will last the full three years the warranty claims since the temperatures still go up really high quite a lot. My experience with the stock HSF was that it hit maximum temperature and started lowering more and more due to thermal cycling almost instantly (so it's pretty much only good for quick bursts like web browsing or something, not sustained pushes like gaming,) ultimately ending up on the minimum 3.7GHz this processor is rated for without the boost, except still at a really high temperature (over 80C for long sessions was not impossible.) Expect to be running your games at 4.1GHz for a little while and slowly over time down to 3.7GHz instead. I think this defeats the entire purpose of the boost and if you stay with the stock HSF I'm not sure it isn't better just to go ahead and turn the boost off entirely.Now, that said, there is some tweaking you can do and I think you need to do it whether you use the stock heatsink or not -- and I knock off a whole star solely for the fact that this is pretty much strictly necessary to use this processor since the tweaking is a lot more complicated on recent generation CPUs than it used to be in the past. Most specifically you need to go to the motherboard's PBO settings and adjust the settings to decrease current, thermal limits, and set a negative curve optimization. You want to set the lowest value it will go to from 0 to -30. Most can start from -15 or so at least and keep going down from there until they find the best value. Some may get -20, some may get -30, or some may even end up having to go up to -10, but it should help if you can get any negative value to set. This can subtract a few degrees from its maximum temperature and make it take longer before it slows down anyway, thus giving you overall better performance since it will stay higher for longer. Depending on your ambient temperature, this might be enough for gaming without changing the HSF -- if you don't mind that it's still going to be pretty loud (at least it downgrades from a raging tornado to an angry thunderstorm.) I still recommend changing the HSF though, even if you can establish really good PBO values because it only helps a little just on its own.I feel like a CPU shouldn't be so much work out of the box. Once you find the right settings and replace the HSF with something better this one is a pretty good performer with very nice results both in gaming and otherwise, but I feel like this one requires that you must buy something else just to use it and then spend days just trying to find the proper settings to make it run cooler. Even if you accept AMD's policy that higher is fine, it doesn't change that these usually end up hitting the thermal throttle limit in really heavy gaming (which they're supposed to be made for!) so still run too hot even by their definition and the cooler produces tons of noise if you're doing anything heavier than web browsing. After a lot of tweaking I have gotten mine to run cool and quiet with excellent performance all around, but usually this much tweaking should only be necessary if you're overclocking beyond specifications, not if you're just trying to get its stock specifications to work better. I think a lot of less technically capable users are going to find this CPU to just not work for their needs.This was a really excellent product that Amazon advertised as I was at wits end in choosing the perfect MoBo & CPU combination. As I reviewed the suggested CPUs for gaming AMD always came out on top and ASUS being a name brand defintetly convinced me otherwise that they're strictly for Intel chips and computing, from previous experience. The only issue I experienced was the GPU covered about 2" of a component fan on the MoBo from a PCIe 4.0x16 slot, e.g. guide marks. So that being the case I moved the GPU to the other 4.0 PCIe slot with no hangups. I was also impressed by the AURA RGB capabilities of the board that was compatible with both in-system software and through the BIOS system. The M.2 slots were perfect to exclude the need of a SSD/ HDD and performance was spectacular as graphics, computing, and read/ write speeds were to par. Highly recommended product!*****Very happy with this combo, easy setup, works out of the box, no bios update needed.Came in rather quickly and works to perfection great cpu mobo combo well worth the priceOk so a few things here you need to know. I bought this combo but had a black screen on boot. Thinking it was the bios i kept trying different bios updates and nothing worked. I finally decided to remove the RAM 4 x Corsair 32GB 3600mhz and only put in one of the ram modules in B1 slot not A1 and finally I was able to get to the bios qhere I updated my memory speeds to the correct 3600 mhz instead of leaving it on Auto and I can now boot fine with all 128 gb of ram.Parts arrived fast and packaged well. This mother board cpu combo is powerful enough for pretty much all games at hugh resolution. There is plenty of room for add ons with PCI and other motherboard headers. The only let down is the lack of a USB C headerNice combination.Love this combo and setup, this was for my wife’s build, maybe give people a heads up that the bios may need to be updated to run the 5 series chips, other than that spot on and running great
