AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Review: Why Is This Amazon's Best Selling CPU?
by Dr. Ian Cutress on May 18, 2020 9:00 AM ESTAMD Ryzen 5 3600 Conclusion
One of the major factors going into this review was the fact that the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 sits on top of the Amazon Best Sellers list in the US. Just to give you a sense of scale, here are the top 10 lists for each of the major Amazon regions:
| Amazon CPU Best Sellers | ||||
| AnandTech | US .com |
UK .co.uk |
EU .de |
AU .com.au |
| #1 | Ryzen 5 3600 | Ryzen 5 3600 | Ryzen 5 3600 | Ryzen 7 3700X |
| #2 | Ryzen 7 3700X | Ryzen 5 2600 | Ryzen 7 3700X | Ryzen 9 3900X |
| #3 | Ryzen 5 3600X | Ryzen 7 3700X | Ryzen 5 2600 | Ryzen 5 3600 |
| #4 | Ryzen 9 3900X | Ryzen 5 3600X | Ryzen 9 3900X | Ryzen 3 3200G |
| #5 | Ryzen 3 3200G | Ryzen 9 3900X | Core i7-9700K | USB-C Hub |
| #6 | Ryzen 5 2600 | Ryzen 7 3800X | Core i5-9600K | Pentium G4560 |
| #7 | Core i7-9700K | Core i7-9700K | Ryzen 7 3800X | Pentium G5400 |
| #8 | Core i5-9600K | Ryzen 3 3200G | CPU Cooler | Ryzen 5 2600 |
| #9 | Ryzen 7 3800X | Ryzen 7 2700X | Ryzen 5 3600X | Ryzen 7 2700X |
| #10 | Core i9-9900K | Core i5-9600K | Core i3-9100F | Ryzen 3 1200 |
As we can see, the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 comes #1 in the US, the UK, in Germany/EU, and third in Australia. In Australia the 3700X takes the top spot, and a USB-C hub takes the fifth spot. The highest spot on these charts for Intel is 5th in the European chart, and on three of the charts the top selling Intel processor is the i7-9700K.
It is worth noting here that these best seller charts don’t always tell the whole story. Sometimes some third party sellers post their hardware as completely new listings, which screws up the system, and it doesn’t take into account any pre-built machines or sales outside of Amazon. Where AMD’s Ryzen 5 3600 is the choice for system builders at home, businesses requiring pre-built systems is obviously a separate story.
We had earmarked the Core i5-9400F as the main competitor to the Ryzen 5 3600 due to the price banding, but none of the i5-9400F-like processors are even shown in the top 10, indicating just how popular the Ryzen 5 3600 is. Of course, with the Core i5-10500 on its way to be the main competition here, it will be interesting to see if it lands on this chart at all – not only for it to be competitive but for Intel to put enough stock into the market.
Having another flick through our benchmarks, it is clear why the Ryzen 5 3600 is a popular choice. It’s a great all-round chip that hits high marks in practically every benchmark, and can keep up with games at either low resolutions or high resolutions. Against some of the quad-core AMD parts it might be lacking a bit in single threaded performance, but that is part of the trade-off: having 6 cores and 12 threads helps everywhere where there is a threaded workload, such as transcoding or complex workflow. Compared to the similarly priced Intel chips, it’s not much of a contest.
The only critical element right now surrounding the Ryzen 5 3600 is the motherboard situation, and how users want to perceive their upgrade strategy. If the goal is to move up to a Ryzen 4000 CPU sometime next year, then users will either have to buy an expensive X570 motherboard or wait until the B550 motherboards come to market at some point in the future (date for on-shelf retail still not announced).
If users want a system today, then the B450 and X470 options are still available, and there is an upgrade path to the Ryzen 9 3950X. Moving from 6 cores to 16 cores isn’t anything to be sniffed at. Either that, or sell the motherboard and CPU as a combination when it is time to upgrade to Ryzen 4000.
There is no official word on Ryzen 4000 / Zen 3 launch yet. AMD has only said ‘Zen 3 by the end of the year’, which could be interpreted in a lot of ways. This means any Ryzen 5 3600 system built today is going to last for a long while to come.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
114 Comments
View All Comments
eastcoast_pete - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
Thanks Ian!While this is not important for many (most?) readers here, I would like to see AMD or anyone else putting a more basic GPU (under $ 50 retail) out that has HDMI 2.0a or better, display port out, and that has ASICs for x264/265 and VP9 decoding; AV1 would be a plus. This could be a PCIe dGPU or something directly soldered into a MB. Am I the only one who's find that interesting? I don't like to always have to plug a high-powered dGPU into each build that has more than just an entry level CPU, so this would help.
Spunjji - Tuesday, May 19, 2020 - link
You'll likely be waiting a while. You'd need to wait for the next generation of GPUs with new display controllers and video decoders. There's a rumour that Nvidia will be producing an Ampere "MX550" for mobile, which could mean a dGPU based on the same chip being released for ~$100. Give that a couple more years to drop in price and, well, by then you'll probably want new standards. :DPgndu - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
I come here for a clearer perspective more than benchmarks, but the timing of this article is weird, especially since 10th Gen's at the door. I get the market or Atleast pc builder cause and effect but market just got blown out of proportions with options, what actually transfers to general populace is not clear until OEM's embrace the reality like nividiaArbie - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
"The Core i5-10500 ... is 65 W, the same as AMD".Anandtech knows very well that Intel TDP is not the same as AMD TDP. Please stop falling into the noob-journo trap of simply repeating the Intel BS just because it's official BS.
GreenReaper - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
In fairness, TMD is also turboing to 88W, with cores plus uncore measured as taking significantly more than 65W.Spunjji - Tuesday, May 19, 2020 - link
Absolutely right, but also in fairness, Intel's sole enhancement for the 10 series appears to be enabling higher clock speeds - and they're made on the same process with the same architecture as the 9 series, which inevitably means more power will be required to reach those higher clocks.So, it's likely to be either a CPU with similar real power use to the AMD processor that never really hits its rated turbo clocks, or a CPU that does hit its rated turbo and never drops below ~100W under sustained load. It's likely to be power and speed competitive on an either/or basis, but not both at the same time.
watzupken - Tuesday, May 19, 2020 - link
This is true that its going above its TDP to provide the boost speed. However this is a practice that Intel has practiced since its Kaby Lake/ Coffee Lake series. Unfortunately, they are the worst violator when it comes to exceeding the supposed TDP when you consider how much power it is pulling to sustain its boost (PL2) speed. If you consider the boost speed of the Comet Lake, even the supposed 65W i5 10xxx series is not going to keep to 65W given the boost speed of up to 4.8Ghz, though nothing is mentioned about the all core turbo, but should be somewhere close, i.e. 4.2 to 4.6Ghz is my guess.lakedude - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
I assume no one has mentioned the typo since it is still there."Competition
With six cores and twelve threads, the comparative Intel options vary between something like the Core i7-9600KF with six cores and no hyperthreading..."
Gotta be i5, right?
Kalelovil - Tuesday, May 19, 2020 - link
@Ian CutressThere appears to be a mistake in the AI Benchmark results, the Ryzen 5 3600 Combined result is less than the sum of its Inference and Training results.
xSneak - Tuesday, May 19, 2020 - link
Disappointed to see the continual cpu reviews using a GTX 1080 as the gpu. We would be better able to evaluate cpu performance if a 2080 ti was used given it is cpu bottlenecked at 1080p on some games. Hard to believe one of the biggest tech sites is using such under powered hardware.