AMD Ryzen 5 Pinnacle Ridge 2600 BOX (YD2600BBAFBOX)

Still the king

The old Ryzen 5 2600 turned out to be so successful that even after almost 3 years from the moment it was released, it is still a fairly powerful and inexpensive processor that provides optimal performance for most users without breaking the pocket. And, of course, in the future it will be relatively painless to replace it with a more recent Ryzen, since, unlike Intel, AMD uses the same AM4 socket for all Ryzen chips. That is, in most cases, the upgrade issue rests on updating the firmware for the motherboard. But, again, perspectives are only half the fun.

Optimal price and performance

With a price tag of $ 135, the Ryzen 5 2600 offers the user something that its competitor is still not mature enough to. And these are 6 physical + 6 virtual cores that operate at a nominal frequency of 3.4 GHz and boost up to 3.9 GHz if necessary. Add to this relatively low power consumption, 16 MB of L3 cache and an unlocked multiplier with excellent prospects for manual overclocking and you will get a real king of the low-cost segment. If 10 years ago, low-cost PCs were shoved with Athlone-type plugs that hung when opening a dozen tabs, then the Ryzen 2600 demonstrates how far progress has come. On a low-cost PC for a nominal $500 with this chip, you can comfortably work in Photoshop, Ableton or DaVinci Resolve, even with fairly heavy projects. In games, it also shows itself perfectly, so the final FPS result will depend primarily on the graphics card. In general, there is a margin of safety for another 4-5 years for sure.

stock cooler

For a build with a limited low-cost, this option is also good because you don’t need to buy an additional cooler for it. Now both the boxed version with a cooler and the OEM version of the processor cost approximately the same in retail, so you can save a little. Especially since the existing Wraith Stealth cooler, although lacking stars from the sky, does a good job of cooling the Ryzen 5 2600 both in stock mode and with turbo boost, while remaining relatively quiet.

But if you plan to squeeze all the juice out of the processor by overclocking it to the Ryzen 2600X frequencies, then it would be more expedient to look for a favorable price for the OEM version of the Ryzen 2600 and buy a conditional Deepcool GAMMAXX 400 for it.