Ryzen 5 3600 alternative
Given the wild popularity of the Ryzen 5 3600, its prices are not going to come down. On the contrary, compared to the beginning of last year, they even increased, and at the beginning of 2021, most stores are asking for almost $300 for it. In principle, the price is fair, but the status of the "people's" processor, as it was with the Ryzen 5 2600, does not smell here. But if the plan is to build a system based on the Zen 2 core (or Ryzen Matisse), then the younger Matisse 3500X can be an excellent plan B.
The same 6 cores, only without multithreading
It boasts the same six cores, unlocked multiplier, factory overclocking, and the same 32MB L3 cache. The only difference is that the Ryzen 5 3500X does not have additional virtual cores. The operating frequencies of the cores start at 3.6 and, if necessary, can rise to 4.1 GHz. Thanks to the unlocked multiplier, the operating frequencies can be raised a little more, reaching the same 4.2 GHz as the older Ryzen 5 3600X. And even a little higher. However you can’t catch up with much here, since the Matisse line is not strong in overclocking, almost all the juices were squeezed out of it at the production stage. If you still decide to overclock, be sure to take care of a high-quality cooling system (the OEM version does not have a cooler at all) and an appropriate motherboard with a good power subsystem and a VRM heatsink, which can fully reveal the capabilities of this processor.
Successfully successful
In general, the Ryzen 5 3500X was a success. For just $150, you get an optimal gaming (and not only) six-core processor with a classic AM4 socket and all the latest AMD developments on board, such as support for fourth-generation PCI-E lanes. Thanks to the increased number of Zen + cores and the added cache in most games and many resource-intensive applications, it outperforms another popular Ryzen 2600 processor by 10 – 12%. The lag behind the older Ryzen 5 3600 in heavy rendering and compilation tasks usually does not exceed 20%. As for gaming tests and comparison with Intel, here the red Ryzen is just a little behind the Core i5-9400F, but at the same time it easily levels this difference due to manual overclocking, which Intel simply does not have. Given all that has been said, we would recommend buying this particular option, and not the familiar Ryzen 5 2600X.
