AMD Ryzen 5 7600X review

Our Verdict

80%

A decent processor for the cash on its own, but Socket AM5’s premium pricing hurts its value.

AMD implemented some drastic price cuts a few months ago to make its Ryzen 7000-series Zen 4 CPUs more competitive with Intel’s 13th-gen Raptor Lake CPUs, and the Ryzen 5 7600X now costs just $249 compared to the launch price of $299.

At Custom PC, we’ve been reviewing the latest CPUs since 2003, and we’ve tested and overclocked hundreds of CPUs, going right back to the Pentium 4 and Athlon XP era. We’ve developed an expert testing methodology that covers all the key areas of performance, including single-threaded and multi-threaded performance, as well as gaming.

Our benchmarks include our very own RealBench suite, which had a GIMP image editing test that stresses single-threaded performance, and a Handbrake H.264 video encoding test to gauge multi-threaded performance, as well as multi-tasking tests.

We also use the single and multi-threaded tests in Cinebench, as well as Far Cry 6 and Watch Dogs: Legion. For our game tests, we record the 99th percentile and average frame rates, and finally, we also measure the idle and load total system power consumption at the wall, while running Prime95’s smallest FFT test with AVX disabled.

For a CPU that’s less than a year old, the aforementioned price drop is massive, but AMD has other reasons for dropping the price than the threat of competition from Intel.

The main issue that AMD’s Socket AM5 platform faces is its total cost, with motherboards and DDR5 memory still demanding hefty premiums. This is especially tricky for the Ryzen 5 7600X, because it’s ostensibly an affordable processor with good mid-range performance, but it has a high platform cost.

This puts it at a disadvantage to the likes of Intel’s Core i5-13400F, and even the Core i5-12600K offers a compelling alternative too. Thankfully, it’s much cheaper than the Core i5-13600K, which costs £80 more, as does the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, should you currently own a Socket AM4 system and are considering that as a potential upgrade too.

In addition to bringing the high performance of the Zen 4 architecture to the fight, it also significantly increases clock speed over its predecessor, the Ryzen 5 5600X. The latter could reach a peak boost frequency of 4.6GHz, but this figure rises to 5.3GHz with the Ryzen 5 7600X, while the 4.4GHz all-core boost we observed with the old CPU is dwarfed by the new kid on the block at 5.25GHz.

This should mean automatic and significant gains over the Ryzen 5 5600X across the board. However, as it has the same number of cores as its predecessor, the 14-core Core i5-13600K is potentially much more powerful.

AMD has also doubled the L2 cache from 3MB to 6MB, but given it the same 32MB total of L3 cache as the Ryzen 5 5600X, while the TDP has risen from 65W to 105W to cater for the higher frequencies. You’ll need a reasonably decent cooling setup too, as temperatures can hit 90°C quite easily.

Ryzen 5 7600X overclocking

Overclocking the 7600X was easier than its toastier siblings, but not particularly fruitful either, hitting an all-core frequency of 5.4GHz with a vcore of 1.2V, adding 150MHz to the stock all-core boost. However, this trailed the peak boost by 100MHz, so using AMD’s curve optimizer will yield better results.

Ryzen 5 7600X application performance

In terms of performance, the Ryzen 5 7600X’s RealBench system score of 300,982 bettered that of the Core i5-13400F’s 271,519, while also beating the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and this result rose to 306,734 once overclocked. However, most other tests were slower after overclocking the Ryzen 5 7600X, due to the stock speed lightly-threaded boost being higher.

1/12

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X gaming performance

Thanks to its 5.3GHz boost clock, the Ryzen 5 7600X was quicker than the Core i5-13400F in games, with the AMD chip clocking up an average frame rate of 130fps and 99th percentile result of 100fps in Far Cry 6, compared with 125fps and 93fps respectively for the Core i5-13400F. However, the Core i5-13600K and Ryzen 7 5800X3D were even faster again.

1/4

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X power draw

The Ryzen 5 7600X consumes a modest amount of power when running at full load, with our test system drawing 233W from the mains at stock speed. This is only a little more than the 211W drawn by our Core i5-13400F system, and the Ryzen 5 7600X is quicker. The Ryzen 5 7600X is also much more power frugal than the Core i5-13600K, with our test rig for the latter drawing 331W from the mains at full load.

1/2

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X pros and cons

Pros

• Excellent lightly-threaded performance
• Good gaming performance
• Not as hot-running as other Zen 4 CPUs

Cons

• Core i5-13600K is quicker in a lot of tests
• Ryzen 7 5800X3D can be a cheaper upgrade for gamers
• Struggles in multi-threaded workloads

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X specs

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600 specs list is:

Ryzen 5 7600X price

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600 price is $249, making it the cheapest Ryzen 7000 series chip at time of review.

Price: Expect to pay $249 (£249)

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X review conclusion

While it has decent performance and is more than a match for Intel’s Core i5-13400F in most tests, the fact remains that combining DDR5 memory and a B650 Socket AM5 motherboard remains $50-100 more expensive than a DDR4 and B660 motherboard combination at the moment.

As such, while the Ryzen 5 7600X is faster than the Core i5-13400F in most tests, the Intel chip offers far better value, and a much faster Core i5-13600K would also end up costing about the same price when you account for total platform cost. Check out our guide to the best gaming CPU for a range of CPUs to suit different needs and budgets.