AMD Ryzen 5 7600X review: The new mid-range king?

The Ryzen 5 7600X was launched as a mid-range $300 chip back in Fall 2022 as the first six-core option on the AM5 platform. It is the spiritual successor to the 5600X and brings the improved Zen 4 architecture to the masses. The processor has been discounted following its poor reception, and is a solid option to consider at $250.

The CPU has received multiple upgrades over the last-gen counterpart. The TDP has been bumped up to 105W, it uses the faster DDR5 memory standard, and the chip is way more powerful than some Ryzen 7 and Core i7 offerings from the last generation. This makes it a lucrative choice for budget gamers.

AMD was kind enough to send over the Ryzen 5 7600X for us to check out. We ran the chip through its paces to find out where it is worth the cash.

Is the Ryzen 5 7600X a good budget processor?

Pre-delivery

The 7600X is an interesting mid-range chip (Image via AMD)

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is based on AMD's latest Zen 4 architecture, a departure from the older AM4 chips. With a new LGA socket and better heat dissipation measures, the new product is a better choice for anyone who wishes to overclock their system.

	AMD Ryzen 5 7600X	AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Architecture	Zen 4 TSMC 5nm FinFET	Zen 4 TSMC 7nm FinFET
CPU core count	6	6
Thread count	12	12
Integrated graphics	Dual-core RDNA 2 GPU	N/A
Base clock	4.7 GHz	3.7 GHz
Boost clock	5.3 GHz	4.6 GHz
L2 cache	6 MB	3 MB
L3 cache	32 MB	32 MB
CPU socket	AM5	AM4
Overclocking support	Yes	Yes
TDP	105 W	65 W

The chip packs six cores and 12 threads like Ryzen 5 chips from the last six years. Similar to all Ryzen 7000 chips, the operating clock speeds of the CPU have been massively bumped up from the last gen. The 7600X has a base clock of 4.7 GHz and it turbos up to 5.3 GHz.

The CPU's L2 cache size has been bumped to 6 MB (the 5600X has a 3 MB L2 cache), which should massively help its gaming performance. Unlike the last gen, however, the new processor doesn't come with a boxed cooler. Thus, users will have to invest in a high-performance air or liquid-cooling solution.

AMD Ryzen 5 7600X vs the competition

The Core i5 13600K goes head to head with the Ryzen 5 7600X (Image via Intel and AMD)

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X is in a pretty exciting market segment with its $250 price tag. Both CPU manufacturers have launched multiple processors in and around this price tag over the last couple of years.

The 7600X directly competes with the Core i5 13600K, a $320 chip. However, the closest Intel competitor to the processor is the Core i5 12600K, which is priced at $249. Both of the Team Blue chips are fairly powerful and rank among the best mid-range chips money can buy thanks to their wide motherboard availability and support for both DDR4 and DDR5 memory.

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By locking the Zen 4 to just the new RAM standard and keeping motherboard prices stupendously high, AMD seems to be at a disadvantage. Although the A620 boards have brought pricing down to about $100, they aren't enough to handle a 7600X. Pricing appears to be the single biggest enemy of the Team Red processor.

Unboxing experience

The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and the Ryzen 9 7950X packaging (Image via Sportskeeda)

AMD has completely revamped the packaging of its latest Ryzen 7000 chips. The 7600X's box is way smaller than its last-gen alternative. Also, it isn't as glamorous as the 7950X, which we unboxed and reviewed a couple of months ago.

Instead, AMD has taken a very straightforward approach and included the processor in a small all-paper box. Only the clamp shell is made out of plastic. I liked this environment-friendly approach over any other packaging designs the company has come up with in the last few years.

AM5 socket and DDR5 support

The AM5 socket on the ASUS ROG Strix X670E-E Gaming motherboard (Image via Sportskeeda)

The latest Team Red processors are based on the redesigned AM5 socket. With this new iteration, AMD has bumped up power delivery to 170W and shifted to an LGA layout like Intel. This makes installing CPUs way easier for users and will prevent multiple pin-bending issues that we have run into in the past.

The company has introduced five motherboard standards for the platform — the entry-level A620 boards, B650 and B650E in the mid-range, X670 for high-end builders, and overclocker-focused X670E for enthusiasts.

We tested the 7600X on both a B650 and an X670E chipset-based motherboard and none of them stopped it from achieving its full potential. However, we won't recommend anything about an X670E for the six-core Ryzen processor since it would just be a waste of money.

Test bench

We used the following system for our review:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X
Motherboard: ASUS ROG X670E-E Gaming WiFi
RAM: Kingston Fury Beast RGB 2x 16 GB DDR5-6000
Cooler: DeepCool LT720 360mm high-performance liquid cooler
Graphics card: Zotac RTX 4070 Twin Edge OC Spider-Man edition
SSD: Gigabyte Aorus NVMe 1 TB PCIe Gen 4
PSU: Corsair RM1000e 1000W fully modular
Case: Open-air test bench

Synthetic benchmarks

The Zen 4 architecture brings vastly improved performance metrics to all Ryzen 7000 processors. The 7600X benefits from the new architecture. It goes head-to-head with some eight-core chips from the last generation and beats them by a solid margin.

In terms of single-core performance, we can see that the 7600X is among the fastest budget CPUs in the market. It is way slower than the flagship 7950X, but the difference isn't huge.

A similar trend continues in multi-core tests where the 7600X beats the eight-core 5700X by a solid margin. In Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5, the newer hexa core chip from Team Red takes the lead. However, the chip is way slower than the 7950X, which managed a score of over 40,000 points with PBO turned on.

Productivity benchmarks

Although the Ryzen 5 7600X isn't marketed as a chip for rendering, content creation, and modeling, it is powerful enough to handle these workloads.

Starting with the Blender benchmark suite, which measures the chip's potential in modeling workloads, we get a combined score of 225.17 points, ranking it in the top 62% of all hardware (including CPUs and GPUs). The score 7950X scores way higher in this benchmark thanks to its 10 extra cores.

The V-Ray benchmark is a test of a chip's rendering and visualization prowess. The 7600X rendered 11,621 samples in the test which, again, is a third of what the high-end 7950X pulled off.

The 7-zip benchmark is a test of the file-compression capabilities of a chip. The 7600X scored an impressive 97,986 MIPS on this test. Although the score is dwarfed by what we logged in the 7950X review, it's a decent number for a budget processor.

Overall, the Ryzen 5 7600X easily ranks among the fastest budget CPUs money can buy. It is a massive step up from the last-gen Ryzen 5 5600X and brings solid performance to the table.

Gaming benchmarks

The Ryzen 5 7600X will not bottleneck even the fastest graphics cards on the planet. When paired with the RTX 4090, the system ran at its full potential with minimal dips in performance.

The detailed performance marks with an RTX 4070 are listed below:

Thermal efficiency

The Ryzen 7000 chips are designed to keep boosting until they run out of thermal headroom as we saw with the 7950X. However, since the Ryzen 5 7600X boosts to 5.3 GHz and is way less power-hungry and more thermally efficient as compared to the 16-core behemoth, it manages sub-90℃ when paired with a high-end 360mm liquid cooler.

When stressed with the AIDA 64 system stability test workload, the processor hit a maximum temperature of 82℃ (normalized to an ambient of 20℃). The chip was cooled by a top-of-the-line DeepCool LT720 360mm liquid cooler.

Gamers don't need to invest in a 360mm radiator if they opt for a 7600X. A decent 240mm liquid cooler should suffice.

Power efficiency

The Ryzen 5 7600X is a mid-range processor. Thus, it is expected to be more power efficient as compared to the higher-end Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 9 models. The chip is rated for 105W, which is higher than its predecessors, all of which have 65W processors.

In the AIDA 64 system stability work load, the 7600X was consistently drawing 105W while delivering peak performance. The detailed power draw characteristic is shown below:

Integrated graphics performance

Starting this generation, every Ryzen 7000 CPU bundles a dual-core integrated RDNA 2-powered graphics processor. This chip isn't targeted toward gaming, unlike the previously launched G-series chips from the company. Instead, it is designed for basic computing and display output purposes.

Unlike Intel, AMD has no SKU without the iGP. Thus, gamers can't save a few extra bucks in case they already have a decent discrete GPU.

The performance of the Ryzen 5 7600X's integrated graphics processor isn't impressive — much like that in the 7950X. It can only handle some competitive games at the lowest settings at 1080p.

Value

The Ryzen 5 7600X makes perfect sense for gamers. It's cheap, brings the improved single-core performance of the Zen 4 lineup, and can be paired with any inexpensive B650 motherboard.

At $250, it offers better value for money than the last-gen 5600X and the competing offerings from Intel, namely the Core i5 12600K and the 13600K. With the falling prices of DDR5 memory and AM5 motherboards, the 7600X, thus, is the best option for gamers who want a powerful PC without spending thousands of dollars.