The Ryzen 5 3600 comes clocked at 3.6 GHz for the base and 4.2 GHz for the boost, the 3600X runs 200 MHz faster at 3.8 GHz and 4.4 GHz, so a 6% base clock increase and a 5% boost clock increase. AMD’s Ryzen 5 3600 is a 6-core, 12-threaded processor which succeeds the Ryzen 5 2600 improving upon it by 13% in terms of overclocked performance. Our two samples were bought on retail and from this tiny sample that wasn’t the case, both were limited to 4.2 GHz at 1.35v and both could boot into Windows at 4.3 GHz, but even with 1.4v failed even a basic stress test.We suspect the reason so many of you asked for this comparison is once again the misleading TDP ratings. Temperatures were exactly the same and clock speeds were also basically identical, in fact the R5 3600 maintained a slightly better PBO frequency in our test, though we wouldn’t read into that too much, there’s a good chance if we ran this enough times with enough CPUs we’d find that on average there’d be no difference in operating frequency.Even when it comes to power draw there’s virtually no difference. Following on from last month's release of the Ryzen 7 series, the Ryzen 5 series is positioned as a less expensive mid-performance alternative to Intel's i5 mainstream offerings. Stock the 3600 hit 80 degrees whereas the 3600X ran 2 degrees cooler at 78 degrees, but it did so while clocking 100 MHz higher, a 2.5% increase in frequency.Having tested both R5 3600 models (see all of that further down below), here's the tale of the tape:This time the 3600X reduced the render time by just 4% when testing with Blender, at this point you’re probably starting to question why we need two 6-core/12-thread Zen 2-based CPUs.Before wrapping this up let’s have another look at power usage, this time focusing on CPU package power and core current.The 3700X does offer a small performance boost over the 3600X in Shadow of the Tomb Raider but the 3600X was only up to 3% faster than the 3600. $10 sure, but not more than that.We only see a 1 fps difference in The Division 2 and we should also note that the 3600X and 3600 match the 3700X in this title and we saw a similar thing when testing with Battlefield V and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.We haven’t discussed manual overclocking. The 3600 becomes a 3600X with the Wraith Spire and the 3600X becomes a 3600 with the Wraith Stealth. In short, using either cooler the 3600X ran 6 degrees hotter and you can expect some throttling with the Stealth cooler, so lets re-run this test again with the Corsair H115i Pro installed.Both CPUs were tested on the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme with 16GB of G.Skill’s FlareX DDR4-3200 CL14 memory and a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti on the graphics side.Using the included box cooler we see virtually no difference in power draw between the 3600X and 3600 and the same is also true when using an aftermarket cooler.AMD explains how they calculate the TDP for Zen 2 processors in the review guide, but it doesn’t help address the issue as there are variables we don’t know, such as the optimal operating temperatures for each part.
With a quality all-in-one liquid cooler installed we find something very interesting: almost no difference between the two CPUs. Not a big deal though.But without question the most popular question we received afterwards was: should you buy the Ryzen 5 3600 or the 3600X?The Cinebench R20 multi-core shows a very mild 2% increase in performance for the 3600X over the vanilla 3600.