The AMD Ryzen 5 3500X is a solid chip for its target market and would make a nice addition for a collector, but enthusiasts should stick with AMD’s retail models for the best mix of price and performance.
| Pros | Cons |
| Faster than comparable Ryzen models in some games PCIe 4.0 | ‘Limited’ to OEM and SI markets |
| Lower power consumption | Reduced performance in threaded applications |
| High pricing in grey market |
AMD’s Ryzen 5 3500X, a processor that AMD designed specifically for the Chinese OEM and system integrator (SI) market, in for testing to determine if it can compete with the best CPUs for gaming or best CPUs for desktop applications. With six cores and threads, the Ryzen 5 3500X stands out among AMD’s third-gen Ryzen stack as the only model without simultaneous multi-threading (SMT).
Like Ryzen 9 3900, this processor isn’t intended for retail. Most customers will encounter this chip in pre-built systems, but you won’t find these desktops competing against the best gaming PCs, because they are only available in China. However, various resellers offer the chip for stand-alone sales in Asia and India even though AMD lists it as China-only.
AMD’s third-gen Ryzen series has proven to be a potent force in the retail market with its healthy serving of cores and threads, and the modular design affords opportunities for specialized designs to tackle various market segments.
The AMD Ryzen 5 3500X comes without an integrated graphics engine, meaning its market is limited to systems with a discrete graphics card. That makes Intel’s new graphics-less F-series processors its natural competitor. Even with a similar number of cores and threads, the AMD Ryzen 5 3500X offers better overall performance in both gaming and productivity apps than Intel’s Core i5-9400F.
However, we could say the same about AMD’s other Ryzen 3000 series models that come with threading and offer a higher amount of performance.
AMD Ryzen 5 3500X Specifications
| Model | Cores / Threads | Base Clock | Boost Clock | L3 Cache | TDP | PCIe | Memory Support |
| AMD Ryzen 5 3600 | 6 / 12 | 3.6 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 32MB | 65W | 16+4 Gen4 | Dual DDR4-3200 |
| AMD Ryzen 5 3500X | 6 / 6 | 3.6 GHz | 4.1 GHz | 32MB | 65W | 16+4 Gen4 | Dual DDR4-3200 |
| Intel Core i5-9400F | 6 / 6 | 2.9 GHz | 4.1 GHz | 9MB | 65W | 16 Gen3 | Dual DDR4-2666 |
The AMD Ryzen 5 3500X does come sans threading, which reduces power consumption compared to the 3600X that comes with the same number of cores but twice the threads. Even with the Ryzen 5 3500X’s pared-back power consumption, Intel’s Core i5-9400F still draws less power.
Relative to the 3600X, the AMD Ryzen 5 3500X’s reduced power consumption equates to less heat generation, but we couldn’t find any significant extra overclocking headroom as a result. As per usual, we’re confined to the limits of the 7nm process.
In either case, now that we’re ticking along at 100 MHz above the turbo frequency on all cores, let’s get to testing.
Overclocking Ryzen 5 3500X
AMD allows overclocking on all Ryzen 3000 SKUs, and the Ryzen 5 3500X is no exception. With the arrival of the Ryzen 3000 series chips, we switched over to AMD’s auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) for the majority of our overclocking tests. That’s because we typically can’t manually dial in an all-core overclock that surpasses the single-core boost speed. In fact, we often end up 200 to 300 MHz below the single-core boost, which results in some performance losses in lightly-threaded apps. Overclocking isn’t about taking losses on the performance front, and the automated PBO gives us the best of single- and all-core performance.
AMD Ryzen 3500x in Nepal
This processor is currently available in Nepal. Unless you’re looking for a neat collector’s item, AMD’s existing retail chips, or the looming Ryzen 3 series processors, are almost certainly the better option.
Price of AMD Ryzen 3500X price in Nepal is Rs.24,500.
Source: Tom’s Hardware
