What makes AMD Ryzen 5 3600X different from AMD Ryzen 5 3600?

[Daniel Fernandes]

Hey I'm new here! I'm planning to build a computer some time later for music production and was doing some research today. The 3rd Gen Ryzen 5 CPUs fits my budget and use very well, but I'm a little confused about what makes the 3600X different from the 3600. These two processors have fairly close rankings on cpubenchmark.net. They also have very very similar specs, the only difference I noticed between the two was that the 3600 has a slightly slower clock speed. Is this just a marketing thing or is there really something about the 3600X that I should consider?

[TrigrH]

4 minutes ago, Daniel Fernandes said:

3600 has a slightly slower clock speed

/thread

[berberries]

the 3600x is literally a slightly faster clocked 3600. you can easily make up the difference with a mild oc on the 3600, can be done with the stock cooler.

[Princess Luna]

The included box cooler, that's it... they are the same CPU.

 

Ironically Hardware Unbox when overclocking these CPU to see how it'd go the 3600 clocked like 25mhz higher (using aftermarket cooling).

[Akira Shimazu]

Higher Clock speed.

3600.  3.6 - 4.2ghz

3600X 3.8-4.4Ghz

 

yeah pretty much marketing.

[Daniel Fernandes]

Thanks for your replies guys! Didn't notice the difference in the cooler  I think it's wiser for me to go for the 3600 then...

[Tom H]

There is a big difference in the cooler...the heatsink portion of the cooler included in the 3600x is twice as large as the one that comes with the 3600 (non x), but both coolers have the same fan though

 

I bought a 3600x for my wife, but found the stock cooler, although adequate, to be loud and whiny. So I ended up swapping it for a $25 THermaltake Silent Contac. Ironically, this cheap cooler dropped my temps 15 degrees vs the stock cooler and has allowed PBO to maintain higher boost clocks as a result

 

SO if I were to do it again, I would get a 3600 (non-x), buy a $30 tower cooler (that will be better than both coolers) and PBO will allow for very similar clock speeds on both processors

[Mister Woof]

The X

[paulmohr]

The biggest difference between the two is mainly the price lol. It does have slightly higher clock speeds out of the box and a little better stock cooler. I don't think either are worth the money though.

 

For music production like if you are using differen DAWS and a bunch of VST's and stuff for a midi controller you might consider spending the extra money on a 3700x. The extra cores might make a difference for that use case. It would for sure be worth investigating. Do some poking around and see if extra cores make a difference with the software you are using. I have a Komplete Kontrol A61 with a bunch of software but honestly I don't use it enough to give you a truly informed opinion. I am just getting into it. Maybe someoneone on here is more into it than I am and can tell you if I am full of crap or not lol. Or there are forums dedicated to music production that might know. Or do some google/youtube searches on it.

 

The 3600 is probably fine but I would consider doing the research to see if more cores would help for you.

[Daniel Fernandes]

@paulmohr Thanks for reminding me to check how more cores can help with the software. I do use a bunch of VSTs and FL Studio as my DAW. Image Line actually recommends the Ryzen 5 3600X in it's PC build article: 

https://support.image-line.com/action/knowledgebase?ans=214

 

And it seems that even though FL Studio can use multiple cores, I probably won't need more than the 6 cores that Ryzen 5 3600 already has. More on that here: https://www.image-line.com/support/flstudio_online_manual/html/panel_cpu.htm#Multi-core_Processing

 

So I guess I'm fine with the 3600, but thank you very much for making me consider that! ^^ 

[Daniel Fernandes]

@Tom H that's interesting! I also wanted my PC to be as quite as possible so thanks for the suggestion!  

[paulmohr]

If you want quiet take a look at the Be Cool series and Noctura line up. Pretty much every stock cooler is going to have more noise because they tend to use smaller fans and less efficient heat sinks, so they need to spin faster which equals a higher noise level.

[Daniel Fernandes]

@paulmohrthanks for the tip! I thought smaller coolers would be less noisy lol, thanks for clearing that misconception!  

 

 

[paulmohr]

Nope, normally the noise comes from the rpm. This is why larger fans are more quiet, they can move as much or more air without spinning nearly as fast. Also why more fans can be more quiet as well. Yes, if you put 6 120mm fans in a case and run the full speed they will make some noise. Especially if they are higher rpm fans. However with that many fans it greatly increases the amount of air that can be moved and they are not required to spin up. It does require re adjusting your fan curves and stuff though. Your computer doesn't really know you added more fans, or larger fans. It still thinks it has one or two 80mm or 120mm fans so it is going to feed them the same rpm as it did before when it reaches the temprature that is set to trigger them.

 

I have 10 fans in my system, not including the graphics card. If I run them all at 100 percent trust me, it makes some noise lol. Oddly enough though it isn't much louder than one old 80mm fan trying to kill itself to keep up. In reality most of the time the fans are barely spinning.

 

I have learned a lot about fans over the years. If you look at my original post on this forum from years ago it was me talking about how I hooked up a bunch of high speed fans and melted a fan controller lol. And those bad boys were LOUD. Basically I tried to pull waaaay too much current through the cheap little fan hub and it literally melted down lol. And newegg let me rerturn all of it even though it was totally my fault.