Ryzen's X chips are worth it because overclocking is a hassle.

[minervx]

It depends on (a) level of tech savvy and (b) amount of free time.

 

Some people would rather pay the extra $30 than spend time reading tutorials about overclocking, configuring the BIOS settings and then stress testing their machine for 12 hours.  And the odds of your system freezing or crashing all of the sudden while you're in the middle of whatever project you're working on are much less.

 

And, yes, it takes you only 5 minutes to overclock, but you also spent hours, over the past several months/years, absorbing bits and pieces of knowledge whereas beginners are going in blind.

[Sfekke]

I do mostly agree with this statement.

 

Furthermore, getting an X chip guarantees that clock speed at normal voltage.

I've heard about non X chips not being able to be pushed up that much without some extra voltage. Making them run a little hotter & consume some more power.

[DiabeticSeizures]

Very true. I tried to overclock my ryzen CPU, but never got it to work. It was stuck at 2.2ghz and it never changed until I changed the CPU ratio to auto.

 

(But I do have the x soooooo...)

Edited May 2, 2018 by Colin Kent

[Lurick]

Enter BIOS > Set XMP profile for RAM > Overclock done

[Sfekke]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Enter BIOS > Set XMP profile for RAM > Overclock done

Not sure if you read it right, just wanted to point out we are talking about the CPU Cores, not the memory.

While .. yes getting your XMP profile right is easy and pretty necessary for Ryzen to reach it maximum potential!

[porina]

For 2000 series, the price difference between X and not isn't much, so I think I'd go for the X simply as they're also binned and could reach higher eventual clocks. 

 

For 1000 series at launch, the price gap was much bigger so it was less clear cut. I'm running my 1700 stock at the moment as I'm not 100% convinced the OC's I had were stable enough. Note I consider one detectable error running Prime95-like loads for 3 months continuously as unstable.

[seon123]

Eh, not really. For me, I have no problem spending hours of my time, and having increased temperatures for a negligible amount of in game performance. It's fun to tinker with it, and seeing improvements. 

For the 1600X, 1700X and 1800X, you need to spend even more, in order to get a cooler. With the 1300X, you're spending significantly more of the budget on the CPU, instead of something more beneficial. 

[Jumper118]

buy the x chip and overclock. dont be a turbo noob. 

[porina]

Just now, Jumper118 said:

buy the x chip and overclock. dont be a turbo noob. 

On the 2700X at least, enjoy the plentiful headroom. Haven't looked again recently but early on my hopes of an "easy" all core 4.3 didn't seem as certain as I hoped. Without extreme cooling anyway.

[Jumper118]

4 minutes ago, porina said:

On the 2700X at least, enjoy the plentiful headroom. Haven't looked again recently but early on my hopes of an "easy" all core 4.3 didn't seem as certain as I hoped. Without extreme cooling anyway.

all the review sample were binned to do 4.2ghz with the provided ram. thats why some reviews were saying they looked tested. i have seen 1 guy get 6 and all did near 4.4ghz then there are a load of people getting stuck at 4.1-4.2ghz  mine does 4.35ghz on air with ease. I guess the best option is to try overclocking the cpu, if its a good one that does 4.3+ it would be dumb to run stock, but if it only run 4.1ghz they tbh you might as well run stock because they boost to about 4ghz out the box. 

[Lurick]

14 minutes ago, Jumper118 said:

buy the x chip and overclock. dont be a turbo noob. 

Free performance is bad because it "takes time" and you "have risks".

 

Edit:

Just way to say that the way OP worded their post is like "nobody should overclock ever because you could have issues".

If you're brand new to building you probably shouldn't be messing with overclocking out of the box until you get everything else working and get familiar with stuff but to say that "because you'll have issues you should avoid it and just spend more money" is a pretty bad argument.

[porina]

2 minutes ago, Jumper118 said:

i have seen 1 guy get 6 and all did near 4.4ghz then there are a load of people getting stuck at 4.1-4.2ghz  mine does 4.35ghz on air with ease.

Silicon lottery... guess I'm too used to Intel, where single core turbo is trivial on all cores, with headroom. Ryzen 2000 looks like it is binned to a MHz of its limit already in comparison.

 

Still waiting for the Asus ITX before I get a 2700X. Obviously not going to be an extreme clocking system...

[Jumper118]

20 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Free performance is bad because it "takes time" and you "have risks".

 

Edit:

Just way to say that the way OP worded their post is like "nobody should overclock ever because you could have issues".

If you're brand new to building you probably shouldn't be messing with overclocking out of the box until you get everything else working and get familiar with stuff but to say that "because you'll have issues you should avoid it and just spend more money" is a pretty bad argument.

everyone should overclock. if you have time to play a game you have a couple of hours to oc.