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Power Consumption
Power consumption measurements are always a bit tricky. But as long as your 12V supply (EPS) readings, motherboard power supply sensor values, and voltage transformer losses plausibly coincide, everything is fine. Therefore, we're using pure package power to avoid possible influences from our motherboard. Results from the PWM controller are very reliable if you take them as averages over a few minutes.
We began with the non-AVX stress test in AIDA64 and found that the Ryzen 7 3600 drew 67W, beat only by the Core i5-9400F at 53W. With PBO active and the Corsair H115i cooler, the 3600 only drew 70W.
The y-cruncher benchmark computes pi using a heavy multi-threaded AVX workload and also generates a performance measurement that we can use for efficiency metrics. We also measure power with HandBrake in x264 and x265 flavors. The latter uses a heavier distribution of AVX instructions than the former, but both transcoders are great for stressing the processor with a real-world workload.
The small increases in the 3600's power consumption from overclocking equate to relatively minor performance improvements. At stock settings, AMD has tuned the processors right at the knee of the voltage/frequency curve where the chip provides the maximum frequency possible and great efficiency. This PBO configuration also retains some of those same characteristics, but that doesn't leave much headroom for explosive performance gains.
Like the Ryzen 5 3600X, the six-core Ryzen 5 3600 is basically an eight-core Ryzen 7 3700X, but with two cores disabled. However, the 3600’s lower 65W TDP envelope equates to less power consumption at stock settings although, after overclocking, the 3600 does come close to matching the 3600X. That leads to surprisingly similar power consumption measurements during our x265 and y-cruncher tests.
We tested with both the stock cooler and the Corsair H115i to see how much extra cooling impacts the maximum performance the auto-overclocking algorithms can extract from the processor, and how that impacts power consumption. According to our measurements, the bundled Wraith Stealth cooler dissipates enough waste heat to nearly achieve the maximum amount of available performance in some applications, but it also doesn't offer much of a boost in others. A better cooler is a good investment if you're overclocking the 3600, but you won't need something as robust as our H115i (even a low-cost Hyper 212 should suffice).
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Plotting power consumption over our performance measurements shows that the Ryzen 5 3600 is an incredibly efficient processor, giving a solid level of performance at impressively low power consumption. That low power consumption isn't all about your electricity bill, either; it also equates to a lower bar for your cooling solution.
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Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.
Latest
8 CommentsComment from the forums
RodroX Three things to comment,
1. Why aren't any temps readings on the article ?2. I did some Cinbench testing with stock cooler and only PB enable (no PBO nor AutoOC) and I usually get around 359X to 360X. After changing the stock cooler for a better tower cooler, temps went down, frecuency went up and cinbench results landed at even better 365x to 366x.
This was on Windows 10 (1903) + Avast antivirus and hwinfo running, with AGESA 1003 ABB and the latest AMD chipset drivers on a Gigabyte B450 Gaming X, is funny and strange to see that a very expensive motherboard like the one used is getting such lower results, wonder if the motherboard could be affecting other benchmark results aswell.Once again, this numbers I wrote are with stock BIOS settings, no PBO nor AutoOC, no manul oc, no vcore offset, nothing (Ive checked, had the 3 PBO options disable on BIOS).
3. Also why not more recent and better optimized games like Shadow Of Tomb Raider or Battlefield V, or anyof the Assassin Creeds ?
Cheers
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Neal4iu am using
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler w/ 4 Continuous Direct Contact Heatpipewith graphite pad and even on overclock to 4ghz staying at 39C so... is niceReply
djbillyd9849 For all the glorious review, I just wish I could get the system to post. I replaced a 3-2200 with the 5-3600, and nothing I knew to do made it post. I found the BIOS upgrade, and ran it, but I haven't tried the thing since. I'm just weird-ed out by it all. Anything I should do differently?
And Oh, BTW, it's sitting on a Gigabyte AORUS B450 Pro WiFi mobo....
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RodroX djbillyd9849 said:
For all the glorious review, I just wish I could get the system to post. I replaced a 3-2200 with the 5-3600, and nothing I knew to do made it post. I found the BIOS upgrade, and ran it, but I haven't tried the thing since. I'm just weird-ed out by it all. Anything I should do differently?And Oh, BTW, it's sitting on a Gigabyte AORUS B450 Pro WiFi mobo....
You do have a graphic card on your system right ?
The Ryzen 5 3600X does not come with an integrated GPU. Your R3 2200 is an APU = CPU+GPU
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djbillyd9849 Yeah, I got a MSI GeForce GT 710.
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Pnky When upgrading the bios are you leaving the ryzen 2200 in the socket for the bios upgrade? youll need the earlier cpu in socket to upgrade the bios then you should be able to swap out cpus or if youre lucky and that MBO has a usb bios flashback port you can do it through that.
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runephilosof Why do you write "No cheap B-series motherboards with PCIe 4.0", what about for instance a Gigabyte B550M S2H?
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TheMillz Rookies I got my R5 3600 stable @4400, your cooler and board are Key I run a x570 Asus tuf and a Cool Master Master Cool W/ A plane Jane Rtx 2060@ 2025mhz o.c Playng warzone @ 160-170 fps
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