Best bang for the $? 5500 vs 5600 vs 5600X vs 3600X for OFFICE work loads

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aLcATRAZ

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Hey fellas

I'm really stuck deciding. I know people here are mostly gamers but I just want to take advantage of the current great offers and build a low power (65w) system to support my "office" or "media" needs for as many years to come as possible. Basically I'm looking for the best bang for the buck. I just know I'm going AM4 and dedicated graphics, simply to be able to choose any cpu.

Lately I've been struggling to have a fluent or quiet experience with my trusty old Surface Pro 4. The quality is great. It's just noisy and slow when it comes to handling several video streams and multiple large screens with tons of applications running.

I feel like my work loads are mostly multi-core. How much value would you put on multi-core performance? As gamers not much, but for productivity and longevity in the office, a whole lot is my guess. Would you agree?

Ok so on to the choices. I'm not showing actual prices but relative prices that are current for my location in the world.

Ryzen 5500 - Price 100% - Geekbench multi 7275
Ryzen 5600 - 140% - 7893
Ryzen 5600X - 162% - 8145
Ryzen 3600 - 95% - 6660
Ryzen 3600X - 100% - 6860
Ryzen 3700X - 143% - 8394

I realise that single core performance matters a lot but I wouldn't put as much focus on that as the gamers do. What stands out to you here? Is the 5500 the clear winner or what? What do you think?

My motherboard does have PBO and Curve Optimizer so will that put the 5000 series cpus at a greater advantage than the 3000 series, after tweaking?

Thanks for reading and commenting. Cheers!
 
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Between the choices, the 5600 is the best buy here for a general purpose machine.

The 5500 is a Cezanne CPU which means it lacks PCIE 4 and isn't as capable in single threaded stuff, and the older 3rd gen CPUs are a lot slower in single thread.

Niche buy - for a purely 8 core, 16 thread workload where all threads are loaded 100%, the 3700X will win out, though.
 
I super appreciate your replies.🙏🙏🙏

I've also been considering the 5600. It's got a solid ~10% single core and ~8% multi core advantage. The price increase for the 5600 right now is 40% over the 5500. It's not compelling.

Looking at specs it sure is nice that the 5600 has 32MB cache and that it's Vermeer architecture like all the big boy cpus. It is bugging me that those things don't actually deliver a multi core performance uplift in proportion with the rise in price.

They're not expensive chips, none of them. It's just that AMD is basically giving away the 5500s right now. I've even seen people gotten these 5500s to boost up to nearly 4700MHz at a modest 1.38v. I wonder what they score at that speed.

If anyone has any input on my theory that multi-core is what I should look at, I'd be interested to get more input. Have you ever regretted going for one measure over the other? Is 50-50 focus on single/multi the best long term method?

Like 12100F today delivers great budget single core performance at the expense of multi. Would you go down to two cores if those cores were absolutely massive, rocking 3000 in Geekbench? When is the multi-core score too low for you? When is single-core score too low?

A ryzen 5500/3700 has unimpressive single core but can rival 5600X, 12100F in multi-core. (12100F easily, a stock 5600X if tweaked)
 
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The 5500 is just a 5600G with the graphics disabled. Its a leftover chip. If you're really that keen to save $30 why not just buy used? I mean either will be OK, but the 5600 arch is better and the cache helps more than you might think. I doubt for productivity you can really tell the difference in the end but for the price gap being so small I'd just get the better one.
 
As a 5600 and 5600x owner, 5600 gets my vote.
Good performance, 65 watt, pretty affordable. I've seen it new going for cheaper than 3600 used, but that doesn't mean a deal can't be found.
 
What graphics card are you going to pair the CPU with? none of them have integrated graphics. Assuming that you have decided on a GPU, I'd probably go along with the rest and vote for the 5600.
 
The extra cache in the 5600 helps a lot in gaming Vs. the 5500

I would take a 3600 over a 5500, because the 3600 support PCIe 4.0. So, better storage potential. But also, many of the mid and low range cards are only using 8x multipliers. So when they are put into a PCIe 3.0 system (like a 5500), they lose performance. A good example is the RX 6600 XT
 
Just came here to say I also appreciate the replies. Building a simple HTPC/NAS and this saved me from a night of research. Microcenter currently has the 5600 for $130. Good enough for me.
 
Iif you do not have a video card around that can be used for anything else (or one that has old codec support), I would be tempted to go with an iGPU platform, the 5600g during blackfriday was interesting, still at $129 on newegg.

You can look at motherboard support of display port-hdmi to be sure you will have enough output from the iGPU for your setup:
https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2022/04/01/amd-am4-mainboards-with-three-digital-display-outputs/

And the AMD apu can play game a little bit (720p medium, 1080p very low or old one).

Has for the multithread hard do say without knowing the office task, are we talking mostly office-word like ?
 
The APU's are alright. 5600g probably on par with a 2600/2600x. I know my 5700G gives me about 2700x with a GT 1030 performance. Affording a GPU for office stuff is cheap, get the most out of the CPU at least
 
DogsofJune said:
The APU's are alright. 5600g probably on par with a 2600/2600x. I know my 5700G gives me about 2700x with a GT 1030 performance. Affording a GPU for office stuff is cheap, get the most out of the CPU at least
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Depending of what the person mean by; I just want to take advantage of the current great offers and build a low power (65w) system to support my "office" or "media", not necessarily,it could mean going has expensive as an GT 1030, cheapest new are $89

5600 + 1030 gt is the cost of an 7600x and quite above the 5700G.

And a cheap 1030GT will give you often what an HDMI-DVI-D, for someone that specifically need multi monitor and streaming support, an modern iGPU will give you 3-4 nice DP 1.4/HDMI 2.1 output
 
LukeTbk said:
Depending of what the person mean by; I just want to take advantage of the current great offers and build a low power (65w) system to support my "office" or "media", not necessarily,it could mean going has expensive as an GT 1030, cheapest new are $89

5600 + 1030 gt is the cost of an 7600x and quite above the 5700G.

And a cheap 1030GT will give you often what an HDMI-DVI-D, for someone that specifically need multi monitor and streaming support, an modern iGPU will give you 3-4 nice DP 1.4/HDMI 2.1 output
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That's a shame 1030's are so much still. I grabbed one new a couple of years ago for $60. The 710 seems to be in that range these days. The point I think I was going for was, go for a better gpu down the line if needed. The APU's have little cache, and the included video isn't worth the price premium. You miss out on some features that a 5600 would bring to the table.
Also, it greatly depends on the motherboard how many monitors you can run with an APU. My 5700G is mated to an Asus mobo, and I'd be stuck with one DP and one HDMI and 4 gig of my ram confiscated for memory. I haven't seen many boards running more than two monitors off the mobo. To be fair tho, I have itx stuff mostly these days.. But you are right, DP and HDMI would offer better vid, but I am betting this fella is running 1080 monitors at 60 Hz. Could be wrong


The best bet is look at this fellows total budget, and if he has some parts already.
 
Exactly the talk make it sound like some video card is lying around but could be quite old if a surface pro 4 was the main computer.

It is a shame the market for a simple GPU with 3 regular DP 1.4 or HDMI 2.0/2.1 output, on pc part picker the cheapest GPU it find with 2xDP 1xhdmi is an $140 RX 580 (after a rebate) or a $173 GTX 1650

I would consider even going with a 13600K and his excellent iGPU ($315) instead of an 5600 ($136) + current video card price tag if what the person one is some codec decoding for the streaming and supporting 3 monitors, it would be common for office work to not require more than an recent enough Intel UHD, they are specially made for that in mind and vice versa, program are made assuming that all you have. Or obviously the used market. You get so much more CPU at the same total price if you are able to skip the purchase of a GPU
 
Notwithstanding all the hate on the RX 6400, that might be an option if OP doesn't have a video card. It's significantly better than a 1030 for $140-ish (US). Significantly worse than a used RX 580, of course, but one can't always find the latter.
 
Thanks for the input fellas. The 5600 is getting a ton of votes!

You're right, I don't do many demanding tasks so then why not go the 5600G/5700G route? Here's my background. I'm a gamer that turned OLD. I used to be into watercooling and etc, so that kind of stuff still excites me. I now live in China and the 2nd hand market here is buzzing. It just relaxes me to look for deals. I see things I never saw back home in Europe. Anyway, nowadays for work I just need to handle lots of live streaming and like two huge monitors. The Surface Pro4 can do that but it's struggling. I don't really care that much about it, but my old gamer mindset is calling me, "hey, why not just build a cool little am4 workstation and try some of these exotic parts you found here".

You guys are going to laugh when you hear what graphics card I ordered. It's a Radeon R5 240, but it supports 4k60Hz via display port and that's what I need. Nothing else really. The card cost me like 9 usd. I know, hillarious.

My logic is, if these cards are like 10 bucks and mATX boards like 20bucks, and I need multi-core performance, then why not give it a go? But wait! Why go that route instead of a 5600G/5700G? Because, it's more fun, upgradable, and later when the 5900/5950 drops in price you can just swap and get like a gazillion in Geekbench.

Here's one exotic part I ordered. The Suzao D8 matx case. What do you think?
1669946744752.jpg
 
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aLcATRAZ said:
The 3000 series still has a lot of multi-core horsepower! It didn't go unnoticed.

Does anyone have any experience with which cpu series is easier to overclock? Like if 5000 overclocks easier then why go with 3000? I'm talking about low hanging fruit overclocking! Not LN2!!! 😁
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Overclocking on AMD has been boring since the Ryzen 2000 series. Just get 3600 speed RAM, enable PBO and XMP, and attach a good cooler.

The Firmware does the rest.
 
KazeoHin said:
Overclocking on AMD has been boring since the Ryzen 2000 series. Just get 3600 speed RAM, enable PBO and XMP, and attach a good cooler.

The Firmware does the rest.
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Thanks! Does OC on AM4 disable PBO2 and/or Curve Optimizer?

I wouldn't want to be stuck at like 4.5GHz all cores at 0% load.

Running PBO2+Curve Optimizer but without an OC board, the Ryzen 5500 would just max out at its max boost 4.2GHz, am I right?

I saw there's a PBO setting like +200MHz, but that wouldn't go beyond the boost clock limit, would it?
 
aLcATRAZ said:
Thanks! Does OC on AM4 disable PBO2 and/or Curve Optimizer?

I wouldn't want to be stuck at like 4.5GHz all cores at 0% load.

Running PBO2+Curve Optimizer but without an OC board, the Ryzen 5500 would just max out at its max boost 4.2GHz, am I right?

I saw there's a PBO setting like +200MHz, but that wouldn't go beyond the boost clock limit, would it?
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It can boost higher: PBO will allow boosts as far as the temps and power limit will take it, generally.

And I think curve optimizer REQUIRES PBO to be on. not sure on that one though.

Most of the time, overclocking with our imperfect, meaty, human hands will result in worse performance than letting our precision boost overlords do it for us.
 
Now I'm intrigued about PBO.

The power limit is fixed, isn't it? 65/105Watts. I see some people adjust FCLK to 104 and get another 100-200MHz of boost with PBO enabled. Like I've seen 5600 that should top out at 4.4GHz boost up to 4.65GHz. Is that done on OC boards only? How does that fit inside a 65w power limit?

It's very interesting. I'd love to get a bit closer to that without having to switch out parts. Like do I need an OC board or not? I see that non-OC boards have PBO and Curve Optimizer. But can those ever go over the max boost OR power limit?
 
If you're building a true "office" or "media" computer, there's no reason not to consider a 5600g. It's relatively cheap. It's only held back by the limited cache compared to the regular 5600, but that's not going to affect you in office/media settings. And you get a decent IGP. I had one in a backup system and it did every web-browsing, media, office task I threw at it easily.
 
kirbyrj said:
If you're building a true "office" or "media" computer, there's no reason not to consider a 5600g. It's relatively cheap. It's only held back by the limited cache compared to the regular 5600, but that's not going to affect you in office/media settings. And you get a decent IGP. I had one in a backup system and it did every web-browsing, media, office task I threw at it easily.
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Thanks but I already went down the dedicated graphics route.

It wasn't an easy choice. The 5600G was super tempting.
 
aLcATRAZ said:
Anyway, nowadays for work I just need to handle lots of live streaming and like two huge monitors. The Surface Pro4 can do that but it's struggling.
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Is it because the iGPU on them is too old to have hardware decoding of those live streaming ? Would the 2013 video card be in a similar boat ? Maybe those new super powerful 5600 and up type of CPU would have enough horsepower to not care too.
 
LukeTbk said:
Is it because the iGPU on them is too old to have hardware decoding of those live streaming ? Would the 2013 video card be in a similar boat ? Maybe those new super powerful 5600 and up type of CPU would have enough horsepower to not care too.
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Fantastic point.

This did get me thinking before. You are right of course. The problem with relying on hardware encoding/decoding (as far as I know) is that you don't know if it's going to work or not for the applications/settings you're using.

It's fantastic, when it works. I considered going with an Intel iGPU for that reason. It's the most widely supported.

However, it's one of the reasons I went dedicated graphics because I can swap that out. If the iGPU is crap I can't do anything about that. I'd feel odd getting all the onboard high res ports, a small case etc and then not using them as I need to drop in dedicated graphics anyway.

I'm not streaming in 4k anyway. If I can do a couple of 1080p streams simultaneously then I'm happy. How many concurrent 1080p streams can hardware process? That's a good question...
 
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Here's the stuff I ordered in the end:

Ryzen 5500
ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac
16GB PC3600c17 ram
WD SN810 nvme
ID-cooling IS-50X
FSP 300W Flex psu 80plus Gold
and the centerpiece of the entire build:
Radeon R5 240 1GB WOW!

I know the votes were for the 5600, but in the future I'd rather sell a 5500 and then upgrade to a 5900. At like 80usd or whatever I paid for it, it won't lose much value. The 5600 is like 115usd. I know you're laughing at 35usd but like I said. I'd perhaps pick up a 5900 later. I don't game so that single core performance is a bit wasted. Multi-core is nearly the same as a 5600.

Also, I hear deliding a 5500 is possible. 😎
 
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Hey does anyone know if an ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac can be updated to the latest bios without a supported cpu?

If the board doesn't come with a new enough bios I might need to borrow a cpu. That's annoying.
 
aLcATRAZ said:
Here's the stuff I ordered in the end:

Ryzen 5500
ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac
16GB PC3600c17 ram
WD SN810 nvme
ID-cooling IS-50X
FSP 300W Flex psu 80plus Gold
and the centerpiece of the entire build:
Radeon R5 240 1GB WOW!

I know the votes were for the 5600, but in the future I'd rather sell a 5500 and then upgrade to a 5900. At like 80usd or whatever I paid for it, it won't lose much value. The 5600 is like 115usd. I know you're laughing at 35usd but like I said. I'd perhaps pick up a 5900 later. I don't game so that single core performance is a bit wasted. Multi-core is nearly the same as a 5600.

Also, I hear deliding a 5500 is possible. 😎
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For your usage, ryzen 5500 at that price is quite decent.
If it has the same IMC as it's counterpart, you may overclock the ram to 4133 18-21-8-21 1T with vdimm 1.42v and vsoc 1.2v.
Just make sure that AB350 has been updated to latest bios to support ryzen 5000.

For the delidding, don't even think about it as the risk is not worth it.
Better let it run the PBO +200mhz, tuning the ram and just test the system to run stable with that tunings.
 
aLcATRAZ said:
Hey does anyone know if an ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac can be updated to the latest bios without a supported cpu?

If the board doesn't come with a new enough bios I might need to borrow a cpu. That's annoying.
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You bought it 2nd hand?
If so, you can request the buyer to check the version of the bios.
You may refer to the pic below for bios list:
1670117908198.png

From version 7.00 up, it already support ryzen 5000.
If not, then you need buyer's help to update the bios first, or your ryzen 5500 will not run.
 
Awesome help there Riev90 .

Yeah I probably need to call a friend to let me borrow one of his older ryzens.

Hey, do you know if I can bump up fclk to like 104 and still have the board be in dynamic PBO mode (switching multiplier depending on load)?

I'd love to be able to boost higher than 4.2GHz or even 4.4GHz for that matter. 4.2GHz is the chip's highest boost according to specs.

I really appreciate your help. What a champ!
 
aLcATRAZ said:
Awesome help there Riev90 .

Yeah I probably need to call a friend to let me borrow one of his older ryzens.

Hey, do you know if I can bump up fclk to like 104 and still have the board be in dynamic PBO mode (switching multiplier depending on load)?

I'd love to be able to boost higher than 4.2GHz or even 4.4GHz for that matter. 4.2GHz is the chip's highest boost according to specs.

I really appreciate your help. What a champ!
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from zen to zen 3 testings I've done so far, the bclk (not fclk, mind you haha) oc doesn't give much boost to the overall things I did with my systems (whether gaming, daily task, almost everything), while making the ram tuning much harder.

like my previous post:
1. If it has the same IMC as it's counterpart, you may overclock the ram to 4133 18-21-8-21 1T with vdimm 1.42v and vsoc 1.2v. Don't forget to set the FCLK to 2067mhz in the bios.

The ram kits you've purchased probably has Hynix C/D die, so that timing above is reasonable.

2. For cpu tuning, try going to PBO sub menu, and set the PBO +200mhz. Fine tune your cpu fan curve to keep the noise.

And also, not a big deal, mate.
Will try to help here. hehe
 
somebrains said:
$60 used 3600 would be my pick
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That was really tempting, yes. The 5500 is actually cheaper than the 3600 now, while providing zen3 ipc. I know the cache/pcie specs aren't as compelling but the benchmark performance is pretty good.

I've seen better binned CPUs being sold for just a couple more bucks. I kind of regret not going for that. I mean like Ryzen 5500 that runs all cores 4.7GHz @ below 1.4v. If I could do it all again I'd buy one of those. However. One problem is that it wouldn't work with PBO enabled without a massive bclk oc (which I can't do, I topped out at 102.25MHz = 4550MHz@~1.4v). You'd have to set a fixed multiplier and that's going to just suck power and generate heat 24/7.
 
I'd like to add that after tweaking my non cherry picked 5500 I'm getting around 1565 / 7850 in Geekbench on my Asrock ab350itx board and 3200 corsair c16 ram. That's pretty much a stock 5600.

To obtain that I'm running PBO +200 and all limits on max. Bclk 102.25MHz. It boosts to 4550MHz. Curve Optimizer is core individual. I got it stable at values between -15 and -9 for the best/worst cores. Turned off CPPC and global C-states. Haven't overclocked the ram yet.

I found Curve Optimizer to be really sneaky. I can get semi stable performance at A LOOOOOT better settings but to weed out that last tiny instability I need to set it very conservatively. I've considered to set a fixed multiplier but I've got a pretty bad core and that's going to set the bar for the rest of the cores then, which I don't like. It hinders single thread performance.
 
aLcATRAZ said:
1. Haven't overclocked the ram yet.
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aLcATRAZ said:
2. I found Curve Optimizer to be really sneaky. I can get semi stable performance at A LOOOOOT better settings but to weed out that last tiny instability I need to set it very conservatively. I've considered to set a fixed multiplier but I've got a pretty bad core and that's going to set the bar for the rest of the cores then, which I don't like. It hinders single thread performance.
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1. You should try it, I encourage you :D

2. If you can set the PBO with individual core using CO, then you are set already, no need to push the all core overclock as it will stress your cooler.

AFAIK, the multiplier / BCLK oc will not suck more power or generate more heat compared to PBO + CO, though.
That multi / BCLK oc power can be controlled via power option in windows to drop the core speed and vcore, the same way you use PBO + CO.
 
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