You can see the award already, I'll give both tested processors a great value award. I do have a soft-spot for that six-core Ryzen 5 1600X though. At 249 USD, paired with the B350 120 USD motherboard we used the gains and performances are tremendous value for that money. Tweak that CPU to 4.0 GHz on all cores and your PC eco-system will list green flags all-over. It is fast and you'll have a 12 thread solution. Next to that, it offers nice gaming perf and excellent application threaded performance as Ryzen offers killer single- and multi-threaded performance. The eco-system is fast in matters of storage like M.2, SATA and/or USB 3.1. The step upwards to Ryzen 5 1600X is a proper one for the folks that actually need and waited for a well deserved upgrade, the guys that have been waiting for a price/perf competitive 6-core processor series and the intent to give AMD some well-deserved support after a couple of gruesome years. As such, the 1600X oozes value if paired with the right motherboard. The quad-core Ryzen 5 1500X performs good as well, I have no complaints here other than I would have liked to see it boost to 4.0 GHz stock out of the box. However, the more I test quad-core processors the less excited I am getting about them. A move to six and eight-core processors to me feels like the right thing to do as I do feel my overall desktop experience is much snappier and faster compared to any brand quad-core CPU. But value wise, for 189 USD that four-core CPU is just that, good value. And sure, perhaps more than enough for many. The one thing you need to keep in mind is that Ryzen is a platform in development. Your motherboard will need a few firmware updates in the future, the memory support sometimes can be daunting and icky. But progress has been made in large steps over the last few weeks and slowly but steadily things are maturing properly. Our recommendation sticks, Ryzen processors like fast frequency memory. You start with a 2667 MHz kit but really, we recommend 2933 MHz or 3200 MHz CL16. Motherboards wise the performance will be the same from a 99 USD B350 towards the most expensive 350 USD X370 motherboard, you define the budget and needs in features. Please base your memory purchase choices on what the motherboard manufacturer advises (check their QVL list). Your sweet spot memory might be 2933 MHz with two DIMMs hence for all processor reviews we are moving to that number where possible. Right, that said and done I think this conclusion page has enough information for you to chew over. A Ryzen 1600X paired with the right motherboard could be a tremendous deal that once again drips and oozes pure value and performance. And hey, can't afford a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or Radeon R9 Fury X? Please understand that the gaming matter mentioned is not at all relevant to you if you are using, say, a graphics card at the performance level of a GeForce GTX 1060/1070 or Radeon RX 480. These actually would be a fantastic match combined with this gem of a 249 USD six-core processor. And the quad-core Ryzen 1500X, well it does really, really well compared to i5 processors in roughly that same price-bracket. But honestly, anno 2017 we feel a six or eight-core part is the way to go. And you have thank AMD for that, bringing value to the PC eco system with many cores.
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