AMD YD170XBCAEWOF Ryzen 7 1700X Processor

First, system specs:ASRock X370 Taichi board16 GB (2X8) Team T Force Nighthawk DDR4 3200 RAMSapphire R9 280X (1080p)Kingston Hyper X 3K 120 GB SSD for OSWindows 10 Home 64 BitThis was an upgrade from an FX 8320 OC to 4.2 Ghz and 990FX board. Most components were carried over to the Ryzen system. I must say, this is a very noticeable increase in performance! This CPU takes anything I throw at it and doesn't even break a sweat. Handbrake encode times on my custom settings are less than 1/4 the time it took the FX to complete, Blender renders much faster, games are smoother with higher frame rates, and the list goes on. It was well worth the upgrade. Even with the dated and aging GPU I have seen average frame rate gains as high as 50% over the 8320. The AGESA 1006a BIOS update (V3.0 for this board) seems to have solved the early memory problems and stability issues. My board has no issue using the XMP profile for 3200 RAM with the correct timings and the system is fully stable. Shop around and be very selective on your RAM choice. DDR4 3200 is the fastest supported so far, but this will likely change in time. Get the fastest you can, Ryzen performance gains are pretty much linear up to DDR4 3600.The Ryzen platform still has some rough edges that need smoothing out, but it is at the point now where it will run fine in most any circumstance. For such a new platform, I'm surprised at how well it works. I've not had any stability issues at all. Overall, I'm very satisfied with this CPU and platform. I'm not even going to bother overclocking it yet, it's plenty fast enough for me.This CPU runs very, very cool. Temp monitoring software reports the 1700X and 1800X at 20 degrees Celsius higher than it actually is. Subtracting the 20 degrees, the highest I've seen is 52 degrees running handbrake, and 54 degrees under heavy gaming load. It hovers around 35 degrees when browsing the net. I'm using a Corair H 60 AIO cooler. It is also extremely efficient. I have seen ~96 watts or so under heavy load, and 20-35 during internet browsing.XFR boosting is an absolutely awesome thing! This CPU with the H 60 regularly runs at 3.5 GHz on all cores, and boosts as high as 3.9 GHz when using less cores.Things to consider:I actually was going to get the Ryzen 5 1600X, but the sale price for the 1700X made me go after it instead. The 1600X is roughly equal to or faster compared to the 1700X at stock clocks in games. So if all you're doing is gaming, that's the top choice. If you (Like me) do other things as well such as rendering, video encoding, photo shopping, or CAD work, the 1700X makes more sense. It is also likely a bit more future proof than the hex core Ryzens are as well.Get a good cooler if getting one of the X models! They do not come with a cooler (As of the date I bought mine). The non X CPU's have a very nice stock cooler. The Corsair H 60 is more than enough for this beast at stock clocks and is dead silent. There are many great air coolers out there, too. Just look for one that comes with the AM4 bracket. Most companies will send one separately if the cooler doesn't come with it.TLDR; This CPU is more than enough to handle anything you want to do. It is a massive upgrade from anything older (2008-2014), especially any FX CPU and quad cores. Ryzen is about 76% faster than Piledriver (FX) clock for clock! I am very happy with it and recommend it to anyone looking to build a new system.

After many years of waiting AMD is finally back in the game. This CPU has not bogged down with anything I throw at it. I'm in IT and run several VMs on my machines. I can run a slew of VMs and game at the same time with no regard to taking down my PC. Media creation has also been a breeze on this thing.There are some cons though: AMD either needs to refine their die selection, or fine a way to tap in some overclocking. Right now the limiting factor from this being the single best CPU on the market is speed. I can barely get this thing to stay stable at 3.95 with 2666 RAM. Some of this BIOS related as a previous BIOS got me to 4.0 and 2900, but honestly the difference form 2666 and 2900 is minimum and so is the 3.95 to 4.0. What this chip needs is the ability to handle 3600 RAM and 4.3-4.5. If they can hit those in Ryzen 2 (or even some better binning in the future) this will smoke anything and everything out there.All in all for the price this is a stellar CPU, and well worth the amount. The caveats we all know: i7-7700k is still the best gaming ONLY CPU (major emphasis on only) and the 6900k is a smidgen better at non gaming task. But for the price this CPU will come close to the 6900k (and can beat it in a good bit of scenarios) and is not super far off the 7700k (10-20fps in 1080p, match in 1440p and up). So there is no reason not to buy this CPU unless you gaming ONLY (and again major emphasis on only, if you do anything else, want to do anything else, or may even have dreams of doing anything else, the 7700k won't cut it).

I bought the 1700X because I knew I had the chops to bring it up to/beyond the par of its bigger brother, the 1800X. They're the same chip, just binned differently.Note however that, in order to compete with a comparative intel chip in games, you will have to work for it until the BIOS firmware further improves. Northbridge processing speed is locked in a 1:2 ratio with the memory controller. As you increase the memory speed from 2133MHz to 2933MHz the gains in performance are a linear scale, with the progression from 2933MHz to 3200MHz being mostly linear still, with diminishing returns once you pass this. This culminates in a 15% framerate increase going from 2133MHz to 3200MHz. Your ability to reach these numbers will entirely depend on your motherboard's maximum memory controller frequency and its compatibility with any given set of RAM, the former of which is usually advertised and the latter can be found on the manufacturer website.Even if working with RAM timings is way over your head, Ryzen 7 proves to be an excellent upgrade for nehalem-and-beyond i7 holdovers, as well as gaming-minded sandy and ivy-bridge users who need extra cores for light+ production work. Strictly for gaming I'd recommend you look at Ryzen 5 chips instead, as the extra threads from a 7 may go unused.If you CAN use 3200MHz ram, and overclock this chip, it becomes an absolute monster. If you can't or are reluctant to touch RAM timings and whatnot, AGESA updates are continually improving memory compatibility, and flashing a BIOS is easy. Either way, this is an a strong competitor to Intel's 8-core lineup at a fraction of the price.