The US$85 AMD Ryzen 5 1600 AF looks to be a new 12nm Zen+ part and even outperforms the Ryzen 5 2600

[Redaktion]

AMD looks to have secretly given some their first gen Zen CPUs a 12nm Zen+ upgrade as was noticed by the recent availability of the new Ryzen 5 1600 AF. Initial tests seem to indicate that the Ryzen 5 1600 AF could outperform a stock Ryzen 5 2600 in Cinebench R20 although overclocking results weren't as impressive. The new CPU can be had for just US$85, which represents very good value for budget-conscious builders.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-US-85-AMD-Ryzen-5-1600-AF-looks-to-be-a-new-12nm-Zen-part-and-even-outperforms-the-Ryzen-5-2600.447885.0.html

[jmasta111]

Great article. I bought one of these last week when I saw it on Reddit as I needed more power for 3D CAD design and to reduce bottleneck on my R9 Fury Nitro which has up until now been paired with a Xeon E3-1225 V2 , which has been struggling to keep up.

Anyway, I bought my brother's old DS3H B450 board from Gigabytye, a stick of ram, and his old case as he was moving on to an Itx system. So I confirm the parts work with his Ryzen 2600 from launch, when all the other parts were bought. Interestingly, I cannot manage to get the thing to post now that the 1600 AF is in there, and my only suspicion is that a BIOS update is required for it to work. This makes sense, considering the rig half been out of commission for most of a year so I would expect it is out of date. Not sure if this gives any indication to the 12nm process and to what extent this chip is substantially different from those prior. One would assume a 1600 would work on a board that a 2600 worked on otherwise. However, this could be as simple as the motherboard not knowing how to address the chip with a slightly different model number, regardless of it's true physical differences under the lid.

Just thought I'd throw that it in there. My brother will be returning to town soon so we will update the bios and post results. I have beefier, but still entry level cooler to pair it with and so it will be interestint to see what overclocking numbers we get. A sample of 1 tells us essentially nothing of value, unfortunately.

[Dale]

If push comes to shove and getting the mobo up enough to be able to flash another BIOS is an issue, AMD _was_ offering a service in which they provided a minimal CPU that would suffice on a lending basis.

I'd be interested to hear how that experience goes...

Dale

[william blake]

85 dollars for the 12 threads zen+? insane value.
1600 As f***

[notix]

The source says the new CPU is built on 12 nanometers but does NOT mention an update to Zen+ so it is still Zen for the AF version.

[James L King]

Now Amazon is selling the 1600 AF for $104.05. I am not sure what is up with this now.

[Randolph M Zugie]

Not an overclocker, but Gamer Nexus managed to get this CPU to 4.2 GHz on a Stock Cooler.   I'm led to believe this, as if they had used other cooling than stock, they would have mentioned it.  Maybe your cpu wasn't a good sample.