AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D Review: New Mid-Range Gaming Champ Is a Micro Center Exclusive

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D Power Consumption and Efficiency

Image 1 of 10

The six-core Ryzen 5 5600X3D comes with a 105W TDP rating that outstrips the 65W ratings for most of the chips in the test pool, including the eight-core Ryzen 7 5700X. In some cases, that results in the six-core Ryzen 5 5600X3D pulling more power than the 65W six-core Ryzen 5 5600X despite the former's lower boost clock rates, as evidenced by the HandBrake x264 workload. Here, the 5600X3D is actually slightly faster than the 5600X, but the higher power consumption results in a loss in the x264 renders-per-day efficiency metric.

The Ryzen 5 5600X3D's performance generally lags the rest of the test pool, so it scores poor marks in the efficiency metrics. The 5600X3D also draws more power and is less efficient than the Core i5-13400 in several workloads.

Some of the poor power efficiency stems from the higher TDP paired with the chips' comparatively lower performance, but we also know that most motherboard vendors haven't tuned for the 5600X3D because it was effectively a canceled processor. Instead, it only has a basic level of enablement. 

Image 1 of 2

Here we take a slightly different look at power consumption by calculating the cumulative energy required to perform x264 and x265 HandBrake workloads, respectively. We plot this 'task energy' value in Kilojoules on the left side of the chart for the Y-axis, with time taken as the X-axis.

These workloads are comprised of a fixed amount of work, so we can plot the task energy against the time required to finish the job, thus generating a really useful power chart. Bear in mind that faster compute times and lower task energy requirements are ideal. That means processors that fall the closest to the bottom left corner of the chart are the best, in terms of efficiency.

As you would expect, given the prior efficiency results, the Ryzen 5 5600X3D's power consumption-vs-performance isn't as desirable as the other 7nm Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000 processors, and it trails the 5nm Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 chips by an even larger margin. 

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X3D Test Setup and Overclocking

We're told that motherboard vendors have only enabled basic support for the Ryzen 5 5600X3D but didn't have samples to fine-tune the BIOS. As such, performance could vary with different motherboards quite a bit. As mentioned, the Ryzen 5 5600X3D doesn't support overclocking via the CPU multiplier, so you can't change the core clocks via that method. You also cannot adjust the power limits (PPT, TDC, EDC) or CPU voltage. Additionally, the chip doesn't support the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature, and you can't undervolt or underclock.

The 5600X3D fully supports overclocking the memory and Infinity Fabric, but we could only reach DDR4-3600 with the fabric dialed in at 1800 MHz. This setting allows us to run the memory in the desired low-latency 'coupled' (1:1 ratio) mode. You can get higher with uncoupled memory, but that results in less performance in games. We gained less than 1% in gaming performance from overclocking the memory, and have had similar results with other X3D processors.

Several motherboard vendors offer custom overclocking options for the Ryzen 5000X3D processors, but these do come with an outsized level of risk, even for overclocking — AMD has prevented these chips from all forms of overclocking due to the limitations of the cache chiplet. The 5600X3D is truly a limited edition chip, so we chose not to risk losing our only irreplaceable sample by testing the ad-hoc overclocking methods for 5000X3D chips.

We test Intel processors with the power limits fully removed for our standard measurements, so those chips run beyond the 'recommended' power settings but remain within warranty. We used DDR4 memory for testing, as DDR5's pricing premium isn't as suitable for this class of chip.

Microsoft has advised gamers to disable several security features to boost gaming performance. As such, we disabled secure boot, virtualization support, and fTPM/PTT on all systems for maximum performance. You can find further hardware details in the table below. 

We tested the Ryzen 5 5600X3D in two configurations:

• Ryzen 5 5600X3D: Corsair H115i 280mm water cooler, default power limits, DDR4-3200 in Coupled mode
  Ryzen 5 5600X3D DDR4-3600: Corsair H115i 280mm water cooler, default power limits, DDR4-3600 in Coupled mode