AMD YD1700BBAEBOX Ryzen 7 1700 Processor with Wraith Spire LED Cooler

At the time of purchase, this product was one of the best options I could invest in for my desktop PC. It competes head-to-head with an Intel processor, and at a much lower price. Ryzen 7 is an excellent investment for your PC. I used it specifically for graphic design, and it worked wonders. It's also versatile for gaming, delivering exceptional performance to your PC. Of course, you'll need a decent amount of RAM to make the combo work properly, along with a motherboard with all the best features.

What a great price for such a beast of a processor. I was so excited to build my first PC and also use this new chipset! I liked the performance adjustments you can seem to get out of this one over the x version, so I left the included cooler in the box and put it in storage. Then I brought out my Corsair AIO and hooked it up to my new 1700. Given a high RAM diet, this chip absolutely flies. Rendering and streaming are very quick. I can stream with OBS at 6300 bitrate at 1080p60fps with NO dips in performance ever. OBS tends to be quite CPU intensive, so this is quite nice (and luckily my internet speeds can keep up).People said this isn't as good at gaming as Intel's lineup. I'm sorry, but I just don't see it. I play all the latest AAA titles as well as competitive ESports titles at 1080p super-sampled to 4k when applicable, max graphics, etc, with no dips in performance, issues with frames, tearing, or anything but the best visuals in gaming I've experienced so far.As I mentioned earlier, this chip loves RAM. I had 16GB of 3200MHz RAM to start, but found that I needed an additional 32GB to really max out my streaming as well as my video editing. 32GB 3200MHz seems to really keep this chip happy and producing great numbers both in benchmarks and in render times, stream reliability and speed, etc.I have this overclocked to 4.1GHz on all cores. This was a trial though. I'm having an issue in the BIOS (ASUS TUF board) where I can't overclock past 3.65GHz unless I play with voltages. The problem is that if I change the voltages for the CPU literally at all, in any direction, the system reboots with a default speed of 1.5GHz on all cores. The only way to get past this was to use the Ryzen Master software. I actually had tried it earlier but thought it didn't work. Turns out it gives you an error saying the application of your overclocked failed, but it really doesn't. If you look at the output, your overclock runs just fine. The part of the program many people don't like is that every time you turn your computer on after being off, it resets to default speed. So every time I go onto my computer I must apply my OC before I game in order to have consistent gaming performance and streaming. I don't mind this at all though. Just keep it in mind when you get this chip.All in all this chip is my pride and joy. I brag about it a bit because it's better than I am in pretty much every way. Paired with a GTX 1080, my system can do just about anything. Ryzen 7 1700 is probably the best chip for the price if you're looking for the higher end as a gaming/editing/streaming usecase.

Upgraded from a 8320 which didn't take to any overclock over 4.3ghz, even when throwing well over 1.5 volts at it. The 8320 was getting sluggist, and bottlenecked my rx 480 in most cpu-intensive games. Aside from the rocky launch, upgrading to this was a night-and-day difference. When overclocked, this chip is held back by my 480, and during heavy gaming, only sips 40-50 watts of power according to the newest version od HWMonitor. When unzipping files, usage sits at under 10%, and the whole thing is bottlenecked by my hard drive's read speed, instead of the cpu. I'm no content creator, so I've yet to find any everyday workload that will bring the CPU-usage above 20% or so.The stock cooler is really quite impressive. It's bulky, with a huge chunk of copper in the center right on top of the CPU. It kept my chip under 70 degrees, even at 3.7ghz. I loved the RGB fan, which is nice to show off if you have a windowed case like me. To me it's almost funny how good this STOCK cooler is, because if THIS high-quality cooler is what just comes in the box for an AMD processor, it makes it look like Intel hates you by comparison, which isn't too far from the truth.I got it overclocked to 3.7ghz without touching voltage (stock 1.185v). it hit 3.8ghz at 1.275v, which had the pleasant side-effect of making my 3200mhz ram stable at 2933mhz (it WOULD work at 3200mhz, but would take a few restarts to post, so I just left it at 2933 for stability's sake). However I wasn't able to get my chip 24/7 stable at 3.9ghz as it wanted at least 1.37 volts, which made it run much too hot for my cooler (a Cooler Master Hyper T4). From what I've heard, Ryzen seems to hit a wall at about 4ghz, so I'm pretty satisfied with 3.8ghz. I'm sitting at R7 1800x performance at almost half the price, which is fine by me. Even at 3.8ghz, Ryzen wipes the floor with all but the highest end Skylake and Kaby Lake chips, and comes biting at the heels of the 6900k. Which is unbelievable considering Ryzen's low price tag.As far as the problems go, there are really only two main ones. It's already been a month or so, and it doesn't look like RAM speeds will be going up for Ryzen any time soon. At least not with a simple BIOS update. You should still keep your BIOS up to date, but I think the RAM speed problem might run deeper than the BIOS. Either way, with my few hours of overclocking, I've managed to get 2933mhz RAM, which is about where speeds should have been to begin with, so my experience hasn't changed much.The second problem stems from Ryzen's design. These 8-core chips are, in very simple terms, two quad-core 'core complexes' stuck together. And if reports are to be believed, these two complexes have problems communicating between one another, so if two co-dependant threads are stuck by windows on separate complexes, performance takes a rather large hit. I personally haven't had any noticeable problems with this, but if it IS true, then I'd have to wag my finger at AMD for having such a fundamental flaw in the architecture.I would list the gaming performance as a problem, but nobody buys a $350+ processor just to game at 1080p on low settings, and this CPU is far from bottlenecking my RX 480, even with it's 1400mhz overclock. So this chip still gets a big thumbs-up from me in gaming.Overall, I think AMD has really hit it out of the park with Ryzen. While it may fall behind Intel's Skylake and Kaby Lake in single-threaded performance, it's no Bulldozer, and can keep up well where it counts.