AMD Ryzen 7 2700 And Ryzen 5 2600 Review: Great Value, Solid Performance

We also spent some time overclocking the AMD Ryzen 7 2700, to see what kind of additional horsepower the processor had lurking under its hood.

Overclocking AMD 2nd Generation Ryzen Processors Pushing Zen+ Beyond Stock

Overclocking a 2nd Generation Ryzen processor is very similar to first-gen parts. Because the processors are unlocked, overclocking it is simply a matter of altering a few multipliers, tweaking voltages, and dealing with the additional heat and power requirements. These processors can also be overclocked by adjusting base clock frequencies though, so it's possible to really fine tune the end result.

As was the case with the originals, overclocking can be done from within the BIOS on enthusiast motherboards or via AMD's Ryzen Master software. Ryzen Master got a major update with the launch of 2nd Gen Ryzen processors, however. We covered all of this in our initial launch article, but it's worth reiterating here.
The latest version of Ryzen Master includes a number of interesting and worthwhile updates and features. We'll quote AMD directly to keep it simple:

• Package Power Tracking (“PPT”): The PPT% indicates the distance to maximum power that can be delivered to the socket by the motherboard across various voltage rails. 100% indicates maximum capacity.
• Thermal Design Current (“TDC”): The TDC% indicates the distance to maximum current that can be delivered by the motherboard voltage regulators when they have been heated to a steady state through sustained operation. 100% indicates maximum capacity.
• Electrical Design Current (“EDC”): The EDC% indicates distance to maximum current that can be delivered by the motherboard voltage regulators in a peak/transient condition. 100% indicates maximum capacity.
• Fastest Core Detection: The stars represent the fastest core(s) within each CCX, while the gold star indicates the fastest silicon in the entire device. The circles represent the second fastest cores within the CCXes. This can be extremely useful for breaking single-core clock speed records.
• Per CCX Overclocking

You'll notice that Ryzen Master presents some new data to the user, as outlined in the list above, which is helpful for users to note only achieve higher overclocks, but see exactly what is the limiting factor. Per CCX Overclocking is now available for all Ryzen processors -- including the originals. And the fastest cores on the chip are labeled clearly, so there's no guesswork.

We took a somewhat conservative approach to overclocking the Ryzen 7 2700 to give you all an approximate “worst case scenario”. Our results should be repeatable, assuming you’ve got similar hardware and everything is working properly. You shouldn’t need exotic cooling to pull off what we did here -- we used the included Wraith Prism cooler with the motherboard and processor installed in a mainstream NZXT mid-tower. Of course, more exotic cooling will result in higher overclocks, but its not a necessity.


To see what our chip could do, we manually cranked the core voltage up to 1.4v and shot for a modest 4.2GHz (42x100MHz), which worked on a few test runs but would ultimately lock up the system. We then moved up to 1.425v, but still had some instability under load, so we backed things down a bit and settled at 4.1GHz across all cores. At this speed, the chip was perfectly happy with the Wraith Prism Cooler and operated in the mid 80-degree range when under load. Idle temperatures were relatively cool and stayed in the low 30's, though.

This wasn't a particularly impressive overclock, considering we hit 4.25GHz on air with the Ryzen 7 2700X, but the bump was significant in terms of its impact on performance...

While we had the chip overclocked, we re-ran a couple of benchmarks and saw some nice performance improvements. With its higher clocks, the Ryzen 7 2700's performance was right in-line with the 2700X.

Total System Power Consumption Tested at the Outlet

Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we also monitored how much power our 2nd Gen Ryzen test system was consuming with a power meter, versus the other systems we used for benchmark comparisons.

Our goal was to give you an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling at the Windows desktop and while under a heavy CPU workload. Keep in mind, this is total system power consumption being measured at the outlet and not the the individual power of the CPUs alone.

In their stock, out-of-box configurations, the Ryzen 7 2700 And Ryzen 5 2600 are relatively power-friendly. Idle power is higher than Intel's mainstream desktop platform, but load power looks really good with these two processors.

We also monitored power while overclocked and saw a huge jump in power consumption under load. With all the voltage we had to pump through our particular Ryzen 7 2700 to achieve the overclock though, we're not surprised to see such a big jump.