AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, 12 Cores & 24 Threads Unlocked Desktop Processor Without Cooler

This is an absolute beast of a CPU.I bought this to upgrade my B450 system from a Ryzen 5 2600.First thing I did was check my boards compatibility with this chip, luckily, the BIOS was quite a lot newer than when support was added, so I didn't need to do any updates. If you do though, make sure you do it before you install this CPU.I, really, didn't think I'd feel that big of a performance improvement. Boy was I wrong...I put the CPU into "eco mode" through the BIOS (it was under AMD Overclocking on my ASUS Prime B450 board), as I'm only using a Noctua NH-U12S as a cooler. I plan to eventually get a more capable cooler, but this is working just fine, CPU is peaking out at 65C in eco mode with the single tower Noctua, pretty impressive if you ask me.My Ryzen 5 2600 ran around the same temps under load, and idled in the 40s, this idles a bit higher, but it doesn't really get much warmer than idle from what I can tell, at least with my system configuration.While I was removing my previous CPU it was actually "stuck" to the cooler. It actually popped right out of the socket... at first I was a bit worried that I may have accidentally broken something but... i apparently got very lucky. No pins were damaged on the old CPU, and it booted up fine in another system I tested it in.New CPU installation was very easy, just line up the triangle to the corner on the socket with a triangle, after opening the clamp bar of course. The clamp bar easily went back into place, and held the new CPU just fine. *Whew*At first I thought I may have damaged the motherboard, but... I took this as a chance to do a good cleaning of the inside of my case, and when I put the system back together... I forgot to plug in the GPU power cable *doh*. After plugging that back in, the system rebooted about 1000 times (got to love ASUS boards!), and then asked me if I wanted to overwrite the fTPM settings. I did, I run Linux and I don't use the fTPM. If you're running Windows 11, you may want to go through whatever procedure you need to go through to save this. You'll need it. You need to do this while your old CPU is installed though, or you'll have to go through the whole process of putting it back in if you don't! Luckily, I didn't need to, but be aware of this.After wiping the fTPM settings and a few thousand more reboots (exaggerating a bit, it was probably 10 total, ASUS boards really like to do that), I was presented with a screen that said a new CPU was detected, and that all BIOS settings were cleared. Cool! So far so good!I spent some time going through and reenabling my RAM speed profile (got to make full use of the 128GB of 3200MHz RAM I installed yesterday!), turning virtualization back on, and enabling eco mode (I didn't want to get a new cooler right now if I could get away with it). Enabling eco mode did bring the CPU temp down about 10 degrees in the BIOS, and from reading around the internet, doesn't really seem to impact performance *that* much. Easier than fiddling with undervolting settings I'd say...After finally getting booted back up into my OS... I was actually kind of impressed already. Just from the increase in boot speed alone I already knew this was going to be good. It wasn't *slow* on my 2600 at all, it's still a very capable chip, but wow, this blows it out of the water.I've been working on a rust project lately, it compiles in about... 45-55 seconds on my 2600... I did the same project compile on the 5900X? 6 seconds. Even in eco mode. Wow oh mighty. The power of 6 more cores and a dozen more threads.I also run a Windows VM for several income producing applications (y'know, we all got to work, otherwise we can't buy these fancy new pieces of sand we send lightning through), and wow. Oh boy wow. Like I said, the 2600 wasn't *slow* by any stretch of the imagination, but the responsiveness and speed now is just absolutely incredible. The VM boots so much faster, every application is up and running almost instantly... and that's with only 6 cores dedicated to it...If you've got an older AM4 system. Buy this. Buy this before they stop making them. Buy this, and upgrade your BIOS if you need to. Just get it. Seriously. This is a monumental leap in performance that will *absolutely* extend the life of your AM4 system by several years. This is *far* cheaper than building a new AM5/DDR5 system, and you will be absolutely blown away by the performance increase.For $350 as of the time of this writing... it's worth every penny. Best performance upgrade I've ever made, for sure.

I once chanted...NEVER AMD! NEVER AGAIN!But here I am, back to AMD, the heathen abomination known as the 5900x is running in my brand new pc build... my inner intel fanboi is totally RAGING right now! I was team blue for life I always proudly declared. My INTEL pride could not be matched. They were my heroes, and the blue man group will always live on in my mind forever.But even I cannot deny that zen 3 was a grandslam and clearly the better cpu right now. Rocket lake might be a tiny bit more powerful core per core when it launches soon, but it also costs more electricity to run, and does not come in more then 8 cores. I would wait until alder lake at least before going back to intel (and it better be REALLY GOOD) if you were looking for a new pc in 2021. It's the P4 vs ATHLON from 2004 all over again. Big hot inefficient intel chips once again.5900x or 5600x?The 5600x is much cheaper but also half the cores. If you are just gaming get that instead (it even comes with a free cooler- though it isn't a very good one).I do a lot of gaming but also a lot of work in windows, and I am delighted how I can have a bunch of apps and stuff running without slowdown. The 5900x is very powerful, and powers through tasks that once took 15 minutes to do in only a few minutes now... but honestly for pure gaming I don't notice much of an increase over my old 4670k i5 (was actually worse in 4k, but in 1080p was about 2x the fps in high detail settings).It really still comes down to your GPU more then anything for gaming esp if 4k gaming, so keep your expectations realistic. I paired up my 5900x with a 3080, and games are wonderful now in 4k glory (the clarity is mind blowing). No CPU bottlenecks for me. =)STONE COLD STEVE PROCESSOR!I paired this up with the noctua d15 cooler and aorus master mobo. The noctua is soo big and the aorus master ram slots are positioned in such a way that that sadly the front fan won't fit (collides with about any ram chips if you try to install in the front- and collides with the mobo back port heatsink if you try to put it in the back). Even so with the 1 fan, the noctua is soo good at cooling and zen 3 is soo efficient that this chip runs COLD! And the noctua is near silent most of the time, seems like a fantastic pairing to me.NEVER INTEL EVER AGAIN!!After swearing off AMD in 2008, I am back. I still hate their GPU drivers so I am still sticking to nvidia for GPU's forever and ever, but the processors from AMD are awesome again. If you need the horsepower the 5900x is pricey but absolutely worth it.I will NEVER buy INTEL EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER AGAIN!well...at least until they are clearly the better processor again... (probably with alder lake lol)I have commitment issues, but it's good way to be in the tech world I guess, and you should be like that too. And please understand that the 7nm vs intel 14nm is not understood by common folks very well. It's like the bit wars from snes\sega genesis. Intel measures differently. Their 10nm is likely to pack far more transistors in an inch then AMD\TSMC's 7 could ever hope to. It might even be pretty close to a TSMC 5nm (we'll see). So don't buy based on NM numbers that are just like marketing fluff now. Buy based on the REAL performance and efficiency numbers\benchmarks.But for now?Yes the 7nm zen 3 IS superior to intels 14nm tech, and I am very happy with my purchase. AMD pulled it off and I never thought they could. I am delighted to have been proven wrong.