AMD Ryzen 7 2700, Ryzen 5 2600 and StoreMI Review

Today We have the follow-up review of the Ryzen 7 2700 and the Ryzen 5 2600 CPUs. These are AMD’s lower wattage versions of the new Pinnacle Ridge eight and six-core CPUs. As mentioned in the Ryzen 7 2700X review, AMD has successfully raised the clock speeds, lowered latency, and improved memory speeds/compatibility with its updated Zen+ architecture. I’m sure this is going to show in the Ryzen 7 2700 and Ryzen 5 2600 as well since all four CPUs are based on the same Global Foundries’ 12LP process.

We will also spend some time going over AMD’s new StoreMI technology, which in a nutshell is a simple convenient way to speed up your existing set-up, without having to reinstall your operating system. Here a few key points from AMD on the subject:

AMD StoreMI is a powerful tool for PC enthusiasts that want to improve load times, boot times, file management, and system responsiveness.

  • Maybe you installed Windows to a hard drive, but don’t want to reinstall anything to get SSD-like performance: StoreMI can help.
  • Maybe you have a large library of files across several drives, and want it all under one drive letter: AMD StoreMI can help.
  • Or maybe you wish the hard drive with your games could get you into the match at SSD speeds: StoreMI can help.

As you add more and faster drives to your PC, AMD StoreMI technology automatically pairs your most-used files with the fastest storage for peak performance. You can also use up to 2GB of RAM as a last-level cache for ultra-fast data.

To top it all of the StoreMI software is free, the only requirement is a 400-series chipset. We’ll see later on exactly how this works and what benefits you might get from using it.

Specifications and Features

Looking at the specifications table below, we see the new Ryzen+ CPU is produced using the 12 nm FinFET process and has 4.8 billion transistors on a 213 mm² die. AMD is still using solder between the die and IHS on the Ryzen CPUs for improved thermal transfer. Both CPUs are equipped with two CPU Complexes (CCX) with 16 MB shared L3 Cache and 512 MB L2 Cache per core.

The Ryzen 7 2700 has a base frequency of 3.2 GHz and a maximum boost of 4.1 GHz with a 65 W TDP. The core speed is up slightly from its predecessors when comparing to the Ryzen 7 1700’s base frequency of 3.0 GHz and a maximum boost of 3.7 GHz but AMD has managed to keep it in the same power envelope of 65 W TDP. During stress testing, I noticed an all core, heavy load, boost which maxed out at 3.4 GHz. The Ryzen 5 2600 has a base frequency of 3.4 GHz and a maximum boost of 3.9 GHz with a 65 W TDP which is another core speed improvement over its predecessor. The Ryzen 5 2600’s full load, all core boost was a bit more erratic during stress testing. It reached a top speed of 3.675 GHz and on the low end, it was dropping to 3.5 GHz but mostly it hovered around 3.6 GHz. AMD’s new Precision boost 2.0 definitely leverages more of the CPU when comparing these to the original Ryzen CPUs but not quite as much boost as the XFR2 equipped ZEN+ CPUs which were both boosting to 4.0 GHz.

Windows 10 is the officially supported platform for the Ryzen CPUs and Windows 7 is possible with the right drivers added during installation. I have managed to install Windows 7 on the MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC so it is possible.

Specifications below supplied by AMD.

CPUAMD Ryzen 7 2700AMD Ryzen 5 2600
# of Cores8 (2 CCX: 4+4)6 (2 CCX: 3+3)
# of Threads1612
Base Clock Speed3.2 GHz3.4 GHz
Boost Clock Speed4.1 GHz3.9 GHz
Instruction Set64-bit64-bit
Instruction Set ExtensionsSSE 4.1/4.2/4a, AVX2, SHASSE 4.1/4.2/4a, AVX2, SHA
Lithography12 nm FinFET12 nm FinFET
Transistor Count4.8 billion4.8 billion
TDP65 W65 W
Thermal Solution SpecSolderSolder
L1 Cache64 KB I-Cache
32 KB D-Cache per Core
64 KB I-Cache
32 KB D-Cache per Core
L2 Cache4 MB (512 KB per core)3 MB (512 KB per core)
L3 Cache16 MB Shared16 MB Shared
Memory Specifications
Max Memory Size128 GB128 GB
Memory TypesDDR4-2933DDR4-2933
# of Memory Channels22
ECC Memory SupportNoNo

The table below is a list of the second generation Ryzen desktop CPU lineup. As I mentioned in the Sneak Peek article AMD has limited the number of available SKUs this time around. You won’t see a 2800X and the four core CPUs have been replaced by the new APUs with Radeon Vega graphics. All CPUs are overclockable, assuming you buy a motherboard with a chipset capable of doing so.

Ryzen 7 2700XRyzen 7 2700Ryzen 5 2600XRyzen 5 2600
MSRPUSD $329USD $299USD $229USD $199
Silicon12 nm “Pinnacle Ridge”
SocketAM4
Cores/Threads8-core/16-thread6-core/12-thread
Clock Speed3.70 GHz3.20 GHz3.60 GHz3.40 GHz
Boost Speed4.35 GHz4.10 GHz4.25 GHz3.90 GHz
CoolerWraith PrismWraith SpireWraith SpireWraith Stealth
L2 Cache512 KB per core
L3 Cache16 MB shared
UnlockedYes
New FeaturesXFR 2.0 and Precision Boost 2.0
TDP105 W65 W95 W65 W
MemoryDual-Channel DDR4-2933 JEDEC up to 64 GB
PCIePCIe Gen 3.0 x16 PEG (x16 or x8 + x8) + x4 M.2 + x4 Chipset
SoC Connectivity2xSATA 6 Gbps, 4x USB 3.1, 1xM.2- PCIe 32 Gbps
ChipsetAMD 300 and 400 Series

AMD StoreMI Technology

StoreMI is something new that AMD has developed to help with that age-old problem. Your Operating System is on a large (slow) hard drive along with all your game files and you really don’t want to reinstall everything from the ground up. What this software does is allow you to just install a faster drive into the system such as an SSD or M.2 drive and StoreMI can create one tiered drive out of your original hard disk drive and the added faster drive. StoreMI pairs your most-used files with the fastest storage for peak performance. In essence, this should give your old Operating System a boost up to SSD-like speeds. Store MI also has many other uses/combinations such as a non-bootable drive which houses just your game files, set up StoreMI with an added SSD and improve your load times while gaming. Here’s a couple of charts from AMD’s StoreMI User guide to give an idea of setup flow and some of the different bootable/ non-bootable possibilities.

StoreMI Bootable

 

StoreMI Non-bootable

How Does StoreMI Work?

During the installation process, StoreMI analyzes all of your storage media such as fast NVMe drives and SSDs to traditional HDD’s, it even includes your RAM. After a reboot, StoreMI has your media prioritized from fastest to slowest. After the utility is run, StoreMI has incorporated the fast media with the slower media into what your system sees as one large disk. In essence, it has created a large, virtual RAID 0 which uses the combined capacity of both disks, unlike traditional RAID setups which require identical drives.

Once installed the StoreMI software continually analyzes your system and allocates the most frequently used files to the faster tier of the virtual drive. For example, the Windows boot files have been migrated to the faster storage which significantly decreases boot times. StoreMI is continually monitoring your activity day to day and automatically prioritizes the files and data you use the most to the faster storage making it quickly accessible to the system. This “learning” results in a more responsive system with faster boot times, accelerated application launches and game loading times. If I were to compare it to anything it would be most like a software controlled Hybrid HDD.

My StoreMI Experience

The first thing I need to say here is that going into this I was very skeptical of StoreMI’s practicality and usefulness. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome.

To start, it would be worthwhile for anyone who is interested in using StoreMI to read the StoreMI User guide first. It’s not that it was that difficult to set up but like anything else, it has limitations and best practices so looking through the guide will help avoid any unwanted outcome or loss of Data. AMD has also put together an FAQ which may prove useful as well.

Starting with a 2 TB WD Blue 5400 RPM HDD which has the Operating System install on it, I had forgotten how slow an HDD can be. This will be paired with a completely blank, unformatted, 250 GB Samsung 860 EVO M.2 drive to use as the “tier” drive. A couple of things worth mention here is that Windows 10 doesn’t support drives 2TB or larger as boot drives unless configured in UEFI mode and any SSD used for a tier drive has a limit of 256 GB. If the tier drive is larger than 256 GB, a second partition will be created with any capacity over the 256 GB limit of the StoreMI software.

I’ll put AMD’s checklist here:

Check the following prior to upgrading your system to StoreMI:
• Your system meets the minimum configuration: AMD socket AM4 processor and 4xx series motherboard with a minimum of 4G RAM (6G RAM to support RAM cache).
• Secure Boot is NOT enabled. Consult your system documentation for further details.
• There are no SSD caching or AMD software RAID solutions installed.
• The BIOS SATA disk settings are set to AHCI, not RAID and there is no software RAID installed on the system.
• Microsoft’s chkdisk or other third-party disk scan tools run error free on the boot drive
• A new unused SSD or HDD is available
• If wishing to use bootable tiers > 2TB in size, the system must be configured to boot in UEFI mode with a UEFI bootable Windows OS installation as Windows 10 does not support > 2TB boot drives in legacy boot mode.

Installation of the software is pretty straightforward, you may receive a warning that JAVA 1.7 or higher is required, just say “OK” and StoreMI will download and install it for you. After installation is complete the system requires a reboot. Once the system was rebooted, it seemed to take Windows forever to start, I’m assuming the newly installed StoreMI was doing some work in the background.

Setting up the tiered drive was quite easy, start the StoreMI utility using the desktop shortcut that was created during installation and you’ll be greeted with a GUI asking me what you would like to do. In this case, create bootable StoreMI was selected.

You will then be greeted with a window which lists the two drives in the system. If there are multiple drives in the system a pop-up menu will appear for drive selection. There is also an option to add 2 GB of ram cache which was not selected. Then, hit create and let the software do its thing.

After the StoreMI software was done it urges you to reboot the system and warns of potential data loss if you do not. The reboot went smooth and I was back into Windows shortly.

At this point, it’s a good idea to check disk management in Windows to make sure the StoreMI drive has picked up the extra space from your added SSD. If it has then your new “C:” drive will be extended past its original size and include the added capacity of the tiered drive. For example, if you used a 1 TB HDD and added a 120 GB SSD you should see a total capacity over the original drive capacity such as 1038 GB. In this case that didn’t happen, the original “C:” drive had unallocated space attached to it. It was easy enough to fix by right clicking on the “C:” drive and selecting “Extend Volume”. In the extend dialog box, leave the defaults as-is if using all the capacity and click next.

The “C:” drive was extended to incorporate the added capacity and my StoreMI volume was complete. Reboot to seal the deal.

It was discovered after installation that the OS wasn’t installed in UEFI which is likely to blame for the StoreMI utility not automatically extending the volume since the “new” drive would be over 2 TB. After blowing it all away and starting from scratch with the OS installed in UEFI mode, StoreMI set everything up without any additional steps. The resulting disk manager looked like this. As you can see the “C:” drive is now fully extended to incorporate the extra 250 GB SSD.

The StoreMI utility works in both Legacy and UEFI very well as both were tested, the drawback of Legacy is that the 250 GB Samsung SSD was partitioned off to stay within the 2 TB limit of Windows 10 leaving 43 GB of unallocated space. If your HDD is limited to 1 TB or 1.5 TB then this won’t be an issue in either mode.

This was where it got fun, using a stopwatch We compared boot times before and after using StoreMI. Starting right from power-on to Windows 10 desktop it took 56 seconds to boot directly from the HDD. After setting up the StoreMI tiered drive the boot time dropped a full 30 seconds to 26s, that’s right less than half the time to get to the desktop and the fun doesn’t stop there.

In order to compare results, we ran a handful of storage benchmarks which all showed near SSD performance after using StoreMI. In addition, Passmark and PCMark10 benchmarks were run and they both showed dramatic improvements.

AMD StoreMI Results
BeforeAfter

PCMark 10 5228 marks

PCMark 10 6180 marks

Passmark 3707.4

Passmark 5226

Crystal Disk Mark

Crystal Disk Mark

ATTO Benchmark

ATTO Benchmark

AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD Benchmark

As you can see the benefits of using StoreMI speak for themselves and the best part, absolutely free to anyone using an AMD 400 series chipset. For those of you who are using a 300 series chipset, AMD and Enmotus offer a software called Enmotus Fuzedrive for AMD Ryzen but this comes with a small fee of $19.99.

Product Tour

Starting with the packaging: The Ryzen 7 2700 and Ryzen 5 2600 arrived in the same bundle from AMD as the “X” CPUs did a grey box containing both CPU and heatsink packages with the Ryzen emblem on it. The R7 2700 and R5 2600 were in their own individual boxes complete with their respective coolers. AMD also included a double-sided leaflet revealing some info about both CPUs and their Wraith coolers.

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On the inside, we find the CPU’s in a plastic shell containing small black boxes along with either a Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 5 case badge. The coolers are in a separate box with plastic holders to keep them from shifting during transport. Below we can see the difference between the Wraith Spire and Stealth coolers. The Spire has a bit more meat to it as you can see. Last up are a couple shots of the CPUs and all those pins.

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Here’s a couple of pictures with the two different coolers installed. This will give you an idea of their size, the Stealth which is on the left will be fine with most memory but the Spire would need to be installed with the “AMD” tab facing the back of the motherboard if you wanted to populate all four memory slots.

AMD Wraith Spire, Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7, G.Skill SniperX

AMD Wraith Stealth, Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7, G.Skill FlareX

Benchmarks

All benchmarks were run with the motherboard being set to optimized defaults (outside of some memory settings which had to be configured manually). When “stock” is mentioned along with the clock speed, this does not include any boost or turbo options. I disabled these in the BIOS to keep core clocks consistent and remove any variance that the boost options may introduce. I would also like to add that both AMD CPUs were tested with their respective included Wraith coolers. This is also true for all tests performed at 4.0 GHz later in the head to head benchmarks and gaming benchmarks. One final note here, We have also updated all the testing for the Ryzen 7 1700X to reflect the BIOS and driver improvements AMD has made since the launch in 2017.

AMD Ryzen7 2700
AMD Ryzen 5 2600AMD Ryzen 7 2700XAMD Ryzen 7 1700Intel i7- 8700K
MotherboardGigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming7 WiFiGigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming7 WiFiGigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming7 WiFiASUS X370 ROG Crosshair VI HeroASUS ROG Strix X370-E Gaming
MemoryG.Skill FlareX 2×8 GB DDR4-3200 MHz 14-14-14-34G.Skill FlareX 2×8 GB DDR4-3200 MHz 14-14-14-34G.Skill FlareX 2×8 GB DDR4-3200 MHz 14-14-14-34G.Skill FlareX 2×8 GB DDR4-3200 MHz 14-14-14-34G.Skill FlareX 2×8 GB DDR4-3200 MHz 14-14-14-34
Graphics CardASUS ROG GTX 1080 Ti ASUS ROG GTX 1080 Ti StrixASUS ROG GTX 1080 Ti StrixASUS ROG GTX 1080 Ti StrixASUS ROG GTX 1080 Ti Strix
HDD StoreMI Samsung 250 GB 860 EVOSamsung 512 GB 950 ProSamsung 120 GB 840 EVOSamsung 512 GB 950 Pro
Game StorageStoreMI Samsung T5 1 TB Portable SSDSamsung T5 1 TB Portable SSDSamsung T5 1 TB Portable SSDSamsung T5 1 TB Portable SSD
Power SupplySuper Flower 1000W PlatinumSuper Flower 1000W PlatinumSuper Flower 1000W PlatinumSuper Flower 1000W PlatinumSuper Flower 1000W Platinum
CoolingAMD Wraith SpireAMD Wraith StealthAMD Wraith PrismEKWB 360 Predator XLCEKWB 360 Predator XLC
OSWindows 10 x64Windows 10 x64Windows 10 x64Windows 10 x64Windows 10 x64

Benchmarks Used

CPU Tests
  • AIDA64 Engineer CPU, FPU, and Memory Tests
  • Cinebench R11.5 and R15
  • HWBot x265 1080p Benchmark
  • POVRay
  • SuperPi 1M/32M
  • WPrime 32M/1024M
  • 7Zip

All CPU tests were run at their default settings unless otherwise noted.

Gaming Tests

All game tests were run at 1920×1080 and 2560×1440 with all CPUs at 4.0 GHz. Please see our testing procedures for details on in-game settings.

  • 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme
  • Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
  • Metro Last Light
  • Ashes of the Singularity
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider

 As was mentioned in my previous review of the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X, it was found that HPET can have a significant impact on the Intel i7 8700K gaming results. These results have been updated for this review ensuring HPET was disabled for all CPUs. I would also like to add that the Spectre and Meltdown patches are active on all but the Ryzen 7 1700X results.

AIDA64 Tests

AIDA64 Cache and Memory Benchmark
AIDA64 Cache and Memory Benchmark
CPUReadWriteCopyLatency
Ryzen 7 2700 @ 3.2 GHz49290477934456665.8
Ryzen 5 2600 @ 3.4 GHz49261476294526965.9
Ryzen 7 2700X @ 3.7 GHz49287476514539268.9
Ryzen 7 1700X @ 3.4 GHz48648484994492974.0
Intel i7-8700K @ 3.7 GHz42675453934219146.8

As you can see the Ryzen is working much better with ram than it was a year ago but that latency is still quite high when compared to Intel. What I did notice though is the latency is better with the Ryzen CPUs that were tested with HPET disabled, there were a few instances throughout the testing where the HPET setting did make a difference but not always for the better. Up next the AIDA64 CPU benchmarks.

AIDA64 CPU Tests
AIDA64 CPU Tests
CPUQueenPhotoWorxZlibAESHash
Ryzen 7 2700 @ 3.2 GHz7435822223596.95675119323
Ryzen 5 2600 @ 3.4 GHz6169521757479.94563415398
Ryzen 7 2700X @ 3.7 GHz8585323874699.86621022338
Ryzen 7 1700X @ 3.4 GHz7872323595618.66004520502
Intel i7-8700K @ 3.7 GHz6222025397493.2252906362

As you’ll see throughout the “stock” testing the higher base clock of 3.7 GHz gives the Ryzen 2700X an obvious advantage over the rest of the Ryzen collection.

AIDA64 FPU Tests
AIDA64 FPU Tests
CPUVP8JuliaMandelSinJulia
Ryzen 7 2700 @ 3.2 GHz7015333411746910964
Ryzen 5 2600 @ 3.4 GHz718226575139218739
Ryzen 7 2700X @ 3.7 GHz7475385532021012676
Ryzen 7 1700X @ 3.4 GHz7410353601853111633
Intel i7-8700K @ 3.7 GHz765947205254015402

The floating point tests seem to be a bit of a weak spot for the Ryzen-based CPUs even with the extra threads they were left behind in all but the SinJulia test where even the 3.4 GHz Ryzen5 2600 had a large lead.

Real World Tests

Next, we will move on to something a bit more tangible/productivity-based with compression, rendering, and encoding benchmarks.

Cinebench R11.5/R15, POVRay, x265 (HWBot), 7Zip
Cinebench R11.5/R15, POVRay, x265 (HWBot), 7Zip – Raw Data
CPUR11.5R15POVRayx2657Zip
Ryzen 7 2700 @ 3.2 GHz14.2214743002.2436.7739499
Ryzen 5 2600 @ 3.4 GHz11.8711882416.6529.732795
Ryzen 7 2700X @ 3.7 GHz17.816913368.9443.3143912
Ryzen 7 1700X @ 3.4 GHz16.7515213118.4238.2439261
Intel i7-8700K @ 3.7 GHz13,4212392593,1542.5736116

Here again, the extra threads gave the Ryzen 7 CPUs a bit of an advantage over the other CPUs in all but HWBot’s X265 benchmark. It’s hard to compare the i7 8700k to the Ryzen 5 2600 with a 300 MHz clock speed difference, not really an “apples to apples” type scenario.

Pi-Based Tests

Moving on from all the multi-threaded goodness above, we get some Pi and Prime number based tests. SuperPi and WPrime, specifically.

SuperPi and wPrime Benchmarks
SuperPi and wPrime Benchmarks – Raw Data
CPUSuperPi 1MSuperPi 32MwPrime 32MwPrime 1024M
Ryzen 7 2700 @ 3.2 GHz13.212712.4564.155105.912
Ryzen 5 2600 @ 3.4 GHz12.516676.0154.64132.957
Ryzen 7 2700X @ 3.7 GHz11.454612.6173.46692.37
Ryzen 7 1700X @ 3.4 GHz12.237678.933.85799.373
Intel i7-8700K @ 3.7 GHz9.907533.124.205116.249

Clock speeds and thread counts play a big role in these last tests. The results will be better interpreted when all CPUs are running the same speed.

Game Results

As far as the gaming benchmarks go, tests were done at 1920 x 1080p and 2560 x 1440p according to our Graphics Testing Procedure which was linked earlier. The CPUs are all at 4.0 GHz using the 3200 MHz FlareX to keep the field as even as possible.

1080p Gaming Results
1440p Gaming Results

As you can see, having the HPET disabled did give the Intel i7 8700K a boost in most tests, specifically the AOTS benchmark pushing it from 78 FPS to 95 FPS which is quite considerable. AMD also benefitted from this when compared to the Ryzen 7 2700X results which were done with HPET enabled. For the most part, the results between the CPUs are pretty flat compared to each other. AMD still manages to hold its own very well in both the 1080p and 1440p tests.

On to the synthetic benchmark, 3DMark Fire Strike, you can see the results are very close across the board except for the Physics test. The added cores of the 2700 and 2700X gave them a big advantage here but the Ryzen 5 2600 came in slightly behind the 8700K.

3DMark Firestrike Extreme Benchmark

Head to Head

In this round of testing all CPUs were set to a static frequency of 4.0 GHz and all were using the same FLAREX, 3200 MHz RAM from G.Skill. This was done to even the playing field as much as possible and give a realistic impression of performance at matched speeds regardless of what a CPUs maximum frequency potential may be. Keep in mind the AMD Ryzen 2600 and Intel i-7 8700K are both six-core, twelve thread CPUs making them the most closely matched out of the five.

So let’s see how they stacked up.

AIDA64 CPU Tests
AIDA64 CPU Tests
CPUQueenPhotoWorxZlibAESHash
Ryzen 7 2700 @ 4.0 GHz9285824368747.37159624155
Ryzen 5 2600 @ 4.0 GHz7278723039564.65214118115
Ryzen 7 2700X @ 4.0 GHz9270024624753.17105424147
Ryzen 7 1700X @ 4.0 GHz9080524367717.66965223782
Intel i7-8700K @ 4.0 GHz6688627302530271866839

The Ryzen CPUs have always been fairly strong in the AIDA64 CPU tests, except for PhotoWorxx, that’s where even the lower core count couldn’t hold the 8700K back. Aside from that, the Ryzen 2600 gave it a good run for the money taking 4/5 of the CPU tests from its Intel competitor.

The FPU testing, on the other hand, is where the 8700K really digs in and shows its strength. Despite the fact that it has a thread disadvantage, the 8700K topped the eight-core Ryzens by over 20% in the Julia and Mandel tests exposing one of the weaknesses in the Ryzen architecture. For everyday tasks, this really doesn’t seem to hold the AMD Ryzen back. You can also see some weak spots across both sets of AIDA64’s test suites where the Intel CPU is scoring much lower than its Ryzen competitors.

AIDA64 FPU Tests
AIDA64 FPU Tests
CPUVP8JuliaMandelSinJulia
Ryzen 7 2700 @ 4.0 GHz8057416732184613710
Ryzen 5 2600 @ 4.0 GHz8158312511638010284
Ryzen 7 2700X @ 4.0 GHz8595.6410172128713494
Ryzen 7 1700X @ 4.0 GHz7866407892064913197
Intel i7-8700K @ 4.0 GHz823350745273065807

In our compression, rendering, and encoding tests you can see the Ryzen 5 2600 putting up a good fight against the i7-8700K once again. All the tests look as they should with Intel taking the crown for the HWBot X265 benchmark. I would also like to draw attention to the Cinebench 11.5 test results. I noticed this during testing that the Ryzen CPUs that were tested with HPET enabled got a 5% boost in this benchmark. This holds true when comparing the Ryzen 5 2600 to my previous 2600X results as well. The HPET setting appears to have little effect in the rest of the benchmarks.

Cinebench R11.5/R15, POVRay, x265 (HWBot), 7Zip
Cinebench R11.5/R15, POVRay, x265 (HWBot), 7Zip – Raw Data
CPUR11.5R15POVRayx2657Zip
Ryzen 7 2700 @ 4.0 GHz18.6418273742.3545.0346818
Ryzen 5 2600 @ 4.0 GHz14.3413902824.2834.437227
Ryzen 7 2700X @ 4.0 GHz19.5118283711.2545.0146403
Ryzen 7 1700X @ 4.0 GHz19.6317693643.9844.3344333
Intel i7-8700K @ 4.0 GHz14.4213032792.345.4238505

The SuperPi benchmarks have never been a strong point for AMD and again this shows here, on the other hand, in WPrime the six-core Ryzen is only slightly trailing the 8700K. The extra cores of the Ryzen 7 CPUs give them an obvious advantage in this last benchmark as WPrime is very thread friendly.

SuperPi and wPrime Benchmarks
SuperPi and wPrime Benchmarks – Raw Data
CPUSuperPi 1MSuperPi 32MwPrime 32MwPrime 1024M
Ryzen 7 2700 @ 4.0 GHz10.641580.6673.31384.968
Ryzen 5 2600 @ 4.0 GHz10.587580.3583.968112.886
Ryzen 7 2700X @ 4.0 GHz10.52581.5883.10986.122
Ryzen 7 1700X @ 4.0 GHz10.42586.4773.76685.06
Intel i7-8700K @ 4.0 GHz9.204477.9773.89108.124

Power Consumption and Temperatures

In the graph below we tested power use of the system across multiple situations from idle, to Prime 95 Small FFT (with FMA3/AVX). The Ryzen 7 2700 and Ryzen 5 2600 systems, both pulled the most power during the Prime 95 small FFT test with 231 W and 208 W respectively. Keep in mind this is full system power usage.

Ryzen 7 2700 and Ryzen 5 2600 CPU Power Consumption Stock Vs 4.0 GHz

Temperatures were controlled with the included Wraith coolers but that only holds true at stock, as you can see even then the Ryzen 7 2600 with the Stealth cooler was reaching 80 °C during stress testing. Attaining a “stable” 4.0 GHz OC with the included coolers proved to be impossible. I was able to benchmark at 4.0 GHz with the Wraith coolers but that was the end of their cooling abilities. As you can see from the graph below, the temperatures are well above the comfort zone and the lack of cooling resulted in additional voltage needed to get the stability tests to run even for a minute. It was just long enough to get the data you see below before the test would crash or was terminated due to the heat. For these results, the Ryzen 7 2700 CPU required 1.35 V to run even for a few minutes. Compare this to 1.3 V for stable testing when I switched to the EKWB Predator 360 XLC which was used for the overclocking segment of this review. The coolers are good for stock operation and even mild overclocks but if you intend to push the speed into the 4.0 GHz zone I would recommend getting an aftermarket cooler.

Ryzen 7 2700 and Ryzen 5 2600 CPU Temperatures Stock Vs 4.0 GHz

Pushing the Limits

Ryzen 7 2700

Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for, “so how fast will they go?” We have a few pictures to post here. I  switched over to my EKWB Predator 360 XLC closed loop cooler for improved cooling at this point. The additional cooling helped tremendously and I was able to run Prime95 on the Ryzen 7 2700 at 4.1 GHz at 1.4V. That was the end of the line for stability on this CPU within voltage limits of 1.45V. We tried multiple tests between 4.15 GHz and 4.2 GHz but the stability tests would lock up within minutes, in the end, 4.1 GHz appeared to be the limit for stability on this CPU. Moving on to the maximum overclock regardless of stability, 4.175 GHz was the highest core speed achievable at 1.45 V. Moving up to 4.2 GHz the benchmarks were hit and miss but Cinebench R15, which is one of the harder benchmarks, was impossible to pass. The Ryzen 7 2700 CPU that we tested quickly ran out of gas once it was pushed past 4.0 GHz, moving from 4.0 to 4.1 GHz required a voltage increase from 1.3 V to 1.4 V and any stability beyond that, even with good cooling, wasn’t achievable. Its sibling, the Ryzen 7 2700X, on the other hand, managed to push well past that with a maximum overclock of 4.3 GHz tested with AIDA64 for stability. Included below is a shot of the stability test at 4.1 GHz and one of the benchmark results with the CPU running 4.175 GHz.

AMD Ryzen 7 2700 @ 4.1 GHz, Prime95 stability test
AMD Ryzen 7 2700 @ 4.175 GHz

Ryzen 5 2600

This little sweetheart behaved much better than its eight-core sibling. I was quite impressed with the low voltage, stable overclocks I could achieve and have to say that to-date, it’s likely the best specimen I have had.

I started with attaining a good stable 4.0 GHz setting with the improved cooling offered by the EK CLC. After a bit of fiddling it settled in at 4.0 GHz with 1.275 V set in BIOS and as you see in the screenshot below, HWInfo64 reports just 1.25 V under load. If any of you are curious as to the testing methods, I use Prime 95 with a custom setting of 128k FFT run in place. This method really hammers the CPU and will show instability within minutes. I ran the test for 30 minutes, which to me is enough for a general idea of stability, some slight tweaking may still be needed but the voltage level is very close.

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 @ 4.0 GHz, 1.275 V

For a 24/7 maximum overclock, it appears that 4.2 GHz is the sweet spot with this particular CPU. With another 30 minutes of Prime 95, the CPU only needed 1.35 V set in BIOS (1.325 V under load) to hold 4.2 GHz stable.

I tried multiple combinations of LLC and Core voltage to get 4.3 GHz but it just wasn’t going to happen, at least with stability. At 1.45 V with a fairly high Load Line setting the CPU could run Cinebench R15 and all other benchmarks but it was nowhere near stable.

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 @ 4.2 GHz, 1.35 V
AMD Ryzen 5 2600 4.3 GHz Benchmarks

Conclusion

The AMD Ryzen 2600 and 2700 behaved much like I expected them too. After all, they are the same silicon as their “X” counterparts only binned for better wattage. Overall they have a slightly lower ceiling for overclocking which was quite apparent with the Ryzen 7 2700 when compared to the 2700X which made it up to 4.3 GHz Vs the 4.1 GHz the Ryzen 7 2700 was able to achieve with the same cooling.

The included AMD Wraith coolers are adequate for running at stock speeds or even mild overclocks but if you’re going to try and push for 4.0 GHz and up you will need additional, aftermarket cooling to keep the CPUs under control. As it is, they are more than enough to keep the CPU within its design limits, these are only 65 W CPUs after all.

The full Ryzen CPU line is already on the shelves at most of the e-tailers. Currently, the Ryzen 7 2700 is listing at $294.99 and the Ryzen 5 2600 is available for $189.99. The new Ryzen “X” CPUs are also available for ~ $30 more than their “non-X” counterparts. Comparing these prices to the Intel i7-8700K at $349.99 makes the Ryzen 5 2600 a very attractive option at almost half the price of the similarly equipped Intel CPU, price to performance is just one of AMD’s strong points.

I have to say that the AMD StoreMI software was quite impressive, the team at Enmotus did a very fine job of putting it together. Aside from the improved benchmark results, the whole system worked more smoothly. Boot time improved significantly, the desktop was more responsive, no waiting for windows to open while the HDD was searching, which is how it ran prior to using StoreMI. If you’re one of those individuals still using a large HDD for storage, your Operating System or both this software will definitely make life easier for you. As I mentioned earlier it’s free for anyone running a 400 series chipset which, to me, makes it hard not to take advantage of the benefits it has to offer. A big thumbs up and Overclockers Approved!

Click here to find out what this means.
Click here to find out what this means.

Shawn Jennings – Johan45

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Avatar of bassnut
bassnut

Premium Member

2,532 messages 14 likes

Thanks Johan ..... nice wright up as always.

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DaveB

Senior Member

2,934 messages 290 likes

Thanks Johan ..... nice wright up as always.

That's "write up".

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D
Dolk

I once overclocked an Intel

6,877 messages 14 likes

I would really like to see StorageMI have its own article. I really like the idea of a deep learning file system on my system. So lets see the before and afters on a single setup using a mix of drives.

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Avatar of Alaric
Alaric

New Member

8,237 messages 7 likes

Well done. AMD is on a roll, still. StoreMI is a nifty little feature. With 53 GB of music and 840 GB of DVR recordings on a 4 TB HDD I could probably put that to good use. Team Red continues to tempt me with performance and innovation.

Semi related topic. I'm looking forward to this.
AMD.JPG

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EarthDog

Gulper Nozzle Co-Owner

76,511 messages 3,245 likes

Buy a hybrid drive. Unless you use the ram as part of it, its not much different. ;)

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Alaric

New Member

8,237 messages 7 likes

I meant I'm looking forward to the webinar. LOL

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m
marcelospera

New Member

1 messages 0 likes

I'm curious about this technology but I have my fears... I have a 240GB SSD drive just for Windows 10, another 480 GB SSD for rapid access files, like games, and a 2 TB HD for large files that not need high speed, like movies or music. I do a lot of testing on my computer and my Windows frequently became unstable. Because of that, I frequently need to restore my partition image to return to a stable system and that is the problem. I don't know what StoreMI would do if I use a restore partition software (I use Backupper Standard Free, excellent program). If StoreMI move files from one drive to another all the time, the restore process can destroy information that was saved on another drive when I saved that partition image. I believe that StoreMI must be incompatible with partition restoration process. Or am I wrong?

Thanks for your great article!

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Avatar of Johan45
Johan45

Benching Team Leader Super Moderator

18,290 messages 167 likes

I can't be 100% certain since I never tested it but I would think that if your software can back up a RAID then it should work to back up the StoreMI virtual disk. They do have instructions about cloning in their FAQ In your situation, I'm not really sure where StoreMI would benefit you.

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