AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 16-Core, 32-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor

First off, yes, this CPU was very hard to get. No time announced for when it would go on sale, broken search linking preventing the product page from being found without knowing exactly what to search for, and finally when the listing did go live it said you couldn't order it unless you went to the list of sellers and specifically selected Amazon. Very strange. To make matters worse, the product page only showed the minimal info on launch day so there was no way of knowing if Amazon was going to offer the game bundle or not. Then when they got around to updating the page with the missing info, they added the info direct from AMD implying the game bundle was included. Well, guess what, it's not. I opened a ticket with Amazon support about it and was told they received no game bundle codes from AMD and I should go ask them about it. Um, yeah, sure. And the FAQ on the AMD rewards site specifically says it's on the retailers to distribute the codes. So I and the others who managed to score one of these on launch day are out of luck there. I'm tempted to deduct a star for that but I don't want to take anything away from the CPU itself.Alright, enough complaints about the low stock, strange order process, and misleading game bundle info. The good news is this CPU is every bit as good as the reviews say it is. So far after a solid day of testing I can say it's a crazy fast compute monster that runs cool, stable, and relatively quiet on my MSI MEG X570 Unify motherboard with a Noctua NH-D15 air cooler and 64GB (2x32GB) of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200 C16 memory (CMK64GX4M2E3200C16) overclocked to 3600-18-22-22-42. The other important bits in my system build are a Phanteks Enthoo Luxe case, Seasonic FOCUS GX-850 (SSR-850FX) 80+ Gold power supply, EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 (08G-P4-2081-KR) video card, and 1TB Samsung SM961 NVMe SSD running Win10 Pro 1909. You can safely ignore AMD's water cooling recommendation as long as you get a good air cooler and ensure good air flow in your case. Power consumption is amazingly low for such a powerful CPU. Sure, it's going to pull more total power than low and most mid-range CPUs but this is still an extremely efficient processor. Gaming performance is excellent. Maybe not quite as good as Intel's best gaming CPUs but close enough provided you don't game for a living. On the other hand, this thing rules the roost in video encoding. It's amazing. I do a mix of both so this CPU is the perfect balance for me.

TL;DR at the endBought this CPU as an upgrade from my Ryzen 1700. I have a decent x370 motherboard (GIGABYTE Gaming 5), so I was wary about whether or not I should upgrade my motherboard as well; however, after making sure I was on the right bios version to support 3rd gen ryzen, I plopped this bad boy in and was immediately blown away. Gone are the days of CPU bottleneck for my 1080ti. Gone are the days of non-GPU accelerated video rendering and audio exporting. It for sure doubled my speed even with my 1700 overclocked to 3.8 GHz, and there's still more I can get out of it if I were to upgrade my mobo to an x570 board. Nonetheless, this chip is amazing. It's a bit pricey, but I feel like I'll be using this baby for much longer than I used my 1700. The ability to use my old hardware is a HUGE plus.The only con (minor) I noticed was it runs a bit hotter than my 1700, as expected, but it required some cooler tweaking to not have my PC sound like a jet engine 24/7. For context, I am using a corsair h100i v2 AIO cooler. At idle, the chip is between 45-50 ⁰C. It sits around 50⁰C when browsing YouTube and such. During 1080p gaming, games like AC Odyssey (max settings) were pushing it to 64⁰C max in a roughly 22⁰C atmosphere. Because the curves on the corsair link software settings were not set to handle water temps that the chip was producing, the fans were pushing 75% usage at just idle (default fans have 2400ish RPM limit). I had to spend a good hour or so and then some more time during gaming to customize and tweak the fan curve settings. It paid off because now my PC as quiet as possible while having stable temps for both the water and the CPU. I'd also recommend using Ryzen Master to check temps ad 3rd party software, at the moment, aren't reporting correct cpu temps (they show the temps as roughly 5-7⁰ hotter with more usage spikes)TL;DR:- If you invested in a good x370 board (~$180+) for the ryzen 1000 series, this CPU is a very good overall upgrade if you have the money to fork over for it. If not, the 3900x is also a great option (or any of the 3000 CPUs, honestly).- Make sure your cooler can handle the temps and the mobo vrm can deliver enough voltage (most x370s can).- Be prepared to modify settings for your cooling solution as the chip runs hotter than ryzen 1000 CPUs.

Works flaulessly

The best binned chips from the AMD Ryzen 3000 series for desktop users. CPU Temperature control is sensitive as Tdie reports the highest temperature of hottest core out the 16. If the cores are not at around 60*C then they are not boosting to their highest boost frequency. It is important to get good thermal paste like MX-4, PK-3 or NH-H2 to dissipate the heat quickly. I used PK-3 and very please with it. If you set the cores frequency by the CCX you can get a massive 10% boost for multithreaded work. 4.20Ghz is good if your work desires it. 4.35Gz you can reach to 10,000 on Cinebench R20 but CPU Temp jumps to 105*C! yikes. Try to keep workload temps below 80*C which 4.25GHz was ok when using it with the Arctic freezer ii 280 and PK-3 thermal paste. Idle temps are 35-40*C with cores @4.25ghz.The CPU can work with basic potato rosewell thermal paste and a non-PWM cpu cooler but idle temps are at 50*C and boosting is out of the picture when cores jump by 20*C because the thermal paste isn't fast enough to dissipate the heat. Your cores will drop to 2GHz if your cooler can not keep up with 16 core heat! AMD BIOS CPU configuration has an option for eco mode in 45w, 65w, and 90w . The temps only slightly improved with eco-modes, mimicked the same workloads when the cores are thermal throttled.UsingMSI x570 ACE motherboard128GB of Oloy RAM from newegg. If you have memtestx86 errors show up then up the ddr4 voltage by 0.02. Make sure not to pass 1.4v for DDR4 for 24/7 use. Currently around 1.38v with XMP enabled.Please refer to GamerNexus for more CPU and MEM settings on youtube.Have fun rendering and compiling with your High-tier gaming, Mid-tier workstation!