AMD Ryzen 3 Summit Ridge 1200 BOX 14 nm (YD1200BBAEBOX)

The missing piece of the puzzle

First, AMD released the flagship sixteen-thread Ryzen 7 processors, then the mid-price eight- and twelve-thread Ryzen 5, and only at the very end the low-cost quad-core Ryzen 3 without SMT technology support (that is, the number of cores is equal to the number of threads). The entry-level Ryzen 3 is the $110 1200, which is cheaper than four-threaded Core i3s ($120), not to mention quad-core Core i5s ($180). The performance of four physical cores is approximately equal to six virtual threads.

Big step forward

The Ryzen 3 1200 is based on the 14nm Zen architecture (for comparison, the AM3+ processors were 32nm and the FM2+ were 28nm). A more thorough technical process made it possible to fit one and a half times more computing power within the framework of the previous 65 W heat pack. The only pity is that by default the Ryzen 3 1200 operates at a relatively low frequency of 3.1 – 3.4 GHz.

Mandatory Overclocking

Of course, the unlocked multiplier allows you to resort to overclocking (up to 3.9 – 4 GHz). But this will require a more expensive motherboard: on the B350 or X370 chipset, while the low-cost A320 lacks overclocking functionality. In order not to waste time on overclocking, you can immediately buy a slightly higher-frequency version of the Ryzen 3 1300X. Ryzen 3 chips, like other already released Zen, do not have integrated graphics (models with graphics will appear only in 2018), so it’s worth buying as the basis of a gaming PC with a discrete graphics card with a total low-cost of $600-700.