PC Gamer Presents - PC Hardware Handbook - May 2018

As an upgrade, a budget chip is a tricky
concept. We’ve been recommending the
Intel Pentium G4600 for our budget
build for the best part of a year, but
when it comes to an upgrade, we can’t
really recommend a last-gen CPU that
slots into a last-gen motherboard. So
instead of tying ourselves in knots
trying to predict which platform you’re
upgrading from, we’ve picked a chip
that offers strong performance at a
great price point. The Ryzen 3 1300X
may not have the headline-grabbing
thread count of the top-of-the-range
1800X, but this is still an unlocked
quad-core chip for not much cash.
Talking of cost, you’ll need to buy an
AM4 motherboard to use it, and
possibly some DDR4 memory to go
with it, if your current system is a little

AMD RYZEN 3

1300X
http://www.amd.com

Chip

Cores/

Threads X265

Cinebench

R15 Single

Cinebench R15

Multi

Fry Render Power

Draw Idle

Power

Draw Load Price

Intel Core i9-7980XE 18/36 41.12 184 3,331 64 66 258 £1,668

MD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16/32 38.29 167 3,012 84 91 271 £999

Intel Core i9-7900X 10/20 38.15 180 2,218 94 86 223 £827

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X 12/24 35.39 152 2,308 127 67 243 £799

Intel Core i7-7820X 8/16 30.45 194 1,741 122 83 197 £496

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 8/16 27.89 159 1,612 161 56 182 £450

Intel Core i7-8700K 6/12 30.65 205 1,553 133 65 198 £336

AMD Ryzen 7 1700X 8/16 26.81 154 1,542 172 57 143 £329

Intel Core i7-7700K 4/8 20.68 194 970 225 44 110 £296

AMD Ryzen 7 1700 8/16 24.12 147 1,406 178 47 115 £290

AMD Ryzen 5 1600X 6/12 22.18 159 1,223 226 45 115 £250

Intel Core i5-7600K 4/4 15.86 179 663 346 44 103 £206

Intel Core i5-8400 6/6 22.24 172 956 231 44 123 £183

AMD Ryzen 5 1500X 4/8 15.85 154 807 329 42 101 £189

AMD Ryzen 5 1400 4/8 13.61 131 693 380 55 93 £169

AMD Ryzen 3 1300X 4/4 12.64 139 550 462 56 95 £130

PROCESSOR BENCHMARKS

long in the tooth. So

that £130 price tag

isn’t the whole

story, but this is

still a good

value

proposition,

with a decent upgrade

path of its own, which is always

worth considering at the budget end of

the scale. The retail chip comes with

the Wraith cooler as well, which does a

fine job of keeping it cool while hitting

the 3.7GHz turbo, so no immediate

need to grab a separate all-in-one to get

the most from this chip. This is an

upgrade path that represents

significantly less outlay than the others

we’ve mentioned, but won’t struggle too

hard to run the latest games.

TOTAL

£130

BUDGET

A CHIP THAT OFFERS STRONG

PERFORMANCE AT A GREAT

PRICE POINT

Feature

TODAY’S BEST UPGRADES