AMD YD270XBGAFBOX Ryzen 7 2700X Processor with Wraith Prism RGB LED Cooler,Black

This is the first time I've gone AMD since the days of Athlon 64.My i5 2500k is really old by today's standards. Even overclocked to the max, it still stutters in intensive web browsing, lightroom, VR and newer games. Time to change.Problem is, the best two mainstream high end chips available today are the 8700k and the 2700x. Which one do I go for?For gaming 8700K will get faster frame rates if you have a 1080ti or game at a lowly 720p, but not by a huge margin. If you game at 1080p the advantage to Intel is marginal, gaming is just as good on both.2700x has more muscle. With a whopping 16 threads you can throw any workload at it and it will chew it up. A massive difference to my 4 core 4 thread 2500k.But here's what made me go AMD. Intel Coffee Lake is a dead end. Intels desktop processor improvements have been a measly single digit % increase with each release, and you'll probably need to buy a new motherboard for the next refresh. However, AMD will support the same socket up to 2020, so whatever Ryzen 2/3/4 AMD releases in two years time will be a viable upgrade option and I can just plop it into the same motherboard. In addition, the AMD cooler is good quality and looks awesome.The 2700X is phenomenal value and cheaper. You get a huge amount of processing power for your money.You won't go wrong with 8700k or 2700X but I believe the 2700X is a better all rounder and better value. If you absolutely must have 145fps versus 125fps for gaming and happen to have a 1080ti to attain those frame rates, then go 8700K, but you will have a non upgradeable system in a years time.My build runs super stable, its on a MSI x470 carbon gaming pro motherboard with 16gb 3200mhz patriot memory. My HTC Vive VR also runs much smoother compared to the 2500k. Gaming, photoshop, lightroom, general computing tasks etc all have a noticeable improvement in speed or smoothness .Never bluescreened never crashed. I don't bother with overclocking the Ryzen, it's not worth it.

...so will try and keep it simple.I had the opportunity to upgrade from an Intel 4690k which was getting old, although still a good performer. I wanted something that would futureproof it for at least 3-5 years with games and for my photoshop video content work. The Ryzen 7 seemed to be the one; not as fast as the best I7s, but very good at Desktop work. A good all rounder from my research.Well out of the box it came with 2 cables, a big cooler fan as well as it s own connector. The spare cabling allows you to connect the fan for customisable colour changes, which is gimmicky, but nice.Then there`s the CPU, slightly bigger than my previous i5 cpu. I fitted it nervously into my new 470 Motherboard.I used the standard paste already on the fan.Whole thing came to life on startup first time with the fan exhibiting a very orangey swirly display. After installing the chipset drivers,etc off the net from AMD`s site. Running with 16 Gig 2400mhz Ram (I heard that 3200mhz ram is better for Ryzen, but just couldn`t push that far, probably later).I checked the Bios which is very user friendly... I guess it`s just me, but I kinda of liked Bios when they were a scary-looking blue screen with a severe interface! Felt serious, now it looks almost gamey... Popped up the ram Easy overclocker to 1, left the rest.Anyway...Ran a few games first to see if all was well (I find this often better than synthetic benchmarks). Dying Light ran like a dream. It ran really well with my previous i5, but this time it just `felt` much, much smoother. everything just happened instantly without a sweat; a zillion zombies attack and I`m just slashing through them with all the carnage then running and jumping into a ledge and climbing a tall building. hard to describe just how smooth it was, not a dip.Total Warhammer 2 again, ran smooth on the Campaign map and in battles, just no dips or stutters that I could see. Xcom2 breezes along.On photoshop, while running Office and playing VLC music, no problem at all working sweetly and efficiently, opening graphic files, manipulating them, etc, even while online (I usually go offline while working).Finally I gave a synthetic benchtest on SuperPosition and 3Dmark which was when I finally heard the cpu fan start chugging and it can be quite noisy. The scores weren`t really that much better than my 4690k, though I know it measures more off my 1060 graphics card. I guess the cpu is now bottlenecked partly by the GPU?Ran User Benchmark and got Gaming: Aircraft Carrier. Desktop: UFO. And WorkStation: UFO... Whatever that all means, but I guess it`s good. lol.Very please with this cpu so far. Recommended.p.s. Had it a year now and it has worked flawlessly. It is unfair for me to keep this at 4 stars, upping to 5 Stars- Deserved.

A great all-round CPU, you get 8 cores and 16 threads with clock speeds upwards of 4GHz in most workloads on all cores. This processor will outperform any similarly priced Intel CPU in raw performance and be very competitive in gaming performance. Essentially unmatched price/performance out of the box, with the exception of the 2600X which is just as good for gaming, but you get 2 less cores.I highly recommend this processor for anyone running the latest games, streaming, recording, and multi-tasking as it's a beast and really can handle anything you throw at it. AMD has come a long way since the Bulldozer FX series, and the 2700X really represents that progress.In a nutshell, for this price point (£300) you are getting the best performance possible in multi-tasking and productivity and still excellent gaming performance. The slightly cheaper i5's of the 8th and 9th generation will give you a bit more Average FPS in most games but your minimums may be lower. This CPU stomps both of those in multi-threaded. This also comes with a soldered heat-spreader and high quality stock cooler (With RGB)! whereas you have to buy the cooler with Intel.