AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core, 24-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor

This is a review of the Ryzen 5900X, the MSi B450-A Max Pro motherboard and the Teamgroup T-Create 32 GB (2x16 GB) 3200 MT/s titanium RAM since I built my new tower with these components.The CPU arrive in an factory sealed box. Seal was not broken. No signs of tampering.The performance of the Ryzen 5900X compared to an Ryzen 5700G octacore I have in my other system is not much greater with this Ryzen 5900X. But the price is about 2 times as much and the power draw is 4 times more. At the moment this 5900X draws 100 Watts total system draw on writing this review.There is no difference on gaming between the 5700G and this 5900X. Cinebench gives me on the 5700G around 12000 points (in the Bios the temperature is limited to 75 Degrees Celsius) and the 5900X gives around 18000 points (again temperature limit of 70 Degrees Celsius on the CPU). I limit the max temperature allways to a difference of 20 Celsius to Tjunc temperature.As now the CPU has an temperature of 50 degrees Celsius with the Gamemax Gamma 500 cooler.I ordered the MSi B450-A Pro Max motherboard when AM5 came out and paid 80$ for it. A bit expensive but it is an ATX board. Super easy to install and flash with the BIOS button the Bios for the Ryzen 5000 series CPU's. Worked right out of the box. The board is better than the B450 board I have from Asus. Easy to install in my XPG Invader case.At the beginning when freshly installed Windows 11 I got lots of sound problems. After installing the crap of MSi drivers and Utilities which actual version MSi's MSi Center was offering, my sound got messed up completely. Sound stutters becauso of the new sound drivers, Chipset drivers and the like. Headphones and 5.1 Speakers intermittently connected/disconnected causing delays and stutters. Looked like an software issue of MSi software. That foreced me to reinstall and erase from scrap Windows 10 and it offered then to upgrade to Windows 11. After that the problem was gone with only Windows drivers. Do not download the crap MSi Center offers. It can break your OS.Other than that this board suggests it has 2 full fledged PCIE x 16 slots of the 3.0 type. At least that is what customers will think easily. Think twice. It has only one x16 PCIE 3.0 slot and the long one below has x16 openings but only half of those have connector pins installed and the manual says it is not even an x8 slot but rather an x4 only. And to add insult to injury that slot is only 2.0. Completely misleading for an new buyer.On the lower slot I have the GT 1030 GDDR5 from MSi installed I had still from Q1 2020. It works on low settings on some games like HnG from 2016 and gets between 52 fps and 60 fps.Other than that this MSi board works way better than the Asus B450 board I have on my other system from last year. The RAM slots are way easier to use and the sticks slide into them like lubricated. The dual channel works on this board which is on my Asus most likely defective (Asus refuses warranty). I use it with 32 GB (2 x 16) TeamGroup TCreate RAM sticks. High quality 3200 Mhz sticks for relatively cheap.It is a good strong board with 2 massive coolers on the Mosfets. These massive coolers impressed me as an new inexperienced buyer for my very first build. So it slipped to me the issue with the PCIE "x16" slots.This Motherboard worked straight out of the box. I use the Ryzen 5900X with this with an Gamemax Gamma 500 AM4 cooler. The coolers does not fit well the AM4 system since it's clip is way to stiff so I had to take the cooler off the CPU and bend a bit the clips till it fits just with a little pressure. Install the air coolers without too much pressure so it is not loose but can slide a bit is fine before snapping it gently in place. As original fit I got 66 Celsius to 70 Celsius on idle or doing basic work with that processor, but after bending the clips to aliviate the pressure I get now at the moment 51 Degrees Celsius. So if too much pressure is applied by the cooler onto the processor that rises the heat to a difference of about 20 Degrees Celsius. Any of these standard air coolers with heat pipes will be able to cool the Ryzen 5900X easily. While gaming it gets to about 61 degrees Celsius. My case has 3 fans in the front and 1 in the back.MSi's UEFI is a bit confusing if one is used to the Asus UEFI. But it has basically the same features but it is way more confusing. The fans can be adjusted better on MSi's BIOS. But with this 5900X duo deca core CPU, the PSU is annoyingly loud all the time. While on Ecomode with 65 Watts the whole system draws on gaming about 150 Watts. The board seems to have no problems to deliver power to the 5900X.Running Cinebench with this board and 5900X CPU with settings to Ecomode 65Watt, the case fans kick in, the CPU has an temp of 61 Degrees Celsius after 5 Minutes Cinebench, the Mosfets have an temperature of 58 Degrees Celsius and the PCH has an temperature of 50 Celsius while the Cooler Master Silencio 120mm fan I put on the Gamma from GameMax CPU cooler, turns 1000 rpm and all 4 Arctic F12 120mm case fans show an rpm of 700.I am surprised how this GameMax Gamma air cooler is able to maintain cool this CPU. So the huge aluminum coolers on the Mosfets of the MSi board sure do their job.The board has lots of fan headers. Thats very good.I recommend this board for the AM4 system but be aware of the cheating PCIE slot advertisement, the sound problems and the rather difficult to use UEFI settings. But this is an robust board.After updating all drivers through MSi Center, updating Windows 11 and running sfc /scannow and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth command, all Windows errors are corrected and there is no software or hardware problem whatsoever. No sound problems anymore after this and Realtek Audio Console, which comes as software on the MSi Center works wonderfull as well. Realtek Audio Console only works when you install the latest audio drivers from MSi Center (without that it fails to run).I am now used to the MSi Bios 5 UEFI over the Asus Bios.I have undervolted the 5900X to 0.1 Volts, combined with PBO on auto and the temperature limited to 70 degrees Celsius.I had to open my PSU since it ran considerably and annoyingly loud with this 5900X so I changed the PSU fan. I put there an 120mm Gamemax 3-pin fan in, funneled the wires through the PSU grid and plugged it into the motherboards Pump header. Now I can control the PSU fan in the Bios as well and it runs normally at 900 rpm )(blows now as much or more air out of the back of the PSU and the air is never hot at all, just a bit warmer after 10 minutes Cinebench which draws 200 Watts while running) and the CPU fan runs at 887 rpm. The system is whisper quiet. PSU fans tend to run at 100% speed on normal load with these 5900X and 5950X CPU's so that is an unbearingly loud and annoying sound. I allmost desperated because of this till I changed the PSU fan. I have in this new built an 600 Watt PSU and an GT 1030 GPU. The case fans allmost never run and spin up only after 62 degrees Celsius.Till date the CPU works as it should.However I believe the 5900X is overpriced since I paid 336 US$ for it. It should be only around 200 US$ and the 5950X should be around 300 USD. The Ryzen 5950X is insanely overpriced since any 7900X or 7950X you can cool with an air cooler as well if you trade a bit of performance. Then again I trade with this as well performance with my temp limits and with this cooler.For the same price I would suggest go for the Ryzen 7950X, apply an 70 degrees Celsius temp limit and cool it just with an air cooler like the Thermalright Peerless Assasin.I did not select XMP for the RAM but rather just manually put the speed at it's rated speed of 3200 Mhz and the rest on auto.The Bios does somehow not update on the MSi software or in the Bios so I updated it manually with the Bios flash button which this motherboard has on the back of the I/O to the latest stable version.For flashing the nevest Bios on this motherboard you download manually the Bios from MSi website. extract all files and select the one file (not the text file) and change the name to MSI.ROM. Then format an USB stick to FAT32 and copy there the MSI.ROM file. No other data should be on the USB stick. Then put power to the system not pressing the power button and stick the USB drive in the USB port below the Bios flash button. Press the Bios Flash button on the back for about 5 seconds till a light start to blink and leave it doing it's thing. There will show up 2 lights blinking in an different pace and the USB drive light will show movement as well if it has one. Only take out the USB stick 5 minutes till all lights are out and the system has sort of resumed (case fans will stop and start again. You will hear a sort of resetting the Bios). Then the Bios is upgraded via Flash button mode.If this Processor should become old after 15 years, then put Tuxedo OS or some other Linux in it or Chrome OS. That will give it's some snappy internet browsing life at least till 2060 Anno Domini.Installing the Gamemax Gamma 500 AM4 CPU cooler I had to bend it's snap over hooks a bit down with an hammer and plier since at the first install it seemed to me way to much pressed onto the CPU. So I adjusted the tension of the snap over assembly 3 times till it had some tension but not much (no sliding on the CPU but a gentle press onto the CPU). If the air cooler is to much pressed onto the CPU I got 67 degrees Celsius on idle - adjusted right and spread nice the thermalpaste with an spatula, I get 49 degrees Celsius on idle. These AM4 snap over clip cooler assemblies sometimes need a bit adjustment (unscrew it from the cooler and flatten the bendings of the arms with a plier or hammer it flatter). Originally even with all my body weight I allmost could not get the snaps over the hooks on the cooler and motherboard plastic ears. That was not normal and I bet the chinese did not bend the snap over arms right for AM4. It has to fit gentle and not with all body weight put that cooler onto the AM4 system. Be ready to adjust things if not deemed right - instead of breaking the motherboard or CPU.

The AM4 platform is getting a little long in the tooth these days, to say the least, but AMD has continued supporting it long after we probably had any right to expect them to. One reason for that is that modern motherboards have gotten crazy in terms of price - it used to be that a "good" motherboard would run you maybe $100, but now to get anything decent you really need to spend *at least* three times that, and then you'll need a new CPU and RAM on top of that. So AM4 has remained popular even with AM5 having been on the market for several years now, and AMD has continued producing processors for it. Many of us are just resistant to spending a large amount of money on a new motherboard when there's no real reason we should have to, and honestly no real reason they should cost that much to begin with.I've been rocking the same motherboard for about 7 years now (an MSI B350 PC Mate), and luckily it's been updated over the years to accept both modern CPU's like this one (yes, that means Ryzen 9's too, which the B350 chipset did not originally support) as well as faster RAM, so I have no need to upgrade to the AM5 or equivalent Intel platform just yet. A used PC Mate or Tomahawk (the gaming version of this same board) would not be a bad investment if you're on a budget and new to AM4! One caveat is that updates on older AM4 boards to support newer CPU's have to be done on older CPU's that they already support - a CPU like this one just won't work at all on a non-updated or older AM4 board. Ask me how I know. (I had to reinstall my old CPU to update my motherboard, then install the Ryzen 9 a second time.)So if you're upgrading from an older CPU, make sure you check for your motherboard's CPU compatibility and update as necessary *before* installing this processor. If you're on a budget and buying from scratch into this platform - and that's still not a bad idea, since price/performance ratios on AM4 are very good these days - make sure you get a motherboard that's either already been updated to support this processor, or did from the start, because you won't be able to update your board without a CPU it supports already in it.The Ryzen 9 5900X is among the fastest CPU's you can get for the AM4 platform. The 5950X is slightly faster but you get diminishing returns for the price. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is better for gaming, if that's all you want to do, but it's significantly slower for things like content creation or anything requiring basic floating point or integer calculations.I chose the Ryzen 9 5900X as most likely the last AM4 CPU I'll ever buy because it was at that sweet spot in price where I could justify an upgrade over my old Ryzen 7 3700X, and I do a lot of different things with my PC - not *just* gaming. You can see that in the Passmark results I've posted, the CPU is in the 93rd percentile. That's not bad for a $300 processor on an 8 year old platform.These processors do take to overclocking pretty well too, although I've had limited results with that on my old motherboard. I do think the B350 chipset is a bit of a limiting factor there - remember, this chipset originally didn't support the Ryzen 9 family at all. Multi-threaded performance on my machine is a little bit below average relative to others with this same CPU even after using AMD's Ryzen Master utility to try to wean as much as I can out of this chip. So your mileage may vary and on an X370-based motherboard, or just something newer than mine, you could probably do even better.You're going to need a cooler to go with this CPU, since even the high-end AMD processors no longer come with one. You *can* use an older AM4 cooler, and I tried using the Wraith Prism that came with my Ryzen 7 3700X on the 5900X for a little while, but it was painful to listen to. These CPU's do just use a lot more power and generate a lot more heat... and that heat ramps up super-quickly. You really need something with a dual heat pipe setup or better, or use water cooling (I use air). I looked around and found that the Thermalright Peerless Assassin was consistently ranked in the top tier of AM4 coolers in tests, despite only costing around $30, so that's what I went with. The others that perform similarly all cost a lot more.On that note, just check that you've got a power supply that will support this processor. Either add up all the power requirements for all the components you have, or just take a Kill-a-Watt device and see how much power you're using at boot (boot is when you're usually using the most electricity). Then add about 70 watts more for this CPU vs. what you're probably using now. Obviously it's not going to be hitting those peaks all the time, but you don't want to get into a high power draw situation and have your PC immediately crash. So just make sure your PC can handle it. I have a 600 watt PSU that's about as old as my motherboard and it is working fine, but remember that what really matters isn't the total wattage your PSU is capable of but how much it can put out on the specific rails that are asking for it. If you've got a 600 watt PSU with something like an RTX 3080, then I can almost guarantee you're going to have a problem if you install this CPU and don't upgrade the PSU. I'm running a 4060Ti, which uses a lot less power than Nvidia's 3000-series cards, or most of AMD's cards.So just be aware of the power requirements, and think about whether your PSU can handle this CPU given the other components in your PC.This platform is probably about at the end of its life but you can definitely wring a few more good years out of it with the 5900X. Maybe by then AM5 will be a little more affordable.