AMD's new Ryzen 5 chips now official starting at $169

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
last updated

AMD
AMD

Following up on the launch of its high-end Ryzen 7 processors, AMD has revealed details around its next series: Ryzen 5. Specifically taking aim at Intel's Core i5 segment, AMD's Ryzen 5 lineup all come in at under $250 and, as recently rumored, are set for an April 11 launch.

Here's a look at the Ryzen 5 lineup as revealed by AMD:

Swipe to scroll horizontally
ProcessorCoresThreadsClock speedPrice
R5 1400483.2GHz
(3.4GHz)		$169
R5 1500X483.5GHz
(3.7GHz)		$189
R5 16006123.2GHz
(3.6GHz)		$219
R5 1600X6123.6GHz
(4.0GHz)		$249

Like their Ryzen 7 counterparts, the Ryzen 5 chips support DDR4 RAM chips, are unlocked and feature AMD's Extended Frequency Range (XFR) tech, which should contribute to some solid overclocking capabilities. We'll have to wait until full benchmarks are available for Ryzen 5, but it sounds as if AMD is squarely targeting Intel's i5 chips — and is nipping at the heels of some i7 chips — on both price and performance.

Why the new Ryzen chips will benefit AMD and Intel users

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. 

10 Comments
  • for these prices is anyone going to switch from intel?  
  • Waiting for benchmarks and prices to stabilize more. Also AMD has a habit of releasing drivers and EFI updates after launch to patch some changes here and there. Once things are okay then I might see and maybe switch. Who knows
  • Heck yeah - I never liked Intel much anyway.
  • Quite a few I'd guess
  • Sure they are, a quad core with 8 threads for $190? That a $100 discount from Intel's offering.
  • AMD R5 1400 4C/8T for $169 is a steal if this thing overclocks as easily as the R7 1700. My guess is that it'll run 3.7-3.8 GHZ on the stock cooler and 4.0 GHz on any decent $30 air cooler. Intel's Core i3 7350 2C/4T is $189 running at 4.2 GHz (5.0 GHz with good aftermarket air cooler) is fast with today's DX11 games that rely on single core performance, but tomorrow's DX12 multi-core optimized games (like StarCitizen) will perform better with more cores. Truth be told the R5 and R6 look like they'll stack up against Intel Core i5s ($200-$289) when the Ryzen CPUs are running at 3.7-4.0 Ghz O/C'd than Core the Core i3 which might have just become obsolete on the desktop. Outside of gaming (Video Editing, Photo Editing, CAD) the Ryzen 5 and 6 will be budget CPU dreams if O/C'd if their their CineBench scores are anything like the R7's. No reason why they shouldn't. Lastly AMD Socket AM4 B350 chipset motherboards for Ryzen are $50-$150 cheaper than equivalent counterparts for Intel CPUs. AMD is democratizing the kind of hardware it takes to really get hardcore workstation things done.
  • If the benchmarks hold up to muster than my next PC build will be up entirely team red ^_^ after all. Curious to see how they perform with current AMD GPU's such as the RX Series.
  • A shame they have 0 OEM design wins. PC gamers are the 1% ers, and it will be good for AMD, but unless they have several options across several OEM's they will fail to capture mindshare amount enterprise purchasers, the bulk of where PC purchases are made.
  • Really?  Nearly every OEM makes AMD stuff.  Ryzen has been out all of 16 days so I think OEMS will do it in time.
  • I would not worry too much yet. This is no 'normal' intel style release. This is a company starting over and trying to boot-strap their way back up.
    Right now is just phase 1, selling retail parts to the retail channel where the individual part margins are high, and where stability is less of an issue.
    As they get firmware and microcode padded down, and manufacturing ramped up (seriously... they did preorders to convince their manufacturing partners that they actually need the fab time just for the retail release... they have a lot of scaling to do) then we will see laptops and OEM product released.
    After their hardware partners have had some time to play with the new architecture, THEN we will see the enterprise and server market parts come out. But I would not expect to see this until next fall at the earliest. If not for their GPUs, AMD would be bankrupt right now. They are not making nearly as much money on the consoles as they hoped for, and they have suffered through several years of internal miss-management and poor investments. Their new leadership is making all the right moves to make them a good company again, but it is just going to take time. I would really not be horribly surprised if this gen of chips never makes it to mainstream products, and that they wait until 2nd gen chips next year before doing a broader push. They will get there though.