The AMD Ryzen 5 1600X is a desktop processor with 6 cores, launched in April 2017, at an MSRP of $249. It is part of the Ryzen 5 lineup, using the Zen (Summit Ridge) architecture with Socket AM4. Thanks to AMD Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) the core-count is effectively doubled, to 12 threads. Ryzen 5 1600X has 16 MB of L3 cache and operates at 3.6 GHz by default, but can boost up to 4 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is making the Ryzen 5 1600X on a 14 nm production node using 4,800 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of GlobalFoundries. You may freely adjust the unlocked multiplier on Ryzen 5 1600X, which simplifies overclocking greatly, as you can easily dial in any overclocking frequency.
With a TDP of 95 W, the Ryzen 5 1600X consumes a good deal of power, so decent cooling is needed. AMD's processor supports DDR4 memory with a dual-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 2666 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the system, Ryzen 5 1600X uses a PCI-Express Gen 3 connection. This processor does not have integrated graphics, you will need a separate graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the Ryzen 5 1600X, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) can run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, AMD is including the newer AVX2 standard, too, but not AVX-512.