A Closer Look

The Ryzen 5 2600 ships in a fairly big cubical box because it includes a 95 W-capable Wraith Spire cooling solution, besides a case-badge and some literature.


It's important to note that this isn't the same variant of the Wraith Spire you'd find inside a Ryzen 7 1600 box as it lacks all lighting. There's no RGB LED-illuminated ring along the fan frame or the AMD logo. The underlying heatsink is the same, and so is the fan itself, so cooling performance isn't affected. The heatsink features a copper core welded to a hunk of aluminium with somewhat radially projecting fins, and all of this is ventilated by a large 80 mm fan that's optimized for low noise.


The Ryzen 5 2600 package looks just like any other Ryzen socket AM4 processor. It comes with a soldered IHS (like 1st-gen Ryzen, but unlike Raven Ridge APUs and Intel). AMD claims to be using a high-grade indium-alloy solder which works to lower temperatures by as much as 10°C. Enthusiasts generally prefer a soldered IHS, and gamers don't care as long as their machines run quietly enough.


AMD continues to use the AM4 socket, which means all existing Ryzen motherboards will be compatible with the new Ryzen 2000 series (after a BIOS update, which most recent boards already have). The company also plans to stick to AM4 for the rest of this decade, so there's a pretty long upgrade path ahead for this platform.

AM4 still has a rectangular cooler-mount-hole layout (as opposed to the square ones on Intel LGA platforms). AMD should have switched to a square layout to make it easier to orient tower-type coolers to blow hot air out the rear of the case. Current AM4-ready tower coolers have elaborate retention module kits that let you do so. Most popular cooler vendors are either already including AM4 retention kits with their latest coolers or will send you a mounting kit for free if you want to continue using a cooler you have. You often also have to remove the plastic retention module motherboards ship with to install certain kinds of coolers.