AMD Ryzen 5 4600H Review

The Ryzen 5 4600H is one of AMD's mid-range Laptop processors. It was released in 2020 with 6 cores and 12 threads. With base clock at 3GHz, max speed at 4GHz, and a 45W power rating. The Ryzen 5 4600H is based on the Renoir 7nm family and is part of the Ryzen 5 series.

Ryzen 5 4600H is also the successor of AMD's last gen Ryzen 5 3550H processor that was based on the Zen+ and 12nm process and was released in 2019.

This processor packs 6-cores and 12-threads in a mainstream package for the first time, and does it at a similar price point as the Core i5-9400H, a processor with just 4-cores and 8-threads.

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600H marks yet another blast from Team AMD, ramping up the intensity of the AMD vs Intel processor war. Still, though, there’s more than just core counts when it comes to a mainstream processor, as single-core performance needs to be on point, especially if you’re hoping to play the best PC games.

Now, we're asking ourselves whether or not the AMD Ryzen 5 4600H finally dethrones the Core i5-9400H as the de facto ruler of the mainstream processors. Ultimately, it depends: the Ryzen 5 4600H doesn't reach the same single-core performance as Intel, but we're starting to see more games adopt multi-threaded CPUs, so that doesn't matter as much.

AMD Ryzen 5 4th Generation, and the Zen 2 architecture itself, is notable because it leads 7nm processors to the mainstream for the first time. But, there’s a lot more going on under the hood than just a smaller manufacturing node.

AMD's Zen 2 series has landed, upping the ante with Intel in its high-stakes game for desktop PC market dominance with a well-rounded lineup of new chips that push mainstream platforms to higher core counts and more raw compute than we've ever seen. As a result, Intel's commanding presence in the enthusiast space is threatened in a way we haven't seen in over a decade.

As we've seen, gaming remains an advantage for Intel, so if squeezing out every last frame is all you care about, Intel's processors are a good choice. Much of that performance advantage will be less noticeable when gaming at higher resolutions, or if you pair the processors with a lesser graphics card.

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600H, like the rest of AMD's Renoir processors, is built on a 7nm manufacturing node – the smallest in a commercially available CPU. What this means for most people is lower power consumption and much improved performance at the same time.

This decision to 7nm has brought a beefy 15% boost to IPC (instructions per clock) performance. Effectively, compared to a Ryzen 5 3-Generation processor at the same clock speed, you will get a straight 15% increase in performance. That’s not big enough to be evident in day-to-day workloads, but it does still mean something.

What this all means is that the AMD Ryzen 5 4600H is an absolute beast when it comes to multi-threaded workloads, especially at this price point. If you're counting on doing some video editing or compiling one hell of an Excel spreadsheet, you're going to see firsthand a performance boost with the Ryzen 5 4600H.

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600H is another impressive release from AMD and its 4 Generation of Ryzen 5 chips. With it, you’re getting 6-cores and 12-threads, with a boost clock of 4GHz. It may not be the strongest contender ever made on paper, but when you see and feel the actual performance gains it offers, you’re certainly getting a lot of bang for your $250 buck.

If you're mostly playing games on your PC, you will be happy buying either processor. Both proved to be solid options and are evenly matched with a slight advantage to the Intel chip if you don't tune up the Core i5 processor. The base performance we showed for the Ryzen 5 4600H can be achieved with $90 memory, while the Core i5-9400H will require $110 - $120 memory in order to enable the frame rates shown here. It’s not a big cost difference and right now with anything less than an RTX 2070 or Vega 64 you’ll more than likely become GPU limited.

One of the nice things about the AMD Ryzen 5 4600H processors is that the retail boxed models come with a CPU cooler. So, you can pick something like the AMD Ryzen 5 4600H up for $250 and don’t need to spend any extra money on CPU cooling.

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600H retail boxed processor comes with the traditional ‘pancake’ CPU cooler. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done on this processor which is rated at 45W TDP. You do not need to have an aftermarket cooling solution unless you want to.

For a 6-core processor, AMD’s $250 flagship Ryzen 5 4600H processor seems downright cheap. On paper, the cost of those 2 extra cores is almost an afterthought when you stack it up against its direct competitor, the $250 4-core Intel Core i5-9400H.

Now the biggest question is can AMD’s Ryzen 5 processor play games? The answer is simply yes as it got a respectable gaming score of 82% in our benchmarks.

Regardless of those external factors, the Ryzen 5 4600H proves it has the chops to be your main gaming system and a just as effective media creation platform – two things that are becoming intrinsically connected in this age of live-streaming, eSports and uploading gameplay videos.

The Ryzen 5 4600H clocks up to 4Ghz just as it promises on the box, and with AMD’s software you can take one of the cores all the way up to 4.1GHz. However, don’t expect to get much beyond that without seriously upgrading your cooling solution and manually tweaking voltages behind the operating system level.

There’s a saying that two heads are better than one and, well, 6-cores are better than 4. The extra processing power of the Ryzen 5 4600H puts Intel’s processors to shame, including both its closest competitor and a much higher-spec part.

Intel's Core i5s are a staple of the high-volume mainstream market. They make up the most popular brand for mid-range-oriented builds by far. AMD is looking to shake that up with true 6-core processors that sell for even less than 4 cores. As if a resource advantage wasn't already compelling enough, Ryzen 5 also enables unlocked multipliers. Intel is ill-prepared to fend off such a combination.

Although the 45W-rated cooler doesn't feature a copper base or the LEDs found on AMD's higher-end thermal solutions, it does handle Ryzen 5's heat output deftly enough to facilitate XFR-triggered frequencies. This gives you an extra 200 MHz. We were even able to overclock the Ryzen 5 4600H to 4.2 GHz within a reasonable temperature range. The fan also blows down onto the motherboard, which provide additional cooling around the socket. If you need more bling, AMD recently announced that it now offers the LED-equipped cooler separately.