AMD Ryzen 5 5500 Review

The Ryzen 5 5500 is one of AMD's mid-range Desktop processors. It was released in 2022 with 6 cores and 12 threads. With base clock at 3.7GHz, max speed at 4.2GHz, and a 65W power rating. The Ryzen 5 5500 is based on the Cezanne 7nm family and is part of the Ryzen 5 series.

Ryzen 5 5500 is also the successor of AMD's last gen Ryzen 5 3500 processor that was based on the Zen 2 and 7nm process and was released in 2019.

In our mind, the best processors are the ones that deliver outstanding performance at a reasonable price point. And, the Ryzen 5 5500 absolutely nails this concept.

One thing that the switch to 7nm silicon has allowed for however, is an increase in cache size. AMD is now describing its L3 and L2 cache in a combined spec of 512K (per core) and 16MB. But, because the 7nm CPU cores are contained within their own chiplets, AMD was able to pack much more in – with a whopping 512K (per core) and 16MB. This is a really big deal, as it allows for much faster performance, especially when you’re shooting for high framerates in 1080p games, and will be especially effective in old esports titles like Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

AMD's Zen 3 (Cezanne) 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 5500, like the rest of AMD's Cezanne 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.

What this all means is that the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 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 5500.

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 5500 can be achieved with $90 memory, while the Core i5-11400 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 5500 processors is that the retail boxed models come with a CPU cooler. So, you can pick something like the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 up for $159.99 and don’t need to spend any extra money on CPU cooling.

The AMD Ryzen 5 5500 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 65W TDP. You do not need to have an aftermarket cooling solution unless you want to.

The gaming tests with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti installed in the test system showed the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 was more capable than many might have expected. The basic mid-range processor from AMD that can be picked up for $159.99 was able to out perform the Core i5-11500 that runs $192 shipped in the three games we tested on. We know that you can’t test on just three games and declare something the overall victor, but it just goes to show that 6-core processors can still manage to get by today. Being able to play current game titles and stream to Twitch on the Ryzen 5 5500 was something we give playable results, but we were pleasantly surprised. As games become more threaded the ‘value’ in a 6-core processor continues to go down, but you can still get by with something like the Ryzen 5 5500 in a pinch.

Like its bigger Ryzen 5 brother, these mid-range processors are all about packing more cores and hyperthreading. The Ryzen 5 5500 sits at the top of the Ryzen 5 family, featuring 6-cores and 12-threads with a base clock speed of 3.7GHz that punches up to a maximum of 4.2GHz. It’s an impressive processor that not only beats Intel’s Core i5 and Core i5 processors, but also manages to turn its nose up at the 6-cores series.

For a 6-core processor, AMD’s $159.99 flagship Ryzen 5 5500 processor seems downright cheap. On paper, the cost of those 0 extra cores is almost an afterthought when you stack it up against its direct competitor, the $182 6-core Intel Core i5-11400.

By comparison, Intel’s current 6-core processor is the Core i5-11500, which runs for a significantly higher $192 price tag. Going back a generation to Comet Lake doesn’t make 6-core processors that much cheaper either, with the ageing Intel Core i5-10500 running for $192.

With Ryzen 5, AMD continues to innovate on its new architecture and 7nm process. Like Ryzen 5, AMD has engineered Ryzen 5 to operate on a AM4 chipset with all the modern amenities of computing. This includes support for DDR4 RAM, the fastest NVMe SSDs and Thunderbolt 3 ports.

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 89% in our benchmarks.

Regardless of those external factors, the Ryzen 5 5500 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 5500 clocks up to 4.2Ghz just as it promises on the box, and with AMD’s software you can take one of the cores all the way up to 4.3GHz. However, don’t expect to get much beyond that without seriously upgrading your cooling solution and manually tweaking voltages behind the operating system level.

If you’ve been looking for an affordable, powerhouse CPU that both works and parties hard, this is it.

Fresh from a successful roll-out of mainstream Ryzen 5 CPUs, AMD's attack on Intel now extends down into the mid-range with its Ryzen 5 5500 processors, which the company is making available as of Apr 4th, 2022.

Although the 65W-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 5500 to 4.4 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.

Like all other Cezanne chips, the Ryzen 5-series CPUs drop into any Socket AM4 motherboard. But most will find a home on boards equipped with the B450 chipset, which has provisions for overclocking and offers plenty of connectivity options. Unlike Intel, AMD plans to utilize its current socket until 2023, so upgrading to future models shouldn't require a new motherboard.