Motherboard maker leaks some details about AMD’s Ryzen 3 processor

Why it matters to you

If you’re planning on building an entry-level Ryzen 3 PC, here are some details that will help in that task.

AMD’s Zen architecture is slowly taking shape. The Ryzen 7 high-end desktop CPUs have already shipped, and the Ryzen 5 midrange chips will be released next week. That leaves just the Ryzen 3 entry-level processors to make their way into the limelight.

At this point, not much is known about Ryzen 3, as AMD has been slow in releasing details on the Zen chips prior to their release. However, as usual, information is leaking out, and one motherboard manufacturer has divulged some details about Ryzen 3, as Liliputing reports.

More: Early Ryzen 5 1600 test results suggest AMD could be on to a winner

The information comes from Computerbase.de, which discovered that motherboard maker ASRock posted an update to its CPU Support List page that references the Ryzen 3. As indicated by the table below, Ryzen 3 1200 will operate with a base clock frequency of 3.1GHz, sport 2MB of L2 cache, and draw 65 watts of power. The supported chipset will be the AMD B350.

ASRock

That’s not much to go on, of course. AMD has indicated that all Ryzen CPUs will be unlocked and thus overclockable, and so this provides potential Ryzen 3 buyers an idea of what they’ll be working with at Zen’s lowest end. We know that Ryzen 5 will start out at $169, which also provides an idea of where the Ryzen 3 line will max out in terms of cost.

Other questions remain regarding the Ryzen 3, such was whether or not it will support the same symmetrical multithreading (SMT) technology as Ryzen 5 and 7, and whether it will include twice as many threads as cores. We also don’t know how many cores each Ryzen 3 version will support.

That level of detail isn’t likely to be released for quite some time, as Ryzen 3 isn’t expected anytime soon.