The FX series of AMD processors isn’t exactly the most innovative line of chips anymore, but with the inclusion of a more powerful and quiet stock cooler along with a 6-core 6350, they still offer more bang for your buck than most CPUs.
The FX 6350 remains as one of the pillars in the AMD arsenal for almost four-years running and continues to be an appealing chip for beginners to build off of for one reason, pure power. The AM3+ chip performs out of the box at 3.9 GHZ and can be boosted to a max of 4.2 GHZ before you start over-clocking it to your necessities. The 6 native Piledriver cores are definitely not the most technologically advanced ones offered on the market today, but they continue to perform admirably in any application they are required for from games to basic video editing. AMD products always suck up a lot of juice, so be sure you take into account the 125 watts you’ll need to run the CPU at peak efficiency.
One of the most appealing parts about the 6350 is that it doesn’t bottle-neck nearly any GPU on the market, peaking at the R9 Fury and GTX 980. While PC part picker will tell you the CPU is compatible with all your parts, that cheaper 6300 you purchased might be holding back your other components from reaching their true potential. The 6350 is also counted in Steams VR test as one of the strongest chips to achieve either a high or very high fidelity score when it’s partnered with a powerful GPU.
This is the point in the review where any normal techie or PC builder would tell you to throw out the stock cooler because it’s garbage, it easily breaks and it can’t overclock anything worth a damn, but I don’t have any intention of saying that about the Wraith. The latest cooler offered by AMD has the same build quality as most after-market coolers and throws out the hassle of messing with cumbersome mounting hardware. It succeeds at delivering cooler CPU temps at stock speeds and the most noticeable thing about it is how quiet it is. The stock cooler AMD continues to provide comes in at an agonizing 51dB of sound. I used to chock up this noise to my GPU developing coil whine from the stress it was taking from games, but it turned out it was actually the stock cooler choking from all the heat. The Wraith cooler doesn’t have this problem and performs near silent at 31dB, even under stress.
If you’re seeking this cooler out as an alternative to achieve a powerful overclock on your system, then you should stick to third-party products. While the Wraith can certainly perform an over-clock because it runs the CPU at cooler stock speeds, it will only achieve a small difference of .5 GHZ at best. The problem is that the Wraith is designed to max out at the turbo setting of the 6350, or whatever CPU it’s packaged with, and still deliver that near-silent experience I mentioned earlier. I’m not a gamer who likes to overclock their system past it’s limits for a small payoff of 5-10 fps, so the overclocking performance of the Wraith cooler doesn’t ruin my positive feelings for it.
The FX 6350 was the first CPU I purchased for my custom-built PC and it still works like a charm. I’ve never encountered a problem with it outside of the noise made from the stock cooler, but that’s fixed with this updated package. If you’re a first-time builder or looking to upgrade your rig from a less powerful AM3+ chip, the AMD FX 6350 with the Wraith Cooler is a great candidate.
