Question 1

Does the cooler have led on it?

Accepted Answer

no led on this cooler. ryzen 3s come with the wraith stealth.  the coolers with leds are on higher end models that come with wraith spire or  wraith max. these coolers come with ryzen 5 1500x or higher.

Question 2

thermal paste comes with this ? or do I have to buy one?

Accepted Answer

Paste comes pre-applied to the included heatsink. If you need to remove the heatsink after installing for any reason, you will need to clean all of it off of the heatsink and CPU, and add some of your own. It is readily available many places and is generally pretty cheap.

Question 3

does this CPU have integrated graphics? If it does are they ok for gaming?

Accepted Answer

No, Ryzen architecture does not have integrated graphics. You'll need a separate graphics card. I'm looking in the range of a GTX 1050 Ti to 1060 6GB for optimal graphics performance. If you go with Intel CPU, the Intel integrated graphics will run like WoW and CSGO fine, but not any AAA games like Battlefield 1 or PUBG.

Question 4

I don't know much about computers, so what is the difference between the 1300x and the 1200?

Accepted Answer

The primary difference is the base/turbo/XFR frequency of the different CPUs. As you'll notice, the 1300x is 200mhZ faster than the 1200, but these are factory settings. A secondary difference between these is based on "binning", which is a process I am short-winded to explain. Basically, the 1300x contains higher quality silicon than the 1200, which gives either marginal or substantial improvement depending on the "silicon lottery".

If you want it short and sweet, they can both potentially reach the same frequency, but the binning process eliminates some the disparity between identical CPUs, and thus the pricing reflects the grade of CPU you'll be getting. It's up to you to decide if the extra $20 would be worth it.

Question 5

I'm assuming this processor works with 64 bit windows 10?

Accepted Answer

Yes.  Pretty much every processor made in the last 10 years will.  I actually have not reinstalled Windows in years.  I got Windows 7 back when it first came out and updated it to Windows 10 without a fresh install and then changed my motherboard, CPU, graphics, and memory and still not problems.  Someday I will get an NVME drive and do a fresh install, but it has been 9 years so far without one.

Question 6

Does this CPU ACTUALLY have 4 cores?  I bought an AMD chip some years ago (which is the one I'm still using today) that said it was 4 cores, only to find out its actually 2 cores with 4 threads but it was advertised as having 4 cores.  I will not be deceived again.

Accepted Answer

Its 4 cores, great processor for the price but I might recommend holding out for the 3300X

Question 7

do you recommend for a refurb of a old 2008 - 2012 dell?

Accepted Answer

A Dell from then would need a completely different motherboard (AM4) and RAM (DDR4). If you got those and they fit into the computer case then yes. Although I might recommend getting a case and taking Dell parts out of that computer and place them with the new parts to make a different computer

Question 8

will a MSI GeForce GTX1060 6gb bottleneck this CPU?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes, yes. In games that have high render distances or advanced tessellation, it really comes down to GPU performance. In games which particularly tax the CPU, like Overwatch, No. The CPU will bottleneck the 1060 6gb. It's a good pair, though, since it's one or the other depending solely on the game :)

Question 9

Does this spire come with the RGB ring?

Accepted Answer

The included heatsink does not come with an RGB ring on the fan. Fan is plain black with a white AMD logo

Question 10

Can you use ddr3 Ram?

Accepted Answer

That's dependent on the motherboard. The Ryzen CPU uses the AM4  chipset - most of which accept DDR4; I have not seen any AM4 motherboards that accept DDR3 RAM. DDR3 and DDR4 are not cross-compatible.

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