I was going to get the 1700 because with an OC it seems the performance difference is negligible. However, they are priced at literally the exact same price. Is there any benefit to the 1700 over the 1700x or any clear reason to get one over the other? I know the original retail price is different, but this current pricing has me wondering why.
If there is no price difference, no, there is not.
The price could be because of just about anything, the 1700 could be priced high before it goes on sale in the future, the 1700X could be priced low to drive sales, the pricing person could be drunk for all we know.
The 1700 comes with a heat sink, the X does not.
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With the 1700 you are know you will be able to hit 3.0 with only a 65w tdp. So there is that.
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And as far as I can tell, benchmark scores are very similar? Hmmm. If the 1700x were even only $5 more expensive is there reason to get it over the 1700? Very tough without a better understanding of the low level differences, but I have a tough time telling what they are.
They are the same CPU with some different settings out of the box, if you’re gonna OC it doesn’t matter. A 1700 could OC better than a 1800X, they are not heavily binned.
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might OC better.
A friend’s 1700 doesn’t go over 3.8GHz at 1.375v but my 1700X will hold 3.95 all day every day at that voltage.
It’s luck of the draw.
Yep fixed it, it’s all silicon lottery, so don’t dwell on it, just buy one. I’d personally take the 1700 for the included heatsink.
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They are the exact same CPU, but the 1700 comes with a HSF. Theoretically they’re binned based on voltage so the 1700x should overclock better, but in reality yields have been good so there’s no real difference. If you can use the AMD HSF (which is not garbage, actually) get the 1700. Otherwise get the 1700x.
The 1700 comes with a heatsink. It’s fairly hefty as far as stock heatsinks go, not that loud and gets the job done with even a slight OC. I have a NH-D15 on my 1700 (way overkill) and the CPU boosts to 3.2GHz on all cores no matter what. Have not tried to overclock yet (no need at the moment).
The 1700X does not include a heatsink. All core boost is 3.4-3.5GHz (with a good heatsink and case airflow you will be hitting 3.5GHz no problem). The 1700X also unlocks some additional options in your BIOS provided you run a X370 board. These extra options are mainly concerning boost clocks.
If both are the same price and you already have a cooler, get the X variant. OC potential will depend on the individual chip.
I can do 3.75 at 1.21something volts but as soon as I bump to 3.8 i need 1.3 just to boot and it locks up during cinebench… of course I can get it stable by upping it a bit more but it just doesnt seem worth it.
I just find it strange that it goes from fairly conservative to WOAH in such a small incremental bump.
That’s how CPUs have always worked. They clock great and run cool until you reach a threshold where you need a metric crapton of voltage and heat to get anywhere further. And just before that is where you either stop or move into high-end cooling.
I haven’t used a stock HSF in so long I pretty much forgot they existed.
Anyways, I guess another thing is the 1700X has an extra 50 MHz XFR, which pretty much means nothing if manually overclocking.
Already on extremely good cooling
just a bit disappointed that 3.8 seems to be my wall
…But I can live with it 
as its still a monster cpu
I would just get 1700X for the same price then.
Simply because higher clocks out of the box.
Overclocking is never a guarantee.
4.0GHz ish is pretty much the max, you could get out of any of those wenn lucky.
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Yeah the X is worth getting if you want to overclock, but then OP has to pay extra for a decent cooler. The non-x comes with the Wraith Spire LED Cooler , which is a really nice stock cooler. You can still clock the 1700 non-x up to about 3.7 - 3.8ghz with the wraith spire and a B350 motherboard… maybe?
You arguements are of course fair enough.
Exally there are also 1700’s that have no problems hitting the 4.0GHz OC.
But that is just a matter of luck really, its not like that a 1700X is guaranteed to be a better overclocker then the 1700.
I dont think that there is any reliable statisitcal data to be find that indicates that the X versions overclock better then their non X counterparts.
Or atleast not that i´m aware off.
Its all a matter of luck really, its just that the 1700X gives you better clocks out of the box without OC.
But i agree that the downside of that being it needing a sepperate cooler.
With the 1700 you can save money on the cooler part.
But as far as motherboards are concerned, there are a very few B350 boards that have a reasonable enough vrm for some basic overclocking.
But then i allready talk about the 3 top model B350 boards.
Still the vrm´s even on those top B350 boards arent that great for Ryzen 7 cpu´s.
I personally allways would recommend to pick a decent X370 board.
Even with a R7-1700, it just makes sense to invest a littlebit more towards a decent X370 board.
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The money saved on a cooler could definitely be used to upgrade to an x370 board. Assuming the extra money doesn’t matter to the OP.
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Depends if you feel like running the (not terrible) boxed cooler included for free with the 1700.
The 1700x has no cooler in the box, so if you’ll need to provide your own.
Decent coolers aren’t too expensive, but its an additional cost; thus like for like the two aren’t technically the same price, if you value the stock 1700 cooler at all.
And by all testing I’ve seen, the 1700 boxed cooler is actually pretty reasonable.
Then again, if you don’t want to overclock the 1700x has higher out of the box clocks and extended XFR range (from memory).
Personally, i can’t be bothered with overclocking these days (IT stuff is my day job, i’d much rather it was 100% stable under all loads, in all conditions, all the time - and don’t want to spend the time to test for that) and would just run a 1700x at stock clocks with a quiet cooler and let XFR do its thing.
The gains vs. time spent faffing around with stability testing just aren’t worth it for me; the only massive difference they will make for me day to day is at high frame rate gaming and if you’re focused on that you aren’t buying Ryzen anyway.
I second the notion to buy a nicer board if funds allow. You’ll probably see more benefit (more usb ports, nicer bios, more m.2, better VRMs, or whatever) from a nice x370 board with a 1700 than a cheaper B350 board with a 1700x or even 1800x.
Not sure if this has been mentioned.
But the binning process means that most 1700X chips should achieve better clocks at lower voltages and generally run cooler than 1700 chips.
So its already going to be a better chip as is.
This is just a fact of how chip the ATMP (Assembly, Test, Mark and Pack) process works. 1700’s are simply lower quality silicon than 1700X’s or 1800X’s.
The reason they are priced the same is because the 1700 includes the cost of the box cooler. Which IMO is “a bit dissapointing” if you like low load temperatures (Over clock or not).
In short if you can afford the 1700X you can probably afford at least a cheap Gamax 400 cooler which is plenty enough as a start and better than the box cooler aluminium brick.