The second generation of AMD Ryzen CPUs launched with a mighty bang last month. They propelled the performance of the Ryzen CPUs to new heights, breaking the 4 GHz barrier with ease, and delivering greatly improved performance. Not only that, they’re rubbing shoulders with Intel in the gaming department now, and blazing their own trail when it comes to multi-tasking. Of course, the Ryzen 7 2700X we reviewed was amazing, but at £282 current price (£329 MSRP), it’s a little more premium. The non-X part is just £248 (£259 MSRP), so a little more wallet-friendly.

Equipped with the new AMD StoreMI technology, you can combine your HDD and SSD, and M.2 drives into one fast pool of storage. Furthermore, SenseMI and Ryzen Master Utility will help you unlock the best performance from your hardware with virtually no effort. Automatic frequency adjustment and boosts, easy configuration of your memory speeds, voltages and more. You don’t have to dive into the BIOS and read the instruction book this time. Of course, the newer features of Ryzen Gen 2 are only supported on X470 motherboards, although the CPU will of course still work in any other AM4 motherboard.