[quotemsg=19633778,0,582021]It's nice to see the review, though it has been three weeks since your review of the 1600X. What ever happened to "However, the 1500X is right behind. Ryzen 5 1600 and 1400 will follow in short order, too."
Is "short order" considered "within the next year or so"? : P
[quotemsg=19633201,0,125865]From the few results I have seen, the spire is only marginally better (3-5C better under load with a 3.9GHz OC) than the stealth cooler. If you want performance per buck on a tight budget, the R5-1400 OC'd to 3.8-3.9GHz using the stealth cooler is the best option. Next up from there is the R5-1600. Also, Paul neglected to add the aftermarket HSF in his R5-1600X cost per core/thread - that is necessary for a fair comparison against the R5-1600 and other CPUs that come bundled with HSF.[/quotemsg]
The heat sink of the 1400's Stealth cooler is only around half the size of the 1500X's Spire cooler. Maybe it's possible to manage a semi-decent overclock with the smaller cooler under the right conditions, but you can be pretty sure that it will make noticeably more noise to achieve that performance level, and I have doubts about it remaining stable under higher ambient temperatures. I found it a bit amusing that they would call it a "Stealth" cooler when its design will clearly make it more audible than the Spire that comes with the 1500X, 1600 and 1700.
Once Tom's finally gets around to reviewing the 1400, they really should test its Stealth Cooler against the Spire, noting not only their max stable overclock and temperatures, but also their sound data at various load levels. The Max could be tested as well, and maybe throw in a cheap tower cooler to see what the approximate price difference between a 1400 and 1500X could get you. A stock Intel cooler could also be tested on one or more Intel processors as a point of comparison. It could even be its own article if they wanted.[/quotemsg]
Sorry about the delay, we've had a bit of a hectic schedule lately with multiple GPU releases and Optane articles. 1600 and 1400 are very much on the radar.