AMD's powerful Ryzen 9 processors are going for absurdly cheap
Looking for an upgrade? Amazon has a great deal on AMD Ryzen 9 CPUs. You can pick up the Ryzen 9 5950X for $599, $200 cheaper than its usual retail price. This is the best price we've seen this CPU since Black Friday; it was only $80 off even then. Amazon is also selling the Ryzen 9 5900X for $449, over 20% off its regular price and the cheapest it's been in a while.
The discount addresses the major issue we had both the Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X, which was their fairly high cost. Both CPUs offer great all-around performance and power efficiency, but for regular gaming builds they were a little overkill. While they still lag a bit behind Intel's latest Core i9 12th-gen chips in gaming performance like the Core i9 12900K and Core i5 12600K, the price cuts make them seem more appealing and more competitive.
The 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X is the top dog of the Ryzen 5000 series that's compatible with X570, B550, and A520 motherboards, and X470 and B450 from the previous generation. The cheaper Ryzen 9 5900X is a 12-core, 24-thread CPU that is on par with the Core i9 10900K. It remains one of our favorite CPUs for its blend of gaming ability and productivity and creativity smarts.
AMD's Zen 3 architecture performance has been a pleasant surprise since its launch in 2020, and it's nice seeing the team red close the gap against Intel in the CPU race to the top. Especially now we're paying less for the privilege.
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X | 16 cores | 32 threads |4.8GHz |$799.99$599.99 at Amazon (save $200) If you need a powerful upgrade for your big red machine, scoring this CPU at this meager price is a must. The Ryzen 9 5950X is not only a mighty chip for gaming, but creatives will see the benefit from the extra cores for 3D
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