5 Best AMD Ryzen CPU Deals To Snag Before Expected Price Hikes

If you're looking at buying a new Ryzen CPU, the time is now, and we mean right now, as in literally within the next few hours. That's because AMD is expected to raise prices on its CPUs at the distributor level if it hasn't already done so. Yesterday, Mark over at OC3D said his sources confirmed AMD's intentions to raise prices on its CPUs "by midnight tonight." That was yesterday, so those price increases, if real, will have gone through already.

Prices haven't gone up at retailers yet, but that may be because AMD's increasing its pricing to its direct customers, which is to say its distributors. Once the stock in the channel sells through, prices might be higher than they are now. This is separate from the memory shortage that's both caused consumer DRAM to skyrocket in price as well as threatening price increases in the GPU world, as 포시포시 warns:


We dug into the post-Cyber-Monday e-tail wasteland and managed to find a few fine prices on fast AMD CPUs. Most of these aren't super-amazing deals or anything, but a few of them are as cheap as we've ever seen them outside of blowout sales. Let's start from the top:

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X 16-core Zen 5 CPU: $539.99 at Amazon (17% off)

AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-core Zen 4 CPU: $314.99 at Amazon (43% off MSRP!)

If you want massive multi-core performance, it really doesn't get a lot faster than the Ryzen 9 9950X, at least as far as standard desktop CPUs go. This chip comes with both the most cores and the highest clocks in the Ryzen 9000 family, and when equipped with a suitable heatsink, it will shred multi-core workloads like video encoding, compression, or CPU-based rendering—still popular among oldheads for its improved precision over GPU rendering. $539 is as cheap as we've ever seen this chip, and while it's not cheap in an objective sense, you get what you pay for.

Meanwhile, AMD's previous-generation Ryzen 9 7900X is on deep discount at just $314. If you're looking for a fast CPU that can serve well in almost any purpose, you could do a lot worse for more money. This chip is cheaper than 8-core CPUs with 3D V-Cache, and the extra four CPU cores can go a long way in tasks that make use of them. Folks who are addicted to multi-tasking while gaming might want to consider this one over a chip with fewer CPU cores.


Speaking of 3D V-Cache, though, we have the best gaming CPU of today and the greatest gaming CPU of yesterday. Tired references aside, there's no fault in picking up a Ryzen 7 7800X3D right now. In most gaming workloads, the difference between this chip and the latest model is pretty small, although the extra clock rate available to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D (thanks to its use of second-generation 3D V-Cache) can help in some titles. Either of these chips will absolutely dunk on anything that doesn't have 3D V-Cache in pure gaming performance, though.


If you want a solid system that won't slow down when you open a browser, Discord, and Spotify alongside your game, yet you don't want to spend a bunch of money on it, here's your pair of parts. The Ryzen 7 7700X is a great CPU at $249.99, and still makes an excellent foundation for a new build. Meanwhile, the Cooler Master Hyper212 is an all-time classic, and at just 20 bucks, it's hard to pass up. This is enough CPU cooler to allow you to enable PBO on the Ryzen 7 7700X, offering multi-core speeds as high as 5.5GHz and single-core clocks up to 5.7GHz. It'll take some tuning, but you won't find a more versatile CPU for this amount of cash.


Finally, we wanted to give a shout-out to this late-release upgrade for Socket AM4 systems. This isn't the cheapest price we've seen for this chip, but as an upgrade to an otherwise worthy older machine, it's still a solid value. Just make sure to check your board's CPU support list and update the BIOS if necessary (it's probably necessary.) This is not a 3D V-Cache CPU, but it offers the highest 8-core clock rate on the platform, and it even includes a capable CPU cooler in the form of AMD's Wraith Prism down-draft heatsink-and-fan assembly. 

Things are looking a little grim for the DIY PC enthusiast scene over the next year or so, and we wouldn't fault anyone for splurging on hardware at this time. The memory shortage looks like it's going to affect everything from PCs to phones, and short of an AI market crash, the pressure on consumer GPUs, SSDs, and HDDs is not likely to abate before this time next year. If you're eyeing an upgrade, don't wait!