If you were waiting to upgrade your processor on your AMD Ryzen platform, then now could be a great time. AMD has pushed price cuts across a wide range of retailers, suggesting that this is a permanent cut to the cost of its flagship range of chips ahead of a launch of its 5800X3D gaming processor, and its Zen 4 next-gen CPUs later this year.
The price drops have been quite significant too, making for substantial savings for anyone who's been waiting to upgrade. The Ryzen 5 5600X, which has been hovering around its $300 launch price for some time, is now around $230, while the previously $450 5800X, is now a cool $300.
At the top end, the 5950X flagship 16 core Zen 3 CPU is now going for just $600 -- That's $150 down from its typical price. That makes it slightly cheaper than the Intel Core i9-12900K, making it the potential king of heavy multithreaded applications again.
For those not quite willing to spend that much but still wanting plenty of cores, the 12-core 5900X is now just $450, down from its typical $550 price tag.
You'll find these discounts at Micro Center, Newegg, Amazon, and Best Buy, with other retailers likely to follow suite in short order.
Although you may want to wait for Zen 4 if you're planning a big upgrade, for anyone who's running a first, second, or third-generation Ryzen processor and wants a significant performance upgrade without having to buy new memory and motherboard (and potential PSU) as well, this is a great deal.