AMD’s Zen 3 CPU launch spells good news for everyone, whether you’re in the market for the best of the best or you’re simply wanting to see prices of the current generation whittled down. After all, Zen 2 is still perfectly capable of holding its own, pairing up with Nvidia’s RTX 3080 nicely. Thankfully, we are already seeing some savings, with both the Ryzen 7 3800X and Ryzen 9 3900X dropping by up to 19%.
Making it onto the list of best gaming CPUs, the Ryzen 9 3900X is a beast built to boost fps into triple digits with its 12 cores and 24 threads. It is designed with overclocking in mind, packing a 3.8GHz base clock, 4.6GHz boost clock, and staggering 70MB cache, but will fare just fine with whatever you’ll throw at it as is. And right now, you can get all of this wrapped in a neat 14% discount over on Amazon US, costing you $429.99, or shaving 16% off in the UK at just £420.
The Ryzen 7 3800X focuses a bit more on value for money, whether you’re a gamer, content creator, or video editor. It contains eight cores and 16 threads at 3.9GHz base clock and 4.5GHz boost clock – perfect for multitasking. Picking this up now will save you 15% on Amazon US at $399.99, or chip a lovely 19% off in the UK at £325.
That’s up to $69 / £74.99 you can now put in the savings account (or, let’s face it, towards beefing up other upgrades).
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Both CPUs are accompanied by AMD’s Wraith Prism cooler, keeping your temperatures and gaming sessions chill. That being said, you’ll get a little more out of your Ryzen 9 3900X by opting for one of the best AIO coolers instead, should you want to squeeze every last ounce of performance from it.
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And the best part is that you shouldn’t need to hunt for the best AMD motherboard, unless you’re jumping ship from Intel over to AMD. The red team has stuck to its guns with the consumer-friendly practice of backwards compatibility, making sure your upgrade path has you pulling as few hairs out as possible.