If you can’t afford to buy a whole new gaming PC, but would like to give your old rig a boost in gaming performance, then this AMD CPU deal is for you. The price of the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D has just dropped to $229 (£219 in the UK), just three months after it was released at the start of 2024, and the best news is that it will drop in to practically any motherboard with an AM4 CPU socket.
The Ryzen 7 5700X3D uses the same 3D V-Cache technology in the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which is the best gaming CPU option in our tests. Unlike usual AMD Ryzen CPUs, X3D processors have a big stack of L3 cache sitting on top of the CPU die, reducing the need to call on system memory, and boosting gaming performance.
The good news here is that, if you already have an AMD Socket AM4 system, whether it uses a first-gen Ryzen 7 1700 from 2017 or a Ryzen 5 5600 from 2022, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to flash the BIOS of your motherboard and drop this new gaming CPU into your old system. You don’t need to spend extra money on a new motherboard or DDR5 memory – your existing setup should handle it fine.
Make sure you check the manufacturer’s website for information about your motherboard first, to see whether it will support this new CPU, but there’s a good chance it will work if you update your firmware. If you’ve not done this before, make sure you check out our full guide on how to flash your BIOS before you start.
The Ryzen 7 5700X3D is a fully-fledged AMD Zen 3 CPU, with eight cores at its disposal, and its huge 96MB of L3 cache will give it a solid boost in gaming performance. The only downer is the clock speed, as this CPU only has a peak boost frequency of 4.1GHz. Comparatively, the Ryzen 7 5700 boosts to 4.6GHz, but only has 16MB of L3 cache, and in our tests, the extra cache really gives these CPUs the edge in games.
Unlike Intel, AMD still releases new products for its long-standing motherboard platforms, and the Ryzen 7 5700X3D was released in 2024, with a price of $249. That price was already good, but at $229 it’s an even better gaming upgrade if you don’t have a massive amount of money to spend.
If you’re new to the world of PC building and replacing your CPU, make sure you also read our full guide on how to build a gaming PC, which includes instructions on how to install an AMD Socket AM4 CPU.