The AMD Ryzen 9 5900X is the company’s best gaming CPU*, and today it’s going cheap at CCL in the UK. They’re asking £345 for the 12-core, 24-thread processor when you use code SAVE20 at the checkout, and tossing in three months of Game Pass Ultimate and free next-day shipping to boot. That’s £20 cheaper than the current Amazon price, and a massive drop from the £430+ going rate at the beginning of the year.
*OK, the Ryzen 9 5950X is technically faster, but it costs way more and the difference in gaming performance is miniscule. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D also looks promising, but hasn’t yet been released and will likely cost more than this 5900X while packing fewer cores.
I’ve used the Ryzen 7 5800X in my own work PC for months, and I’ve been incredibly impressed with the single-core speed AMD managed to unlock with its Ryzen 5000 processors. The 5800X is also a good choice for gaming, but it packs all of its cores into the same complex, making it harder to cool than the two-complex 5900X. It’s also not particularly competitive on price at the moment, costing £310 – so paying an extra £35 for 50% more cores is a pretty awesome deal.
The Ryzen 9 5950X, as we mentioned in the disclaimer above, is not that much faster for gaming, but its 16-core 32-thread design makes it a killer choice for content creators – and it’s also been reduced recently, clocking in at £505 on Amazon (compared to £650 at the start of the year).
Right, back to the 5900X deal. If you’re not familiar with Xbox Game Pass for PC, it’s basically a Netflix equivalent for PC games, letting you play hundreds of titles for as long as you’re subscribed to the service, complete with Xbox achievements. There’s a really good selection of titles on there, and first-party Xbox titles that get a PC release are available day one for free, so it’s a pretty nice way to explore the limits of your new gaming processor.
The Ryzen 9 5900X is compatible with a wide range of AM4 motherboards, but some may require a BIOS update in order to support these latest Ryzen 5000 CPUs. Google is your friend here, but if you get am AMD 400-series (B450, X470) or 500-series (B550, X570) motherboard with a USB BIOS flashback feature, you should be good to go – just double-check the compatibility before you hit ‘buy’.
Will Judd
Senior Staff Writer, Digital Foundry
Will Judd is a journeyman from the forges of Digital Foundry, here to spread the good word about hardware deals and StarCraft.
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