AMD Announces Ryzen 3000 CPU Promotion, $25 to $50 Off, Free Xbox Game Pass

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AMD sweetens the deal.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

It seems there's a new sale on AMD's Ryzen processors every day, but these discounts usually come from retailers that accept a lower profit margin to boost sales, meaning the price cuts aren't official recommendations from AMD. That changes today via an official AMD promotion that lasts through the month of March at Newegg and Amazon.

AMD tells us that it will trim pricing on some of its most popular SKUs, spanning from the always-impressive Ryzen 5 3600 to the powerful Ryzen 9 3900X, with discounts ranging from $25 to $50 off the recommended pricing. AMD also sweetens the deal with three months of the Xbox Game Pass with the Ryzen 9 3900X, Ryzen 7 3800X, and Ryzen 7 3700X (while supplies last).

These price trimmings apply to AMD's recommended pricing, but because the chips already sell below those guidelines, the new deals create incredibly enticing price points. For instance, you can pick up a Ryzen 9 3900X for a mere $418.95 at Amazon, or the Ryzen 5 3600X for $200, both of which are well below the price cuts listed below. 

  • Ryzen 9 3900X –$449 ($50 off SEP) or lower    Amazon | Newegg
  • Ryzen 7 3800X – $359 ($40 off SEP) or lower   Amazon | Newegg
  • Ryzen 7 3700X – $304 ($25 off SEP) or lower   Amazon | Newegg
  • Ryzen 5 3600X – $224 ($25 off SEP) or lower   Amazon | Newegg
  • Ryzen 5 3600 – $174 ($25 off SEP) or lower     Amazon | Newegg

For select models, AMD also throws in a free three-month subscription to its Xbox Game Pass that gives you free access to over 100 PC games on Windows 10. 

The promotion runs through the end of March.

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Paul Alcorn
Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • TechLurker
    Margins must be extremely good at this point in time. I wonder how much further down they'll go once Ryzen 4000 (Zen 3) arrives later this year.
    Reply
  • Darkbreeze
    This makes no sense. I was already seeing prices that were LOWER than what you've listed in the article, for the last three weeks, WITHOUT any extra 25-50 dollar discount. I just bought two 3600x and a 3600 three weeks ago. The 3600x were 199.00 and the 3600 was like 175 bucks. And that was without any kind of extra AMD discount. So now, WITH the supposed AMD discount, it seems the "savings" is the same as what these have been selling for anyhow.

    Nice. It's the typical raise the price by forty bucks and then offer a thirty dollar off sale. Because, I guess they figure we are all too dumb to realize what they are doing. Now, if they were to offer those discounts off the price these were actually selling for, that would be worthwhile and might temp me to pull the trigger on a 3700x which I have been eyeballing and had just mentioned in a forum conversation. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case because I'm not seeing anything different overall than what I have been seeing as much as three weeks ago to earlier today.

    Maybe this doesn't "kick in" until some future date? That's the only way I can see it as being valid. Otherwise, it's a gimmick.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    Darkbreeze said:
    This makes no sense. I was already seeing prices that were LOWER than what you've listed in the article, for the last three weeks, WITHOUT any extra 25-50 dollar discount.
    It does make sense: takes the lower super-special pricing exclusive to a couple of stores like MicroCenter to something closer to a new standard street price across the market.
    Reply
  • NightHawkRMX
    Newegg had an email exclusive deal. $165 for a r5 3600 with free shipping.

    I wander if they could drop coolers and make even cheaper ones?
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    Darkbreeze said:
    This makes no sense. I was already seeing prices that were LOWER than what you've listed in the article, for the last three weeks, WITHOUT any extra 25-50 dollar discount. I just bought two 3600x and a 3600 three weeks ago. The 3600x were 199.00 and the 3600 was like 175 bucks. And that was without any kind of extra AMD discount. So now, WITH the supposed AMD discount, it seems the "savings" is the same as what these have been selling for anyhow.

    Nice. It's the typical raise the price by forty bucks and then offer a thirty dollar off sale. Because, I guess they figure we are all too dumb to realize what they are doing. Now, if they were to offer those discounts off the price these were actually selling for, that would be worthwhile and might temp me to pull the trigger on a 3700x which I have been eyeballing and had just mentioned in a forum conversation. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case because I'm not seeing anything different overall than what I have been seeing as much as three weeks ago to earlier today.

    Maybe this doesn't "kick in" until some future date? That's the only way I can see it as being valid. Otherwise, it's a gimmick.
    AMD may have let major retailers know in advance that a price cut would be coming. It's likely that they lowered the wholesale price of new stock over a month in advance of the announcement, when we started seeing prices dropping, resulting in many retailers lowering their prices on the processors to undercut the competition before any public pricing announcement had been made. If you look at price tracking charts, you can see there was a drop in Ryzen 3000 pricing across the board around the start of February, so that's likely when AMD lowered their pricing, but didn't announce an official suggested price change right away so that smaller retailers would have a chance to sell any stock they had bought at a higher price first.

    And maybe there was an additional, more recent price drop as well. The charts show some of these processors taking a second dip around the start of March. AMD is undoubtedly doing this in anticipation of the upcoming processors from Intel, which will add Hyperthreading to finally make their thread counts more comparable to what AMD has been offering, so they need to adjust pricing to maintain momentum, at least until the 4000 series arrives later in the year.

    NightHawkRMX said:
    I wander if they could drop coolers and make even cheaper ones?
    I doubt the coolers add that much to the cost of the processors. The Wraith Spire and Stealth are relatively simple designs compared to something like a tower cooler, and I doubt they cost AMD much more than $5 to manufacture. The Wraith Prism on the 3700X and up might cost a bit more due to its more complex design, but it probably doesn't raise the price of a 3700X by more than a few percent either.
    Reply
  • Darkbreeze
    InvalidError said:
    It does make sense: takes the lower super-special pricing exclusive to a couple of stores like MicroCenter to something closer to a new standard street price across the market.
    The prices I was referring to, that have already been "standard" for at least three weeks, were already at Amazon and Newegg, not Microcenter, who normally requires you to visit their brick and mortar to get those prices, anyhow.

    And Amazon and Newegg are the stores that were called out specifically in this article. The price has not changed. It's been the same for many weeks now give or take an occasional fluctuation of five or ten dollars.
    Reply
  • cfbcfb
    Darkbreeze said:
    This makes no sense. I was already seeing prices that were LOWER than what you've listed in the article, for the last three weeks, WITHOUT any extra 25-50 dollar discount. I just bought two 3600x and a 3600 three weeks ago. The 3600x were 199.00 and the 3600 was like 175 bucks. And that was without any kind of extra AMD discount. So now, WITH the supposed AMD discount, it seems the "savings" is the same as what these have been selling for anyhow.

    Nice. It's the typical raise the price by forty bucks and then offer a thirty dollar off sale. Because, I guess they figure we are all too dumb to realize what they are doing. Now, if they were to offer those discounts off the price these were actually selling for, that would be worthwhile and might temp me to pull the trigger on a 3700x which I have been eyeballing and had just mentioned in a forum conversation. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case because I'm not seeing anything different overall than what I have been seeing as much as three weeks ago to earlier today.

    Maybe this doesn't "kick in" until some future date? That's the only way I can see it as being valid. Otherwise, it's a gimmick.

    Same here. I've seen the 3700x for ~$280 as a straight up sale price. Marketing stunt.
    Reply