AMD’s next-gen Ryzen 7000 CPUs might be just around the corner, but if you’re looking to build a speedy PC today—or especially if you can upgrade an older AM4 rig—the Ryzen 9 5900X is hard to pass up at its new low price of just $350 at Walmart. That’s a full $200 off the original launch price for a CPU that, not so long ago, was difficult to find in stock at all.
The Ryzen 9 5900X is one chip down from the current-gen AMD flagship 5950X CPU (unless you count the 5800X3D). It packs 12 cores, 24 threads and a top stock Boost Clock speed of 4.8 GHz. Perhaps the most appealing thing about the 5900X these days is the fact that it can be dropped into any number of extremely affordable AM4 motherboards—perhaps one you already own—for butt-kicking gaming or productivity performance on a budget. Be sure to check to see if they board you’re considering will need a BIOS update to support this CPU, though.
The Ryzen 9 5900X is one chip down from the current-gen AMD flagship 5950X CPU (unless you count the 5800X3D). It packs 12 cores, 24 threads and a top stock Boost Clock speed of 4.8 GHz. Perhaps the most appealing thing about the 5900X these days is the fact that it can be dropped into any number of extremely affordable AM4 motherboards—perhaps one you already own—for butt-kicking gaming or productivity performance on a budget. Be sure to check to see if they board you’re considering will need a BIOS update to support this CPU, though.
The Ryzen 9 5900X may have been knocked off our list of Best CPUs due to newer Intel Alder Lake models (and the aforementioned Ryzen 9 5800X3D). But if it were going to stay at this $350 price it might just earn a return to our list. Our testing shows it neck-and-neck with the 5950X in gaming, with really only the Core i5-12600K offering better gaming performance at a lower price.
Consider the dozens of affordable motherboards and the low price of DDR4 RAM (especially compared to DDR5) and the Ryzen 9 5900X is a great option if you’re looking to put together a high-end gaming rig or productivity PC. There are more powerful chips, but you’ll pay more for them—much more if you are building a whole new system when you could drop the 5900X into most existing Ryzen rigs and get speedy performance for years to come.
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