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While AMD mainly focused on its forthcoming high-end advances at CES 2025 this year, a new product for the budget market was quietly added to its website. The AMD Ryzen 5 9600 has been confirmed as a slightly down-tuned sibling of the 9600X, with MSRP and release date yet unknown.
AMD's Ryzen 9000 Series, codenamed "Granite Ridge" launched in July/August 2024 after some slight packaging delays. The Zen 5 family offers expected generational improvements, with the 9600X winning 4.5 out of 5 stars in our review at launch. Now the 9600, sans X, arrives to offer a cheaper option for those wanting the cheapest Zen 5 experience yet.
The Ryzen 5 9600 will be a 6-core / 12-thread CPU with 32MB of L3 cache and a 65W TDP. If this sounds familiar, it's because these specs match the 9600X exactly. The difference comes in clock speeds: the 9600 offers a 3.8 GHz base clock and turbos up to 5.2 GHz. The X variant sits at 3.9 GHz / 5.4 GHz, just a hair faster before overclocking (as is typical for Ryzen, the 9600 non-X still allows overclocking).
The Ryzen 5 9600 offers something else new to the 9000-series: an included Wraith Stealth cooler. With none of AMD's other consumer processors including stock coolers since the 8000G processors released in January 2024, the return of the Wraith Stealth is a welcome sight for the budget-minded buyer looking to save ~$20.
With the arrival of B840 and B850 midrange Zen 5 motherboards at CES, it seems the 9600 will be nicely positioned to get PCIe Gen5 into the hands of the budget/midrange AMD buyer. As Zen 5 motherboards get cheaper, budget AMD buyers may no longer need to stay on older hardware to join Team Red.
It is unclear when the 9600 will arrive on the scene or how much it will run consumers. Not much has been shared about the chip at CES 2025, but based on the general price decreases across the current AMD generation, the Ryzen 5 9600 will likely launch at an MSRP of around $220 or less, based on the $230 launch price tag of the last-gen 7600.
We'll be sure to update with any further information we can pull from AMD at CES. In the meantime, be sure to follow the rest of our CES 2025 coverage, including our exclusive look at the family photos of AMD's newest offerings, delidded.
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Sunny Grimm is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has been building and breaking computers since 2017, serving as the resident youngster at Tom's. From APUs to RGB, Sunny has a handle on all the latest tech news.
Its a welcome addition to the line up for sure. I wish they would bring back the wraith spire though, especially for a mid grade cpu, that cooler was actually useful. The wraith stealth is barely adequate more often than not, especially with a mid grade chip like the 9600.
Don't get it, 9600X is already updated 7600 with it's 65W TDP and they release one that's a wee bit slower with the same TDP so just a bad silicon lottery variant in reality.
9600X should have always been called 9600 and they would avoided so much negative press if they released 9600X with 105W TDP in the first place. Ditto 9700X.
