AMD Ryzen 5 9600X hits all-time low price

That's got more power consumption and heat to deal with, plus the issues with irregular contact with coolers.

And the "it's definitely really fixed now" issue with chip degradation/damage.

And finally, as was the "argument" against the Ryzen 5000 series, it's the last chip for that socket.

Those are the trade-offs.

King_V said:

That's got more power consumption and heat to deal with, plus the issues with irregular contact with coolers.

And the "it's definitely really fixed now" issue with chip degradation/damage.

And finally, as was the "argument" against the Ryzen 5000 series, it's the last chip for that socket.

Those are the trade-offs.

For a mid range pc and it's typical uses the 9600x probably consumes more power. Users will probably browse the web, watch videos, social media, shopping, and 60 fps gaming. Only the last case will the 9600x consume less power and only on demanding games. All Raptor Lake chips typically take single digit watts for light use unless they are locked at full speed.

And the reports of degradation have apparently vanished. Not a significant issue for the last year with the 14600k failure rate being comparable to the 3d cache failure rate even when reports were coming out (just a few for both). I'd say with no evidence of a problem with all of the clicks it could bring some websites is pretty good evidence that the problem no longer exists.

And it is true that it is the last chip for that socket. Is 14 cores, 20 threads not enough for 5 years for someone in the bargain market? I could see needing to upgrade 6c12t, but why pay more now only to have to pay more again when you could just pay less and be good for 5-10 years? AM5 will be a long dead socket by the time someone who is ok with a 9600x now would need to upgrade a 14600kf. But if they did need to upgrade they could ebay both their motherboard and CPU instead of just their CPU with AMD, and they would have a newer motherboard with better features.

9600X costs 20% more and is far less capable, has less flexibility for even more savings on motherboards and ram, and doesn't come with 2 free games. A 14600kf with a cheaper Z series board, DDR4 and with the extra $100 saved on this spent on a GPU is going to run circles around a 9600x in games and productivity for the same price. But hey, with AM5 you can just spend more to fix your mistake.

I wouldn't call it far less capable. If you need a budget CPU geared toward heavily threaded workloads, yeah, get the 14600KF. Otherwise, I'd go with the 9600X

Me, personally, I'm still doing just fine on my 5600X. That said, if I were in the market, I'd still be more leery of the 13th/14th gen issues. That's a much bigger issue than the 3d cache failure because, if I recall, the latter was just outright failure, rather than invisible degradation that may happen quickly, or may extend out. I may be remembering wrong, but I thought the 13th/14th gen degradation issue was far more widespread. The 3d cache issue was on, well, X3D CPUs, which we aren't discussing here.

For me, it's harder to trust Intel after the degradation issues in the same way that it's harder to trust Newegg after the damaged refurb/open-box item fiasco. That trust is going to take time to rebuild.

rluker5 said:

14600kf is $186 on Newegg right now and comes with Civilization VII and AC Shadows. Also comes with 8 extra E cores and a tube of thermal paste. 9600x costs 20% more and gives you so much less. https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i5-14600kf-core-i5-14th-gen-raptor-lake-lga-1700-desktop-processor/p/N82E16819118472
This should be the story.

Yes, but you get 0 upgrade path, and have to hope Intel actually fixed the degradation issues. For a low budget, no upgrade path rig, 12600k is a better buy, at $148, or spend a bit more, and get the 12700k, for around $220, for more P-Cores. The 12700kf, if you have no need for IGP, is a steal at $155.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FXKHN7M?tag=pcpapi-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1

I'd definitely be way more comfortable with a 12th gen Intel than the 13th or 14th.

logainofhades said:

Yes, but you get 0 upgrade path, and have to hope Intel actually fixed the degradation issues. For a low budget, no upgrade path rig, 12600k is a better buy, at $148, or spend a bit more, and get the 12700k, for around $220, for more P-Cores. The 12700kf, if you have no need for IGP, is a steal at $155.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FXKHN7M?tag=pcpapi-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1

Those are good deals, but in my experience 8 Alder P cores < 6 Raptor P cores when there are E cores available for background tasks. Also Alder had the issue where the cache could not run 4Ghz when E cores were enabled and it also had worse intercore latencies. I personally upgraded from a 12700k that could barely do 5 GHZ on all P cores to a 13600k that can barely do 5.6GHz on all P cores. The 13600k ranges from as fast as the 12700k to 20% faster in the games I checked and is slower in nothing. It will also be as fast while consuming half the power. I also picked up another 13600kf, later, for the office for $180 and it OCs like it is the same chip with a bit better memory controller and no iGPU. I imagine the 14600kf is statistically a slightly better binned version of the 13600kf.

Alder Lake CPUs are good, but Raptor Lake are noticeably better. But if you want to save $31 and give up those free games with a 12700kf that is a fair option.

A defining characteristic of degradation is it's progressive nature. If your CPU is degrading at rate x/time then the more the time passes the more your chip will be degraded. And the more that people will notice that their chips have passed some degradation threshold and will complain or RMA. It doesn't work in such a fashion that a few chips all degrade at once then no other chips continue degrading. Since the reports have stopped since last summer it seems the degradation was not nearly as widespread as initially thought. I believe the last article to hit the news cycle was the data from Puget Systems refuting the claims that degradation was a systemic issue. It was also never to be shown to be an issue with i5s, it was just mentioned as a possibility.

King_V said:

I wouldn't call it far less capable. If you need a budget CPU geared toward heavily threaded workloads, yeah, get the 14600KF. Otherwise, I'd go with the 9600X

Me, personally, I'm still doing just fine on my 5600X. That said, if I were in the market, I'd still be more leery of the 13th/14th gen issues. That's a much bigger issue than the 3d cache failure because, if I recall, the latter was just outright failure, rather than invisible degradation that may happen quickly, or may extend out. I may be remembering wrong, but I thought the 13th/14th gen degradation issue was far more widespread. The 3d cache issue was on, well, X3D CPUs, which we aren't discussing here.

For me, it's harder to trust Intel after the degradation issues in the same way that it's harder to trust Newegg after the damaged refurb/open-box item fiasco. That trust is going to take time to rebuild.

That is good that you are happy with your 5600X. You could always do the switch thing and get a 5800X3D or 5950X if you thought it was worth it. I personally sat on a 5775c and DDR3 until I got a 12700k and it was fun to have such a big upgrade with all sorts of stuff when I did. Going to a 13900kf on my same gaming pc wasn't nearly as entertaining, basically just some numbers got better but my overall experience didn't change that much.
That is the biggest flaw in the socket longevity argument for most people IMO. It applied to AM4 because the early Ryzen chips were really bad in games, but since the 5000 series it is a lot easier to hold 60 fps in any game without raytracing enabled. If you game at 60 then you just know the benchmarks are better but you don't see much improvement in your daily use. It isn't like just changing the CPU will let you use faster SSDs or get better wifi or audio or change your boot experience. If your current CPU isn't lacking and you don't expect it to become a hinderance to your performance over the lifetime of your motherboard socket then why would it matter that you could spend slightly less money to have as little improvement as you can while maintaining functionality of your aging pc?
You may even think that I wasted money with an upgrade path that I didn't need. But I like to think of it as an impulse purchase chasing hopes and dreams. I did get some relatively expensive entertainment tuning the thing though.