A previous Zen 3 flagship desktop CPU from AMD before the arrival of its updated big brother processor from the AMD stable, specifically the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and 7950X3D. AMD's Zen 3-based Ryzen 9 5950X was a fantastic mix of gaming performance combined with the ability to smash through productivity tasks and multi-threaded performance duties. Holding its value pretty well, sales on the Ryzen 9 5950X haven't been that common compared to other CPUs, but that's recently changed with this CPU dropping to a new low on Amazon.
The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X processor has fallen to a new low of just $399 on Amazon, a drop of almost $50 compared to recent prices and checked against the Camelizer price comparison tool. If you're running an AM4 system and want to upgrade your CPU to something more task-oriented than just gaming, this could be the CPU choice for you. Or if you're able to pick up a cheap X570 motherboard for example, this could be the start of a cheaper yet still powerful work/gaming computer.
The Ryzen 9 5950X might not be topping the CPU benchmark lists anymore but it remains on a lot of them. If you take a look at our CPU hierarchy you can still see the CPU ranking highly in multi-threaded performance especially. So it might not be the best CPU for gaming, but it is especially adept at productivity tasks due to its 16 cores and 32 threads, solid multi-threaded performance, a base clock of 3.4 GHz, and maximum boost frequency of 4.9 GHz. Surprisingly this processor has a relatively low TDP of just 105 watts despite its performance.
