AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X is now 50% off for Black Friday, delivering an excellent upgrade for socket AM4 users
AMD’s latest Ryzen 7000-series Zen 4 CPUs might be all the rage, but deals on AMD’s previous-gen Ryzen 5000-series Zen 3 CPUs are looking fantastic this holiday season. AMD’s Ryzen 9 5900X has been discounted by a whopping 49% on Amazon for Black Friday, bringing its price to just $289. It’s a very compelling CPU for anyone looking for a fast and cheap high-core count CPU that can chew through productivity applications — and a great upgrade for AMD socket AM4 users on earlier processors.
The Ryzen 9 5900X was launched in 2020 and is one of the most powerful offerings in AMD Ryzen 5000-series lineup. The chip comes with twelve Zen 3 cores, 24 threads, a base clock of 3.7GHz, a boost clock of 4.8GHz, and 64MB of L3 cache. The chip supports PCIe 4.0 as well as DDR4 memory, with a maximum official speed of DDR4-3200 , though you can achieve significantly higher speeds via overclocking.
Despite its age, we found in our testing that the Ryzen 9 5900X can still hold its ground against chips like the i7-12700K in benchmarks and applications that can take advantage of the chip’s twelve cores. By modern standards, the 5900X’s performance level matches closely with the Core i5-13600K, which costs nearly as much as the 5900X after its 49% discount.
For gaming, the 5900X isn’t a particularly great recommendation, especially in light of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D that can be had for $80 cheaper. But, if you are looking to do a mix of productivity and gaming, the 5900X can more than hold its own and can still provide a good gaming experience with the best graphics cards, especially mid-range offerings.
The 5900X particularly shines as a CPU upgrade for users still on an older AM4 system. AMD’s decision to build five generations of Ryzen CPUs around the AM4 platform means that older systems sporting 300- and 400-series chipset motherboards can upgrade to the 5900X with a simple BIOS update, potentially saving hundreds of dollars that would otherwise have to be spent on a brand-new motherboard and memory combo.
At $289, the 5900X represents one of the best CPU deals we’ve seen to date. It offers competitive mid-range productivity performance with an upgrade path that can save users from spending money on a new motherboard and newer DDR5 memory. With how far the 5900X has been discounted, we’d be surprised if it gets any cheaper this holiday season.
