After months of price markups and near-invisible stock, it looks like you can finally buy AMD’s awesome Ryzen 5 5600X and Ryzen 7 5800X at list price again—even better, there are signs it may stay this way.
We’ve been watching AMD’s more mainstream CPU models, and they’ve mostly been out of stock, or selling for 50 percent above their list prices.
In the last week or two, though, we’ve found the Ryzen 7 5800X at its MSRP of $449 on AmazonRemove non-product link, and the Ryzen 5 5600X selling for $335 on AmazonRemove non-product link. That’s a bit above its list price, but Newegg is selling it right at its $300 MSRPRemove non-product link.
Newegg
That it’s news you can buy AMD’s Ryzen 7 CPU at list price tells you how bad the situation has been.
Both CPUs have been nearly impossible to buy since their introduction last November. The combination of good reviews, low inventory, pent-up demand, and scalping, made them basically non-existent. Shortages have been so bad that some PC vendors have resorted to selling older Ryzen 3000-based models as an alternative.
Reached for comment on what’s changing the supply fortunes, AMD attributed the influx to more chips available.
“We have shipped a significant volume of Ryzen 5000 series CPUs and are shipping out additional stock on a daily basis,” an AMD spokesman told PCWorld. “We are also refreshing stock of AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processors and Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards on AMD.com on a weekly basis, giving gamers and enthusiasts a direct option to purchase the latest Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs at the suggested etail and retail price.”
Unfortunately, the higher-end Ryzen 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 5950X continue to be scarce. Because they are more expensive chips, it’s possible that AMD underestimated the huge demand. Both also take double the resources to build. The 6-core Ryzen 7 5600X and the 8-core Ryzen 7 5800X are built using a single 8-core compute die, while the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X and the 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X both use two compute dies. Besides using more dies, both Ryzen 9’s are also screened to hit the highest frequencies.