AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 4.7 GHz 12-Core AM5 Processor $439

MicroCenter is now matching the B&H and Amazon price, and dropping it $2 further. Plus, they're offering a free 32GB kit of DDR5-6000 RAM worth $150!

Really? I thought MC would just be $150 higher. interesting.

What's the difference between 7900x and 7900x3D ?

MC usually has the best prices for CPU's. They've been running this free RAM deal since just after the Zen 4 chips came out. The price was $438 for a while, but they raised the prices after the cheaper 7900 non-x came out. But now they're matching (-$2) the new deal at B&H and Amazon, bringing this CPU to the lowest price ever.

Also, watch for open box deals. They're usually just customer returns and are tested before being put back into circulation. I got this CPU as an open box for $373, and that was when the new price was $20 more. But good luck on catching an open box, since they sell out quickly!

They also have a submit a build deal, where if you submit your build to their forums, you get a $25 coupon, but it can take a few days for them to approve it and send the coupon. Mine arrived a day after my pickup reservation expired!

As to the 7900x3d, well, the biggest difference is that the 7900x3d doesn't come out for another month or so! (They haven't yet announced the official date. Well, they did, but later took it down and said that it was a mistake.)

But when it does come out, it will have 3D v-cache on one of the two chiplet stacks. The one with the 3d v-cache will run at slower clock speeds, because the v-cache can't handle the higher heat. So, half of the cores will run slightly faster, and half will run slower, but be boosted by the v-cache. Overall, this should provide a fairly significant boost to SOME games that benefit from the 3d-cache. Since the CPU hasn't come out yet, we haven't gotten any test results from the industry media yet to quantify how much of a boost.

But it's going to be a lot more expensive. They haven't yet announced the price (which isn't a good sign), but most industry experts expect that it will be between $600 and $700. And who knows if MicroCenter will offer a similar RAM deal. They're not offering it on the 7700 non-x, which has a lower MSRP, but is actually $12 more than this sale price.

So, in short, if you can wait, you'll probably get a 15-30% boost in performance in SOME games for around 50% more money than this deal, and without the free RAM.

Thank you for the great info.

I have a Threadripper 1950x , back in the day it was over $2K I think. Still super fast but noisy fans made me turn it off and use a 5825 laptop I recently bought which , except for gaming and Photoshop, flit feels similar in speed.

Still on the fence if I should spend $800 on an upgrade (considering tax and motherboard)

By the way, any MB opinions? Surprisingly no one talks about that although most, I assume would need a new AM5 motherboard for this.

Thank you for the great info.

I have a Threadripper 1950x , back in the day it was over $2K I think. Still super fast but noisy fans made me turn it off and use a 5825 laptop I recently bought which , except for gaming and Photoshop, flit feels similar in speed.

Still on the fence if I should spend $800 on an upgrade (considering tax and motherboard)

By the way, any MB opinions? Surprisingly no one talks about that although most, I assume would need a new AM5 motherboard for this.

Hmmm. With AM5 motherboards, there's such a wide variety of features and prices, it really comes down to what budget you're looking at vs how futureproof you want it to be with your features. For some people, being able to eventually get a gen 5 PCIe video card (even though there aren't any on the market yet!) or a Gen 5 m.2 (which are just starting to come out, and will be more expensive) is important to them, even if they have to pay more for that. If they are, then get an x670 (preferably an x670e. If not, the b650 boards will likely be fine for you.

Honestly, I think you're better off going with an open box motherboard. That will allow you to either save more money or get more features for the money you are spending. Yes, getting an open box motherboard can be scary, but they're generally just customer returns, and they test them before putting them back into circulation. I'm on my third open box motherboard in around 6 years, and they've all worked fine for me.

Personally, I like the Asus boards. For me, they have the right balance between price and features and future-proofing. Sadly, I think that Asrock, MSI and Gigabyte all cheaped out on the audio on their lower end boards to an unacceptable level, but audio is important to me. If it's not to you, then they may be a good choice.

I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly) from your screen name that you're in Brooklyn. If so, the MC there happens to have several of the Asus motherboards available as open box for a discount, if you get them before anyone else.

Assuming that you're not looking for an unnecessarily high end motherboard, here are three choices I'd consider:
- ASUS B650-PLUS TUF GAMING WIFI Normally $240, but right now Brooklyn has an available open box for only $192. That price may be enough to convince you to go AM5. It has most of what you'll probably want or need, with decent audio and lots of connectivity. Compared to the others, it has one less m.2 slot, but three is enough for most people, and one of them is gen 5! But it doesn't have any gen 5 PCIe slots for some future video card you may want.
- ASUS X670E-PLUS TUF GAMING WIFI $330, no open box currently available. Has one more m.2, for a total of 4, and it's gen 5, as well as a gen 5 PCIe slot for your video card. It also has a bunch more USB connectivity. But it's also $90-140 more than the b650 TUF. The x670 boards also have better VRMs to deliver power to the CPU, with two more phases and 10 more amps.
- Then there's the ASUS X670E-PRO PRIME WIFI AMD AM5 ATX Motherboard. Normally $350, but Brooklyn has an open box for $298. For some reason, Asus is positioning this as $20 more than the TUF, although the feature sets are almost identical. Normally, I wouldn't say it's worth the extra money, but if they still have the open box, that makes it $30 less than the TUF, so if you're going to go for the higher end x670 models, you might as well go for this one. The only real differences between the two board I can tell are that this one is white, it has one more USB-C, DTS X-Ultra (vs DTS audio processing on the TUF), has a TPM header, if you want that, and has the PCIe Slot Q-Release, a cool feature I kind of like, but which is hardly a deal-breaker.

With Asus, it can be hard to tell what to buy, given that they have almost 30 different AM5 motherboards, many of which have very similar specs. It feels like they mainly just decided what prices they wanted covered, then fudged the details to try to justify those prices.

In the end, I'd normally say that it really depends on whether you want an x670 for the future-proofing, or want to save some money with a b650. If it's the former, I'd go with the Prime, if they still have it open box; if not, the TUF is fine. All three are great boards.

Note that NC's system doesn't generally give you the $20 motherboard combo discount with a CPU if the motherboard is an open box one. However, it very clearly says on the CPU page and on some of the motherboard pages that there is a $20 bundle savings. The b650 TUF explicitly says "Save $20 when bundled with a compatible eligible processor". A manager should be able to override their system and give you the discount, especially if you point out that if they don't, it's illegal false advertising. But no guarantees.

And, if they do honor the bundle promo savings, then you're only out $610 plus tax for the whole shebang!

Good luck!

Thank you for the wonderful writeup!