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Item 1 of 4
expiredBeigeRoad455 posted Jul 28, 2023 6:57 PM
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+ Free Store Pickupat Micro Center
Deal Details
Micro Center has CPU/Motherboard/RAM Computer Build Bundle on sale for $549.99. Select free store pickup where available.
Thanks to community member BeigeRoad455 for finding this deal.
Note: Availability may vary by location.
Bundle Includes:
Thanks to community member BeigeRoad455 for finding this deal.
Note: Availability may vary by location.
Bundle Includes:
- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Raphael AM5 4.7GHz 12-Core Boxed Processor (Heatsink Not Included)
- ASUS B650E-F ROG STRIX GAMING WIFI AMD AM5 ATX Motherboard
- 64GB G.Skill Flare X5 Series (2 x 32GB) DDR5-6000 PC5-48000 CL30 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit F5-6000J3040G32GX2-FX5 (Black)
Editor's Notes
Written by oceanlake- This price is $377.97 lower (41% savings) than the list price.
- See the forum thread for additional discussion of this deal.
- Get 1%-5% cash back on deals like this with a cash back credit card. Compare the available cash back credit cards here.
Community Notes
About the Poster
Deal Details
Community Notes
About the Poster
Micro Center has CPU/Motherboard/RAM Computer Build Bundle on sale for $549.99. Select free store pickup where available.
Thanks to community member BeigeRoad455 for finding this deal.
Note: Availability may vary by location.
Bundle Includes:
Thanks to community member BeigeRoad455 for finding this deal.
Note: Availability may vary by location.
Bundle Includes:
- AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Raphael AM5 4.7GHz 12-Core Boxed Processor (Heatsink Not Included)
- ASUS B650E-F ROG STRIX GAMING WIFI AMD AM5 ATX Motherboard
- 64GB G.Skill Flare X5 Series (2 x 32GB) DDR5-6000 PC5-48000 CL30 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit F5-6000J3040G32GX2-FX5 (Black)
Editor's Notes
Written by oceanlake- This price is $377.97 lower (41% savings) than the list price.
- See the forum thread for additional discussion of this deal.
- Get 1%-5% cash back on deals like this with a cash back credit card. Compare the available cash back credit cards here.
Community Voting
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Top Comments
Regardless, even if allowed to run unchecked with default power settings, a 7900x will still be easier to cool than intel competitors such as the i7-13700k, and air cooling is entirely viable. I highly recommend the thermalright peerless assassin air cooler, it matches up favorably against most top tier air coolers and only costs ~$35.
Edit:
Thermalright actually released a new successor to the peerless assassin, called the phantom spirit. Now that it's been out for a few months, and has been extensively reviewed, since it seems to be a bit better for zen 4 cpus at around the same price I'd recommend the phantom spirit instead as long as it's around $40 or under.
Here's a link to a review of a variety of coolers with zen 4 cpus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-wxHtELX5s
Edit: I just realized you probably meant the last gen i9-12900k that's part of a popular microcenter bundle, so I'll also give my thoughts on it. The i9-12900k is essentially a worse i7-13700k with a less refined architecture and less cache. Its gaming performance is slightly below to almost on par with the 7700x, and its multithreaded performance is significantly better than the 7700x, though inferior to the 7900x. Like all 12th gen and beyond intel cpus it is significantly less power efficient than the ryzen 7000 series, using significantly more power and generating far more heat. It definitely needs a very powerful air cooler or liquid cooling. The intel platform also lacks a meaningful upgrade path (the current socket will end with 14th gen raptor lake refresh).
With regards to the i9, I assume you're referring to the i9-13900k. The 13900k is a top tier cpu in both gaming and multithreaded productivity performance; outstripping the 7700x by a decent margin in gaming, and significantly beating the 7900x in multithreaded performance. On the other hand, it is significantly more expensive than either. Additionally, it is far less power efficient, using an enormous amount of power and producing such a tremendous amount of heat that liquid cooling is almost a necessity.
The 7700x is a good all around lower mid-range cpu that's best for people on a tighter budget who will not do anything more cpu intensive than gaming on their computer. Due to only having 8 cores it has significantly worse multithreaded performance compared to the i5-13600k and especially the i7-13700k. While 8 cores should be sufficient for gaming in the near term, it's quite possible that in the next 5 years or so unreal engine 5 games and next gen console ports may be able to take advantage of additional threads. This is obviously just a possibility, but I still personally would opt for a greater than 8 core cpu if you have the budget to spare and are planning to keep the cpu for at least 5 years.
The 7900x is an upper mid-range cpu that approximately matches the 7700x in gaming performance and is massively superior in multithreaded performance. This makes it a good option for those who use there computers for more than gaming but don't feel the need to pay a large premium for top of the line productivity performance. As a dual ccd design inter-ccd latency marginally reduces gaming performance, however higher clock speeds almost completely compensate. Due to having 12 cores it is likely to age better than the 7700x, and it should also hold its value somewhat better should you decide to upgrade your cpu in a few years and sell your old one.
Moving on to cpu performance, this bundle will be equal to or better than the 7700x in essentially every single possible use case, so you don't need to worry about the 7700x being better in gaming. The 7900x is within 1 or 2 percentage points of the 7700x in gaming performance with the same ram, and the better ram will likely make it flat out faster even in gaming. With regards to multithreaded performance the 7900x absolutely annihilates the 7700x, having 50% more cpu cores. If you do anything more cpu intensive than only gaming, or intend to keep this cpu for more than 5+ years, I highly recommend the 7900x.
With regards to the motherboard, the asus b650e-f is significantly better overall compared to the MSI B650-P PRO. Most importantly, the much cheaper msi board completely lacks pcie gen 5 support, while the asus b650e-f has both a pcie gen 5 ssd slot and a pcie gen 5 x16 slot.
Moving on to ram, the 7900x bundle comes with twice as much, 64gb as opposed to 32gb. Most people won't make much use of 64gb of ram, unless they're doing productivity workloads, but it certainly doesn't hurt to have more, and if you're willing to experiment there's some interesting things you can do such as utilizing ram disks. More importantly, this ram is cl30 meaning it has better performance, and utilizes hynix memory chips as opposed to the samsung chips in the cl36 ram the 7700x bundle includes. Hynix memory chips are better in just about every way, being more reliable, stable, and better for overclocking. Considering how appalling the ratings and reviews of the 32gb of cl36 ram are, I personally think the better ram is a major improvement to the value proposition. To be clear, most of the issues with the samsung cl36 ram were due to incompatibility issues, those have already been fixed but it took over 6 months for bios fixes to be released. On current bios revisions with updated agesa that ram now appears to no longer have the prolific issues it previously had. However, I've still seen higher than average mention of users who've had that ram fail after several months even after the fixes have been released, and even before fixes were released some ram kits had no issues and some were completely broken, even when running on the same hardware. This leads me to suspect that the samsung memory chips utilized in that microcenter specific sku that is given away for free are poorly binned chips of subpar quality.
Overall, if you have the budget to spare I highly recommend the 7900x bundle as it is a better value overall and will likely have greater longevity. If you ONLY use your pc for gaming and that $150 premium significantly cuts into your overall budget for your entire build, to the point it knocks your gpu down a tier, I'd go with the 7700x bundle.
I went into more detail on certain points in various posts throughout this thread, so if you want even more information feel free to peruse those.
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https://pcpartpicker.co
Regardless, even if allowed to run unchecked with default power settings, a 7900x will still be easier to cool than intel competitors such as the i7-13700k, and air cooling is entirely viable. I highly recommend the thermalright peerless assassin air cooler, it matches up favorably against most top tier air coolers and only costs ~$35.
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First off, the most important thing is to figure out not just what you currently need from a power supply, but what you are likely to need several years from now, since psus tend to have a much longer upgrade lifecycle than most other computer components. As such, I am personally an advocate of purchasing a moderately overkill psu for your current circumstances, so you can keep using the same psu even after you've upgraded your cpu and gpu years down the line. The key there being moderately, you shouldn't pay substantially more for a psu you'll never even come close to fully utilizing. There's no reason to spend enormous sums on a powersupply unless you're building a machine that requires truly ludicrous amounts of power. If you wait for good sales you can get decent current gen atx 3.0 1000w+ (which is probably already higher than you should consider unless you plan on getting a 4090 or 7900xtx) for under $200. I would personally recommend purchasing an atx 3.0 powersupply, since in addition to having a 12VHPWR connector they also support some newer standards and technologies that are nice to have. However, if you're on a tighter budget, you can find last gen powersupplies at a substantial discount, and they will still be perfectly serviceable.
Moving on to efficiency, there's an awful lot of confusing marketing and misinformation surrounding the "ratings" (80 plus, bronze, gold, platinum, titanium, etc.) you'll see psus advertised with. Actual efficiency under real world conditions can only be discerned through proper reviews. Since "efficiency ratings" are one of the primary marketing differentiators most companies use I typically would recommend getting a psu rated at least "bronze" since the "white" and "80+" only skus sometimes use lower quality components, but at the end of the day actual component quality and performance as reviewed is what you should pay attention to. Realistically speaking, unless you live somewhere with extremely expensive electricity or a very hot climate, the efficiency differences between a decent "bronze" and a decent "platinum" rated psu will probably make very little difference.
Since power supplies have a nasty habit of taking out connected components when they fail I highly recommend only purchasing psus that have been professionally reviewed and are made by large reputable brands. No matter how good of a value that small unknown brands' psu seems to be, if it ends up frying your board and gpu you'll be out far more than if you'd just spent a bit extra on something reliable.
The best resource I've found for finding good psus is cultists network psu tier list, here's a link: https://cultists.networ
There's tons of good information on there, especially if you follow the links on the spreadsheet. Any psu in the A or B tier of that list should be good, but make sure to carefully read the documentation and footnotes.
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7900x/32GB/B650E bundle $549
Samsung 980 Pro 1TB $49
MSI MPG 850 PCIE -priced match at $119
Lian Li Cool 216 - Price matched at $89
Noctua u12A - $119, got on Amazon, micro center doesn't sell it. But U12s at $89 should be fine
Zotach trinity 4080 OC - $1069 - that's the big one you have to look out for for price drops
$2000 + around $85 tax
7900x/32GB/B650E bundle $549
Samsung 980 Pro 1TB $49
MSI MPG 850 PCIE -priced match at $119
Lian Li Cool 216 - Price matched at $89
Noctua u12A - $119, got on Amazon, micro center doesn't sell it. But U12s at $89 should be fine
Zotach trinity 4080 OC - $1069 - that's the big one you have to look out for for price drops
$2000 + around $85 tax
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I had scoped out different parts for a build I was planning for myself -- I wanted a non-ASUS mobo and a different set of G.Skill RAM with tighter timings -- but the bundle pricing and my good build experience with the parts is making me consider getting it again for my build. That they upgraded the RAM makes it even more tempting. And it's hard for me to complain about the ASUS board when my son's build has been solid so far and has all the specs I am looking for.
For those looking for CPU cooler recommendations -- my son's build has the Peerless Assassin on it and at stock voltages under full load testing it would never exceed 91C. After setting a VERY light undervolt, we are seeing 87C max. We can probably push it lower if we really wanted to, but we are happy and stable where we are. So definitely put the Peerless Assassin on your list if you are going the air cooled route.
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Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank BeigeRoad455
Moving on to cpu performance, this bundle will be equal to or better than the 7700x in essentially every single possible use case, so you don't need to worry about the 7700x being better in gaming. The 7900x is within 1 or 2 percentage points of the 7700x in gaming performance with the same ram, and the better ram will likely make it flat out faster even in gaming. With regards to multithreaded performance the 7900x absolutely annihilates the 7700x, having 50% more cpu cores. If you do anything more cpu intensive than only gaming, or intend to keep this cpu for more than 5+ years, I highly recommend the 7900x.
With regards to the motherboard, the asus b650e-f is significantly better overall compared to the MSI B650-P PRO. Most importantly, the much cheaper msi board completely lacks pcie gen 5 support, while the asus b650e-f has both a pcie gen 5 ssd slot and a pcie gen 5 x16 slot.
Moving on to ram, the 7900x bundle comes with twice as much, 64gb as opposed to 32gb. Most people won't make much use of 64gb of ram, unless they're doing productivity workloads, but it certainly doesn't hurt to have more, and if you're willing to experiment there's some interesting things you can do such as utilizing ram disks. More importantly, this ram is cl30 meaning it has better performance, and utilizes hynix memory chips as opposed to the samsung chips in the cl36 ram the 7700x bundle includes. Hynix memory chips are better in just about every way, being more reliable, stable, and better for overclocking. Considering how appalling the ratings and reviews of the 32gb of cl36 ram are, I personally think the better ram is a major improvement to the value proposition. To be clear, most of the issues with the samsung cl36 ram were due to incompatibility issues, those have already been fixed but it took over 6 months for bios fixes to be released. On current bios revisions with updated agesa that ram now appears to no longer have the prolific issues it previously had. However, I've still seen higher than average mention of users who've had that ram fail after several months even after the fixes have been released, and even before fixes were released some ram kits had no issues and some were completely broken, even when running on the same hardware. This leads me to suspect that the samsung memory chips utilized in that microcenter specific sku that is given away for free are poorly binned chips of subpar quality.
Overall, if you have the budget to spare I highly recommend the 7900x bundle as it is a better value overall and will likely have greater longevity. If you ONLY use your pc for gaming and that $150 premium significantly cuts into your overall budget for your entire build, to the point it knocks your gpu down a tier, I'd go with the 7700x bundle.
I went into more detail on certain points in various posts throughout this thread, so if you want even more information feel free to peruse those.
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Share your experience with the Slickdeals community
Share information with the community. Please follow our Community Guidelines and be kind!