The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X has hit $275 at Amazon

An incredible price for an eight-core sixteen-thread gaming CPU.

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X has hit $275 at Amazon, an incredible price for an eight-core sixteen-thread CPU that ranks among the best for gaming and content creation. That’s nearly a $100 less than the same CPU cost last year, when we trumpeted thatthe processor had reached $369in a one-off sale and $175 below the chip’s US MSRP.

At this reduced price, you’re paying $34 per core, which is a pretty incredible value when you consider just how strong each of those cores are. Ryzen 5000’s new core architecture and vastly increased L3 cache makes them keen performers, with a 20% increase in single-threaded performance over the previous-gen Ryzen 3000 chips and significantly more over Ryzen 1000 and 2000 CPUs - making this a perfect upgrade if you’re still using one of these older processors.

Best of all, this high-end CPU is supported on a wide range of motherboards using the venerable AM4 socket, so you may not even have to upgrade your motherboard - just see if a BIOS update with Ryzen 5000 support is available. Similarly, the 5800X uses the same DDR4 RAM as earlier Ryzen chips, so this could be an easy drop-in upgrade that grants you significantly better frame-rates in games that are CPU limited.

To find outifyou’re CPU limited in your favourite game, you can use tools like MSI Afterburner or NZXT CAM to check your current GPU utilisation - if it’s below 95%, then you’re being limited by your CPU and an upgrade could help. Similarly, upgrading your memory could also make a difference if you’re still rocking 2400MT/s kits or similar, but the CPU is the best bang-for-buck upgrade outside of a new graphics card.