Black Friday week strengthens AMD’s claim that now is a “great time” to upgrade your gaming PC
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We recently sat down with Martijn Boonstra, AMD’s Product and Business Development Manager, to discuss the launch of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D and the 9000 series as a whole. During our conversation, he suggested that now’s a “great time to consider upgrading your PC” and we couldn’t agree more, especially now that Black Friday promotions are in full swing.
It’s no secret that this time of year is a great time to do some shopping, with Black Friday deals stretching far beyond the day itself these days. While discussing the Ryzen 9000 series, it became immediately clear that AMD is offering some great value CPUs if you’re in the market for a PC upgrade.
While finding the current gold standard for gaming (the Ryzen 7 9800X3D) in stock is a difficult task at the moment, that shouldn’t stop you from thinking about other upgrades in the meantime, or simply opting for one of AMD’s discounted 9000 series chips.
AMD Ryzen 5 9600X
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D 16-Core Processor
AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 12-Core, 24-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor
9800X3D is the best upgrade for gamers, though there’s more to consider
In regards to what kind of CPU you should be looking for, Martijn noted that the 9800X3D is “the CPU to buy right now” if you’re “100% a gamer” – this isn’t just AMD’s marketing talk, the 9800X3D has been widely commended and is currently the best CPU for gaming on the market. As the successor to the 7800X3D, it’s the first 9000 series X3D chip and certainly made its mark when it launched on November 7th.
There was a massive rush to buy it, so you’ll have to keep an eye on our 9800X3D stock tracker while it remains tough to find from online retailers. With that in mind, you may want to consider some alternatives; Martijn suggests the 7800X3D is “obviously a very, very strong alternative” with a slightly better deal on price to performance. However, this chip has been a struggle to find at a discount price lately, and there’s much better value out there in our opinion.
Deals season is here folks, and Amazon has already kickstarted its early Black Friday deals! We'll be covering all the best deals in more details over in our deals hub, but if you haven't got time to read through those, why not see our top picks below.
- ASUS TUF NVIDIA RTX 5080 Was $1599 Now $1199
- ASUS TUF RTX 5070 Ti Was $999 Now $849
- Samsung Odyssey OLED G6 Was $899 Now $649
- TCL 43S250R Roku TV 2023 Was $279 Now $199
- iBUYPOWER Y40 Gaming PC Was $2,299 Now $1,819
- Samsung Odyssey G9 (G95C) Was $1,299 Now $777
- Alienware Area-51 gaming laptop Was $3,499 Now $2,799
- Samsung 77-inch OLED S95F Was $4,297 Now $3,497
- ASUS ROG Strix G16 Was $1,499 Now $1,199
*Prices and savings subject to change. Click through to get the current prices.
Looping back around to the 9000 series, he also recommends the 9700X. This 8-core, 16-thread CPU is a little more budget-friendly and certainly represents an excellent alternative right now. The entire Ryzen 9000 CPU line-up (outside of the 9800X3D) dropped to a new low price late last month, and now processors like the 9700X and 9600X are even lower thanks to Black Friday sales on Amazon.
- Cores: 8
- Threads: 16
- Boost clock speed: 5.2GHz
- Base clock speed: 4.7GHz
- L3 cache: 96MB
- TDP: 120W
- Platform: AM5
What about the rest of your upgrade?
If you’re upgrading your PC, there’s a decent chance that it’s not only the CPU that’s being replaced. For example, if you’re making the move up to a 7000 or 9000 series processor, you’ll need an AM5 motherboard and DDR5 RAM to support it. These three upgrades go hand-in-hand if you’re making a generational leap, which is why you’ll often see them bundled together.
While we’re on the topic of upgrades, we should also talk about graphics cards, especially if you wish to pair something high-end with the 9800X3D. It’s worth arguing the GPU is one of the only things not worth upgrading right now, as we’re close to the launch of next-generation cards.
Intel is likely launching Battlemage this December, while Nvidia and AMD will follow up with the RTX 50 series and RX 8000 series respectively in early 2025. If you can’t wait for that, we’d suggest checking out our latest Black Friday GPU deals here; high-end AMD GPUs such as the RX 7900 XT enjoy an all-time low price at the time of writing.
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