“Ryzen” Prices? AMD Fans Worried About $50 Premium for Ryzen 5000 Series, Lack of Stock Coolers

After months of anticipation, AMD finally unveiled its Ryzen 5000 Series processors today. While the company blew away expectations with incredible claims such as a 19 percent generational increase in IPC (“the largest since the introduction of ‘Zen’ processors in 2017”) and a 26 percent generational uplift in gaming performance for the 16C/32T Ryzen 9 5900X, some fans have expressed their disappointment at how AMD is already pulling an Intel by raising prices.

We took a look at the company’s previous press release for the Ryzen 3000 Series, and this seems to be true. The Ryzen 9 5950X will be sold for $799, while the Ryzen 9 3950X debuted at $749 (different clocks, but same core/thread count). Likewise, the Ryzen 9 5900X comes with a $549 price tag – a $50 premium over the Ryzen 9 3900X ($499). Enthusiasts seem particularly concerned about the price increases with lower-tiered SKUs such as the Ryzen 5600X. There’s also the fact that the majority of Ryzen 5000 Series CPUs will not come with stock coolers (only the Ryzen 5 5600X gets one).

“…the price hikes are really not good news and dont make total sense to me,” wrote one user on r/Hardware. “I mean $50 on a $500 top end chip is acceptable as its only 10%, but $50 dollars on a previously $250 chip? 20% premium on the low end is very bad. They are leaving room for intel to compete with small price cuts on 4-6 month old chips.”

“Yeah over the course of the presentation I went from ‘well, I’m definitely getting a 5600X’ to ‘oh, I guess I’ll need to think about this,'” agreed another. “It’s certainly a gamble for them. They probably need to bring their margins up but risk losing their position as value king. If Intel is smart they could drop prices on 10th gen and really hurt AMD.”

On the other hand, AMD’s increased pricing for the Ryzen 5000 Series is perfectly justified based on the remarkable improvements that the Zen 3 architecture brings. As noted above, these CPUs deliver an unbelievable increase in IPC. In fact, the performance is so good that AMD may have finally stolen the gaming performance crown from Intel.

“It actually may be very good for their brand, long term,” argues one user. “By increasing price they start to shift their image as competing with Intel on quality/performance rather than on value. They had already started this shift with the 3000 series, so it’s really just a continuation of their strategy.”

If you’re planning to jump on the Zen 3 train, let us know what you think of the new prices. The Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X, and Ryzen 5 5600X will be available on November 5, 2020.

AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Desktop Processors