So: let’s cut to the chase. The 5800X is down to $229.99 at Ebay, from a list price of $449, meaning it’s nearly 50% off. That also makes it $170 cheaper than the equivalent Ryzen 7000 processor, the $400 eight-core Ryzen 7700X. Or, to put it another way, you’re paying around 60% of the price for at least 80% of the gaming performance of that newer CPU - not bad, given that you’ll also pay way less for a complete Ryzen 5000 system (with AM4 motherboards and DDR4) than a complete Ryzen 7000 one (with AM5 motherboards and DDR5).
Get the Ryzen 7 5800X for $229 (was $449)
Of course, over time that calculus will change - but for now, Ryzen 5000 is by far the best value option, as Ryzen 3000 was when Ryzen 5000 launched two years ago. By staying behind the curve, you can take advantage of heavily discounted prices from retailers eager to make room for new-generation stock. Here though, that move to expensive X670/X670E motherboards and still relatively dear DDR5 compounds the effect, making the 5800X a comparatively better choice. Another good alternative is the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which adds a huge amount of extra L3 cache to the design. This does basically nothing in most content creation tasks, which are architected to avoid relying on the cache as much as possible, but can make a massive difference in games where cache misses are much more likely. That makes the 5800X3D a competitive CPU even against the Ryzen 7700X and the Intel Core i9 12900K and 12700K. Unfortunately, retailers know this too, and the 5800X3D remains pricy at $360. That’s barely below the 7700X, which is a more balanced CPU overall as it’s significantly faster in single-core and multi-core workloads that don’t hit the cache. Anyway, the 5800X3D is still worth considering on account of its cheaper ecosystem, so read some reviews and make up your own mind. For me though, the 5800X at $230 is very hard to pass up!
