Get the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor for £249 (was £350)
To use one of these processors, you’ll need two things: a compatible motherboard and DDR5 memory. So far, AMD’s released four platforms - X670/X670E and B650/B650E - so anything from this range would work. I recommend the X670 lineup, with names like Gigabyte, Asus and MSI all producing solid boards. In terms of DDR5, the current sweet spot is DDR5-4800 - the base spec! - but there are small performance gains to be had from using faster DDR5-6000 or faster memory, albeit only in a limited number of CPU-bound situations. The 7600X is the baby of the Ryzen 7000 family, but for gaming its six-core, twelve-thread design looks solid. The primary advantage to going with the higher core count models, like the 7700X, 7900X and 7950X, comes in applications that can use as many threads on the CPU as are available - think about things like rendering a 3D scene, or transcoding a video file. These tasks can be split up into loads of separate chunks, then run concurrently on the CPU, so you see a big speedup on the higher Ryzen 7000 CPUs here. Games are more complex though, and that makes it harder for developers to divide work to really take advantage of high core count CPUs - so we expect to see much smaller margins from one CPU to another in the same generation. And in fact, with Ryzen 7000, we see some surprising results where the 7700X is the fastest choice in some games - a result of the multiple CCD design of the 7900X and 7950X incurring a performance penalty, one that isn’t necessarily overcome by the higher core counts and faster clock speeds in the bigger designs. Interesting, huh? In any case, what I’m trying to say is that the Ryzen 7600X featured in this deal is a great choice for gaming, allowing you to save money on the CPU side and put more of your budget towards the GPU, which is a much bigger contributor to gaming performance, especially at higher resolutions like 1440p and 4K. Thanks for joining me on this meandering explanation, and stay tuned for more deals as we discover them!
