Get the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X for £185 (UK RRP £329)
The 5700X is significantly better than the similar-sounding and similarly-priced (£182) Ryzen 5700G, which has integrated graphics but has a half-size L3 cache and no PCIe 4.0 support, as a result of its origin from laptop-grade silicon.
In fact, the £185 5700X is very close to the £225 5800X, with the same core/thread count, cache allocation and overall architecture. The only differences, in fact, is that the 5700X has a rated turbo speed of 4.6GHz versus 4.7GHz for the 5800X, and a lower rated TDP - but in actual usage, you can easily change the default power target to unlock extra performance and the two CPUs should be indistinguishable unless you bring out the benchmarking tools. Given the £40 difference in price, that makes the 5700X by far the better option!
To use this CPU, you’ll need an AM4 socket motherboard, most likely a B550 or X570 board, although some earlier generations also have BIOS updates available to support Ryzen 5000. Thankfully, these motherboards are very cheap these days, compared to their AM5 counterparts, and DDR4 RAM is similarly good value.
What do you make of this CPU - are you even considering a Ryzen 5000 system, or are you happy where you are? Let us know in the comments below, and stay frosty out there.
