We previously reported on this as being a tech rumour but now AMD has officially given the Ryzen 5 7600X3D the greenlight, bringing six cores and 96 MB of L3 cache to the masses. Well, only the masses in the US and even then, only those who are near one of the 28 Micro Center retail stores in that country.
Essentially nothing more than a Ryzen 7 7800X3D with two cores disabled and lower clocks, the $299 Ryzen 5 7600X3D (via Sweclockers) is the cheapest AM5 CPU to sport 3D V-Cache. However, there are two major caveats to getting your hands on one of them. First, there's a limited supply, so once they're all sold, that's it.
The second one is that they're exclusive to Micro Center in the US and even then, they're only available at its retail stores, so you won't find it on the website. That's not different to when AMD launched its Ryzen 5 5600X3D but at least the Ryzen 7 5700X3D more than makes up for it.
Tom's Hardware reports that Micro Center will be offering the 7600X3D as part of a bundle, with an Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus Wi-Fi motherboard and a 32 GB dual-channel DDR5-6000 RAM kit for a cent under $450. That's a very nice deal and would make an excellent upgrade for a budget gaming PC, though you would have to add the cost of travelling to a Micro Center store.
The important question to ask is whether the Ryzen 5 7600X3D is worth buying. $299 is considerably less than the $419 it costs to buy a 7800X3D from Amazon, and if you don't already have an AM5 motherboard and DDR5 RAM, you'll have quite a bit of extra cash to put towards them if you did buy the six core chip.
However, both the new Ryzen 5 9600X and last-gen Ryzen 5 7600X are cheaper still ($279 and $229 at Newegg, respectively) and while 3D V-Cache does help a lot in gaming, it's not like those two chips are especially slow. They're also widely available across the world, in stores and online shops.
If you are one of the lucky few to live near a Micro Center and you've been looking to do a cheap AM5 upgrade, then $450 for the bundle is well worth the money. Personally, though, if I had an AM4 motherboard, I'd just get a Ryzen 7 5700X3D (a little over $204 at Amazon) and stay on that platform until AMD releases another generation of AM5 processors.
But if you already have an AM5 motherboard, then just stick with whatever processor you have—even if it's a Ryzen 5 7500F (AMD's slowest Zen 4 chip), it'll be fast enough for gaming—and wait for the Zen 5 X3D processors. They won't be cheap, of course, but if they're much better than the current 9000-series chips, their sales will help push the prices for the Zen 4 versions down.
