Surprise new AMD Ryzen CPU is available – but it’s probably not what you expected
Ryzen 5 3500X is another option for an affordable processor from Team Red
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AMD’s Ryzen 5 3500X processor was launched exclusively for the Chinese market, but now it’s available to purchase in the US and UK.
AsTom’s Hardwareflagged up, the spin on the Ryzen 5 3500 (itself an OEM-only model) is now on sale at some big retailers. NamelyAmazonin both the US ($245, but it was $220 previous to that, Tom’s reports) and the UK (£169or another listing has it at£195), plus Newegg ($173, albeit that’s a third-party seller shipping from Hong Kong, with some poor customer feedback – so we’d be very careful about taking that particular chance). Also in the UK, Scan has the3500X available for £168.
So, particularly in the US, some of the prices are a little hard to stomach, at least if you compare to the pricing ofIntel’s chips – and the likes of the Core i5-11400, which is a bit cheaper than this, providing very similar performance levels in games. But as AMD’s product range stands at the moment, the 3500X could be a tempting option for those planning on looking at the cheaper end of Team Red’s line-up.
SMT off
Indeed, the Ryzen 3500X is still a competitive piece of silicon – it’s pretty close to the 3600 or 3600X in terms of performance, the main difference being the lack of multithreading (the 3500X is a 6-core, 6-thread processor with no simultaneous multithreading or SMT, compared to the 6-core, 12-thread, 3600 models).
And considering the 3600 is pitched at about $250 in the US, the 3500X looks comparatively tempting (at least at its previous price on Amazon, which could well return).
As for the UK, the 3600 can be had for£170 at Overclockersright now – but it’s a bit more expensive elsewhere. And remember, as Tom’s points out in itsreview, the 3500X is actually a touch faster than the 3600 or 3600X in some games (that multithreading can actually hold back performance with some titles).
It never hurts to have more options on the table when it comes to CPUs (particularly these days), though it remains to be seen how much stock of the 3500X will be floating around.
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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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