If you’ve been watching the rocketing price of DDR5 RAM with a heavy heart, then here’s a CPU deal to put a smile on your face. The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D is now going for £299.99 in the UK, putting it below the £300 threshold and marking this chip’s lowest price since AMD rereleased it this year. Most importantly, this CPU works with DDR4 memory, and will drop into practically any motherboard with an AM4 socket, as long as its BIOS is up to date.
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
£313 £299.99
“AMD set out to deliver the world’s fastest gaming CPU and the coveted crown returns to Ryzen.” – Read our review.
In fact, you could even install this CPU in a first-gen Ryzen motherboard with an X370 chipset, as long as the BIOS supports it. Just to be sure, check your motherboard manufacturer’s support page, making sure it matches your exact model number, and see if this chip is listed in the CPU compatibility list.
That means you not only don’t have to fork out loads of money for new DDR5 RAM, but you won’t need to replace your motherboard either. You can just swap out your existing AM4 Ryzen CPU for this X3D chip. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D has the same key advantage of AMD’s later X3D CPUs, which is a massive 64MB helping of extra L3 cache.
In our tests, we found that this extra cache has a significant impact on gaming performance, as it means your CPU is less likely to have to page your system memory for frame data. That’s despite it having a comparatively lower boost clock speed of just 4.5GHz – all that cache is the real prize when it comes to gaming. As you can see in the Far Cry 6 graph above, this 8-core CPU was well ahead of all the competition when we tested it for our review.
That clock speed deficit does put it at a disadvantage when it comes to multi-threaded performance, but if gaming is your top priority, this is the chip to buy if you want to reuse your existing DDR4 memory. It’s not as quick as the latest Zen 5 CPUs, of course, but all that extra cache makes it the best DDR4 CPU on our guide.
Bear in mind that this isn’t the lowest price ever for the 5800X3D. The original chip’s price dropped to £264.97 back in 2023, but subsequent scarcity has resulted in it fetching considerably higher prices recently. In these times, though, we’re just glad to see a DDR4-friendly 8-core CPU with 3D V-Cache going for under £300.
The latest version also comes with a carbon nanotube cooling pad, which should last much longer than thermal paste. Check out our guide to buying the best CPU cooler if your current one isn’t up to the job.
