Get the Ryzen 7 5800X3D for £348 (UK RRP £530)
The Ryzen 7 5800X3D is one of the best gaming processors on the market, with 8 cores and 16 threads clocked at a speed of 3.4GHz (4.5GHz boost). The secret sauce though, and what differentiates this from the 5800X, is the addition of a 3D v-cache, which expands the L3 cache size from 32 to 96MB. This makes it perfect for high-performance gaming, even beating out Ryzen 7000 and Intel 12th/13th-gen CPUs in some games. The lower turbo frequency means that it can be a bit slower than the 5800X in content creation tasks like video transcoding, but in my testing over at Digital Foundry I only found one game, CS:GO, that actually ran slower on the X3D than the 5800X. Of course, it’s still plenty fast enough for streaming and other tasks, and will easily run circles around earlier Ryzen processors. In terms of compatibility, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is compatible with motherboards that use the AM4 socket and support Ryzen 5000 CPUs, which includes most models - especially those on the B550 or X570 platform. A cooler isn’t included, so you’ll want to pick one up for yourself - a good-size air cooler like the Noctua D15 or a 240mm or larger AiO would be ideal here, but you can make do with a smaller cooler too. The last time we saw the 5800X3D this low was back in October when it was £349, so it’s well worth jumping on this deal now if you’re interested.
