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Although AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 CPUs aren’t scheduled to be released until the end of July, one of them has already just appeared for sale on Amazon, possibly giving us an indication of pricing. The new six-core AMD Ryzen 5 9600X is listed for sale on the Canadian version of the site for a price of $475.51 CA, which works out at around $347 if you do a straight currency conversion.
This new CPU’s predecessor, the Ryzen 5 7600X, currently has a spot on our guide to the best gaming CPU, but only because it’s had a drop in price. When it first launched, it cost $299, which is a lot of money for a six-core processor. This AMD chip now goes for just $184.99, meaning the 9600X at the Amazon Canada price represents an 87.6% price increase, and we doubt it’s going to be anywhere near 87.6% faster.
The listing was spotted by eagle-eyed tech leaker momomo_us, who shared the link in a post on X (formerly Twitter), and it was still up on Amazon at the time of writing, as shown in the screenshot below. The listing shows the correct Ryzen 9000 release date as well, with a link for buyers to pre-order the CPU.
The price of goods in Canada often isn’t the same as in the US, though, even if you convert the currency. The two countries have different sales taxes, and PC enthusiasts in Canada (and the UK) often end up paying a bigger markup for hardware than people in the US.
We’d be surprised if the Ryzen 5 9600X price ended up being $347 at launch, but $299 isn’t out of the question, especially given the original launch price of this CPU’s predecessor. That would raise some questions about AMD’s pricing strategy, though. Even AMD is saying that its first Zen 5 CPUs won’t out-perform its current X3D CPUs, such as the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, in games, and you can currently get a 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X3D for just $327.98.
Pricing the new Ryzen 5 9600X at the $300 mark would be a mistake for AMD, even at launch. It’s expected to be quicker than the 7600X, but not by a huge amount, and that needs to be reflected in pricing. Really, who’s going to pay $300 (or more) for a six-core CPU in 2024? As a point of comparison, the Ryzen 5 7600X currently goes for $274.99 on Amazon Canada, meaning the 9600X would cost $200 more at this price.
Let’s hope this is just a mistake in an early listing, and that the Ryzen 5 9600X will have a much more competitive price when it launches at the end of July. In the meantime, check out our guide to AMD Zen 5 to read up on everything know about the new CPUs right now.
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