Paul has been around consoles and computers since his parents bought him a Mattel Intellivision. He spent over a decade as editor of popular print-based video games and computer magazines, including a market-leading PlayStation title. Has written gaming content for GamePro, Official Australian Playstation Magazine, PlayStation Pro, Amiga Action, Mega Action, ST Action, GQ, Loaded, and the Daily Mirror. Former champion shoot 'em-up legend
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It’s been a funny old year, between all the obvious pandemic stuff, raging election fury and a palpable change in many parts of society, in the tech space, we have also seen some remarkable events.
From the earlier part of the year when Amazon was only able to ship certain essential good, massive stock shortages due to the lockdown in China, and the fact webcams were exchanging money for silly prices on the black market, we have also seen huge virtual events from Nvidia and AMD that have generated extraordinary clamor for new products.
New GPUs and CPUs have almost become currency with scalpers and blaggers hoovering up as much stock as they could in order to flip huge profits on sites such as eBay.
The same thing even happened in the console space with Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 being turned into cash-spinning opportunities for speculators.
Online auctions for pre-order codes appeared. People paying in excess of $500 for basically a confirmation email. What’s going on with the world?
When does Ryzen 5000 Zen 3 go on sale?
So what’s this got to do with you? Well, today is AMD day clearly. Zen 3 CPUs hit the shelves today and the fortunate few will be able to get their hands on a Ryzen 5950X, Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X, or a Ryzen 5 5600X. That’s the idea at least.
General stock is still a couple of hours from being on sale, we have been lucky enough to have some in the WePC office already which we are busy running through our benchmarking suite as I write in a far-off corner of WePC Towers, but it seems the general public might well once again be out of luck, certainly on specific models.
We really hope people are able to get their hands on what they want today but the tactic of late certainly seems to be, just get it launched regardless of how little stock is available. Of course, companies have had to adapt to tightened supply lines too but have still been all too keen to whip up frenzies with slick online presentations.
The position we find is ourselves in is unique at the moment in that we have a lot of you guys desperate to get building your next PC but unable to get the guts that you need to put in it. So what do you do? Hang on for some undetermined time until they become freely available or plump for a “step down” option.
And then, do you relent and make even more for the companies by upgrading quickly. Am I being cynical to think if a company gets you to buy two products rather than the one you wanted if it was freely available if only benefitting them and taking advantage of human nature’s desire to have things immediately?
They kind of know most people won’t sit around with hundreds of dollars burning a hole in their pockets, especially this close to the holiday season.
The thing is, for a lot of people what’s available to buy today and be delivered to your home tomorrow will be perfectly great. The fact it has been superseded by something that you can’t actually buy immediately shouldn’t cause you a mental dilemma. It’s just a bit frustrating and it is something I hope won’t be repeated going forward once we get past this most unusual of years.
Where to buy one of the Zen 3 CPUs that are actually available today
For the stock that is available today however you face a mission trying to click through multiple sites to try and grab one before everybody else.
With that in mind, we have put together a page here that will let you keep track of what our link-finding teams are discovering out in the wild-west of the internet.
Head over there, choose what you are looking for, and keep checking back as we have people working on those pages all the time, updating links for sites around the world so you don’t need to hunt them down yourselves.
You certainly won’t have time to make a buying decision because if there is one thing we are sure of, these will be sold out before you know it.