AMD's Ryzen 9 3900X is going for as much as $800 amid supply issues

[onetheycallEric]

In context: The Ryzen 9 3900X arrived last July, making a splash for being the first 12-core desktop processor aimed at consumers for $499. However, the chip was gone just as quickly as it arrived and has proven to be very elusive since, leading to significant price gouging. It remains to be seen if pricing and inventory stabilizes in November, when AMD is set to launch the Ryzen 9 3950X.

Nearly three months removed from AMD's launch of the well-received Ryzen 3000 family of processors, supply issues surrounding the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X still remain. AMD launched the high-end Ryzen 7 3700X and Ryzen 9 3900X on July 7th, and stock was depleted almost immediately, leading consumers to either out of stock notices or being greeted with grossly inflated prices.

In the time since, the availability of the Ryzen 7 3700X has improved. However, the same can't be said for the Ryzen 9 3900X, despite AMD's commitment to get more stock into retail channels. Over at Newegg, the Ryzen 9 3900X is currently going for as much as $800. At Amazon, prices aren't faring much better, with prices anywhere from $722 to well over $800 at time of writing.

A recent thread on Reddit also shows that Microcenter has increased the price of the Ryzen 9 3900X to $570, a healthy $71 premium over the $499 MSRP. In that same thread, many users expressed speculation that AMD had secretly increased the MSRP for the Ryzen 9 3900X. However, when Tom's Hardware reached out to AMD for comment, AMD quickly dismissed the idea, stating the MSRP remains unchanged.

AMD certainly can't control demand, and there's only so much they can do to augment supply, as the chips are manufactured by TSMC -- and TSMC is very busy these days with its 7nm process. Recent reports indicate that TSMC has tripled its lead time for 7nm chips from 2 months to 6 months. TSMC is currently grappling with 7nm orders from AMD for both Ryzen and Navi, as well as Apple's A13 SoC powering the new iPhone 11 family.

AMD sort of confirmed a shortage when it announced a delay for the Ryzen 9 3950X, stating the 16-core chip would debut alongside next-gen Threadripper in November, allowing AMD to focus on current supply issues.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/82113-amd-ryzen-9-3900x-going-much-800-amid.html

 

[Uncle Al]

Ouch! Sometimes the old adage of "supply and demand" doesn't necessarily benefit the consumer!

 

[QuantumPhysics]

How much is the new 64 core AMD cpu?

 

[grumblguts]

Let the MUGS pay this price. Sensible people will wait patiently until availability picks up.
This will only hurt the ***** so it matters not.

 

[neeyik]

How much is the new 64 core AMD cpu?

Around $7k:

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E168191...J&cm_re=PPSSHZKQUPOGEJ-_-19-113-581-_-Product

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Around $7k:

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E168191...J&cm_re=PPSSHZKQUPOGEJ-_-19-113-581-_-Product

LOL WOW

 

[Squid Surprise]

Ouch! Sometimes the old adage of "supply and demand" doesn't necessarily benefit the consumer!

“Sometimes”?!?
It never does! Supply and demand, by definition, benefits the seller!

 

[Nobina]

Let the MUGS pay this price. Sensible people will wait patiently until availability picks up.
This will only hurt the ***** so it matters not.

It always hurts sensible consumers in the end. If enough people buy this CPU for $800 AMD will be justified to do this again. How do you think phone prices became so high? Dum dums bought them at $1K so phone manufacturers continued making them at that price and then raised them some more. What happened in the end is a "sensible" consumer that used to buy a flagship at like $500 or $700 now either has to pay $1200 or buy a lesser phone, so he gets screwed.

 

[mrvco]

Considering what we went through with GPUs recently, I wouldn't consider this "significant price gouging", especially considering there are plenty of viable alternatives available that will suffice until supply catches up with demand.

 

[Irata]

Around $7k:

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E168191...J&cm_re=PPSSHZKQUPOGEJ-_-19-113-581-_-Product

LOL WOW

I know, totally overpriced for a 64C/128T 2S top of the line server CPU.
Personally, I'd much rather go for the noticeably cheaper Xeon® Platinum 8280L.

It only costs $17,906, so quite a bit cheaper, but you also get a lot more:

28C/56T, 6 channels of DDR4-2933 memory support and not the measly 8C DDR4-3200 that Epyc supports.
In addition, you get a full 48 PCIe 3 lanes, so I/O won't be a problem like it would be for the 7742 which only offers 128 PCI3 4.0 lanes.
And to top this of, for that low price you also get 38.5 MB of L3 cache instead of the laughable 256MB that Epyc has.

[/s]

 

[neeyik]

LOL WOW

At least one can buy it as an individual item, unlike Intel's largest server CPUs - they're only sold direct to system builders and even then, only as part of an entire module (I.e. CPU+motherboard+rack). One of the most expensive Intel CPUs one can buy directly is something like the 28 core Xeon Scalable Platinum 8180 at $11k.

Edit: Irata beat me to it

 

[Skjorn]

Ouch! Sometimes the old adage of "supply and demand" doesn't necessarily benefit the consumer!

“Sometimes”?!?
It never does! Supply and demand, by definition, benefits the seller!

Unless your demand is not meeting the supply. Then it benefits comsumers.. because of over supply.. dang that was tough...

On topic, microcenter has it listed as saving $30 at $569.99... they have original price at $599.99... Microcenter has went downhill with good prices since about 2015.

 

[VitalyT]

Shortage of CPU-s means AMD is doing something right, as the demand is increasing faster than anticipated.

 

[Evernessince]

Intel's closest 12 core is $1,125 USD. That's uses mesh topology as well, so IPC is down compared to their consumer processors.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Already gone cold on AMD's new parts. the X570 MB's are ridiculous prices, and are power hungry old designs. So rule them out. the CPU's are fine but rarely hit their advertised clocks fwiw, but worse many are in short supply and the 5700XT still uses way too much power especially the 2-4% faster AIB's using more power than 2080 Ti's and if you're unlucky enough to live in Australia are also criminally overpriced.

We're also told TSMC can't meet 7nm demand to expect worsening shortages. Looks like I'll wait for Zen 3, X670 and Nvidia's Ampere based cards next year.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Shortage of CPU-s means AMD is doing something right, as the demand is increasing faster than anticipated.

Possibly but TSMC can't keep up demand on their 7nm line so they are the real bottleneck.

 

[Danny101]

Well I'm still on the ASUS Prime X370-A platform with the lowly Ryzen 1200 and RX 570, so it's going to be a while before I'll concern myself with any upgrades. After they move on to a new socket, I'll then determine what the max a CPU will be supported. The Ryzen 9 3950X will likely be the best available CPU issued for the X370 platform. I still feel I jumped too soon with that build. Granted, it was still leaps above from what I came from. After all these years, my scheduling of upgrades still needs some dialing in. I generally pick a platform, splurging on a premium motherboard, a starter CPU, and a solid mid-range GPU. As the series get revised, I max out to the latest supported CPU for that board along with a matching GPU. Works out to about 5-7 years between platforms.

 

[Shadowboxer]

AMD would be absolute fools if they don’t raise their own prices. If their parts are selling for these prices then it should be them that benefits and not the retailers. Clearly the demand is there. Last time I checked AMD are for profit corporation and not a retailer charity.

Oh and it makes me laugh when people claim AMD are hurting the consumer with increased pricing. Those consumers are clearly willing to pay these prices. It’s the consumers demand for this product that has caused the price to rise!