Get AMD's brand-new Ryzen 5 7500F CPU and matching motherboard for £300 from AWD-IT
A nice deal ahead of our full DF review.
AMD's Ryzen 5 7500F processor was announced last week, a cheaper version of the 7600 with fractionally lower clocks and no integrated graphics. That makes it a cheaper entry point to the Ryzen 7000 family, and you can pick it up from AWD-IT as part of a £300 bundle that includes a matching WiFi-capable A620 motherboard worth £132. That makes the 7500F just £168, compared to £200 for the Ryzen 5 7600, a handy 16 percent savings for equivalent performance.
The 7500F has already arrived for testing at Digital Foundry HQ, and it looks to be a capable chip for the money, bringing with it six cores, 12 threads and a boost clock of 5GHz. This also keeps AMD to their trend of offering boost clocks of 5GHz or over with all the current Ryzen 7000 chips. The only reason you'd really choose the 7600 or 7600X over the 7500F is if you need their integrated graphics capabilities, which allow you to do light gaming without a discrete graphics card. Now that GPU prices are more reasonable, this isn't a common scenario so most gaming PCs are better off saving money with the 7500F and spending more on the GPU.
This bundle deal from AWD-IT combines the 7500F with another innovation - a motherboard with an A620 chipset. At CES 2023, AMD promised we'd see motherboards that supported AM5 for a much lower price than other chipsets, and the advent of the A620 chipset has made that a reality. The difference here though is that these motherboards don't support PCIe 5.0 SSDs, which are impressive in speed tests but not better than PCIe 4.0 drives in terms of real-world performance - and they're also hilariously expensive. Instead, this A620M motherboard comes with a singular PCIe 4.0 x16 slot and a handful of SATA ports for your storage needs. DDR5 RAM is supported though, with overclocking up to 6400MT/s. For most people therefore, an A620M motherboard is a pretty clever way to save money.
This particular AsRock motherboard brings with a good selection of I/O, too, with WiFi 6E, gigabit ethernet as well as a slew of USB ports. To be precise, you get a pair of USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-Cs, as well as five USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports, and eight total USB 2.0 ports. By my reckoning, that's a total of 13 USB-A ports, giving you plenty of options for plugging in peripherals, external drives and other devices.
If you want to grab a solid foundation for a modern PC for especially affordable money, this deal on the brand-new Ryzen 5 7500F and an AsRock A620M motherboard for £300 from AWD-IT is well worth a look.