New Ryzen 7000 motherboard bundles make it way cheaper to upgrade to AMD's latest CPUs
We highlight options from Ebuyer, Overclockers and AWD-IT.
AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors launched to critical acclaim, including from us at Digital Foundry, but the high prices of the CPUs - and of the required DDR5 RAM and X670 motherboards - made it difficult to recommend the new processors in terms of outright value. That's starting to change, with all three components dropping in price significantly, and AMD is even discounting CPU, motherboard and sometimes RAM bundles to make it easier to justify upgrading to the latest generation of Ryzen processors.
Today we're highlighting two such bundle deals at Ebuyer, where you can pick up a Ryzen 7000 processor and high-end motherboard from as little as £390 - including a free copy of Star Wars Jedi Survivor when it comes out on April 28th.
Just to give you a bit of a flavour as what to expect, I'll run you through a couple of options available - including the most affordable bundle and the bundle that offers the biggest reduction when bought together rather than separately.
The most affordable of these combines the AMD Ryzen 5 7600 and MSI Pro B650M-A WiFi mATX motherboard for £390, a £40 saving compared to buying the two components separately.
As far as processors go, while the 7600 marks out the most affordable entry into Ryzen 7000 so far, it's still a potent processor that easily outperforms even Core i9 and Ryzen 9 competition from previous generations, complete with six cores, 12 threads and a boost clock of up to 5.1GHz. In our Ryzen 7600 review, we found that it performed near identically to the more expensive Ryzen 5 7600X, and by the extension the rest of the Ryzen 7000 family, while consuming less power thanks to its reduced TDP.
As for the motherboard in this deal, the MSI Pro B650M-A WiFi comes with all the creature comforts you'd expect in an AM5 motherboard - support for DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 is included, and you even get high-speed connectivity options including WiFi 6E and 2.5-gig Ethernet. There are also a ton of PCie Gen 4 and M.2 slots for expansion, for putting in any GPUs or storage solutions you wish to.
At the other end of the scale comes the biggest savings from one of these bundles, courtesy of the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and MSI MPG X670E Carbon WiFi for £700, £150 off buying the two parts separately.
As you'll know from our Ryzen 7 7700X review, this CPU is actually faster in some games than the more expensive Ryzen 9 7900X and 7950X, as the entirety of its TDP can be spent on a single chiplet, rather than the multiple-chiplet designs of the larger chips which incur some latency penalties despite having higher clock speeds and more cores. The 700X is hardly bereft of cores either, with eight cores and 16 threads to make it quite a workhorse for content creation.
For the motherboard on offer here, the MSI MPG X670E Carbon WiFi represents a high-end AM5 motherboard with significantly more PCIe 5.0 lanes than the previous B650 board, thanks to two chipset chips handling PCIe lanes. That makes this drive a better choice if you want to attach a ton of storage, network cards and other add-in cards. Of course, there's still support for DDR5 RAM to take advantage of a new hardware standard, plus more robust power delivery components that should allow for better overclocking potential. In terms of connectivity, there's both Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5-gig Ethernet for whether you're using a wireless or wired connection, while for some extra style points, this MSI motherboard also comes with some controllable RGB which is handy for syncing up any other RGB components you might have, like light strips.
If you are in need of a new processor and motherboard combo for an upcoming PC build, then this selection of AMD-based options at varying prices should make for an especially solid foundation for your next system.
AMD's Ryzen 7000 bundles are also available at Overclockers and AWD-IT with slightly different options available, so why not take a look and see if one takes your fancy?