Following the release of Intel’s 13th Gen Core “Raptor Lake” and falling demand in the PC component market, AMD Ryzen 7000-series “Zen 4” desktop processors have seen their first round of price reductions on top retailer Newegg. The highest Ryzen 9 7950X 16-core/32-thread CPU is now available at USD $574 as opposed to USD $700 (a 18% price reduction). The Ryzen 9 7900X, which has 12 cores and 24 threads, has a price decrease of 14%, from $550 to $474.

A $50 price reduction brings the 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 7700X’s MSRP from $400 to about $350. The 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 7600X receives a similar $50 discount, bringing the chip’s original $300 launch price down to approximately $250. The competitively priced 13th Gen Core SKUs, which comprise the i9-13900K, i7-13700K, and i5-13600K, pose a serious threat to all four SKUs. Another important deterrent is the expense of Socket AM5 motherboards, which contribute significantly to platform prices that are capped at DDR5 memory. The Intel platform presently offers motherboards that support DDR4 and entry-level chipset alternatives.