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Buying older Ryzen CPUs around 8th October

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I've seen a few comments on this forum suggesting people wait until the 8th before buying a Ryzen CPU. Although I'm not looking to buy a 4000 series CPU (unless the pricing is surprisingly cheap), but I was wondering if there might be a knock-on effect on the pricing of existing Ryzen CPUs?

This could happen in one of 2 ways: 1) retailers clear stock of existing chips by reducing prices, or 2) increasing supply of 2nd hand CPUs come on to the 2nd hand market making older CPUs more competitive.

Any thoughts?
 
Soldato
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Yeah it's inevitable that pricing of the 3000 series will come down, both on the new and the second hand market. I think the 4000 series will be too much of an improvement to miss out on though.

If you're on a budget perhaps get a 3000 chip to use temporary and then upgrade to 4000 in a year or two. I dont think staying on 3000 permanently for the next 5 years would make sense because things are progressing very quickly.
 
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Thanks CuriousTomCat, that's good advice. Maybe I'll have a look at the 3600 for now - if it goes down a bit when the 4000 series comes out that will be a bonus.
 
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A cheap 3600 next month, then a swap out for a 12 core Zen 3 in 18 months time makes some sense.

Came very close to building a new system and then saw the comments saying to wait also , Definitely not going to buy now , hopefully pick up a bargain
 
Soldato
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The price of the 3xxx series CPU's has been gradually increasing again, post Comet Fail Lake launch, you can see this trend if you follow the market daily, you only need to look at the price of the R5 3600 the average price has risen almost 15%, from lows of ~£140 to around £180 if you look at one today.

So six months ago you could have had the same CPU for £40 less, how does this translate into the 4xxx launch? Well the prices seem like they have started to slow down (in terms of price increases) and obviously there is going to be some pent up demand for those waiting for 4xxx, but there isn't loads of stock around like there was with the 1xxx and 2xxx when the 3xxx launched. So it is hard to say the difference this will make, not to mention the 3xxx CPU's are much superior to the previous two generations, so I expect demand to be high on the second user market. The prices for a 3600 as an example may easily fetch £125+ due to the fact they spent a lot of time priced higher recently, if you happened to buy one from here and paid £209 last week, then £125 seems like a big drop, but if you bought at £140 then £125 seems like a great price to get, so it may land somewhere in the middle.

Hows does this fit in with the 4xxx launch, well if AMD pull a blinder and do a £179 6c/12t CPU that is way faster than the 3600, then adding £55 a budget might not sound a lot from a second user 3600 at £125, but that will buy you 16GB of DDR4 3200MHz RAM, or bump you up from a low-mid GPU to the next tier e.g. 1660 Super to RTX 2060. I think you'll see them fetch a reasonable price either way, as I've said in previous threads, AMD don't have the spare 7nm capacity so the stock may not be replenished to any significant levels vs the new CPU's and the price may naturally stay a bit higher due to this.
 
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The price of the 3xxx series CPU's has been gradually increasing again, post Comet Fail Lake launch, you can see this trend if you follow the market daily, you only need to look at the price of the R5 3600 the average price has risen almost 15%, from lows of ~£140 to around £180 if you look at one today.

I've noticed quite a big rise , I was planning on going with a 3600 , Lowest price at one point was £170 ... Back up to £208 in a lot of places , and even more here (£218.99) ... A vast amount of suppliers are out-of-stock where the 3600 is concerned, so I was thinking the price rise was just because demand had rocketed without supply to back it up...and that when stock levels rose enough, that it should level back out? But from what you're saying, could be very wrong on expecting a drop again
 
Soldato
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I've noticed quite a big rise , I was planning on going with a 3600 , Lowest price at one point was £170 ... Back up to £208 in a lot of places , and even more here (£218.99) ... A vast amount of suppliers are out-of-stock where the 3600 is concerned, so I was thinking the price rise was just because demand had rocketed without supply to back it up...and that when stock levels rose enough, that it should level back out? But from what you're saying, could be very wrong on expecting a drop again

AMD are facing an uphill battle at the moment as they are starting to disrupt many previously non-dominant market places e.g laptop CPU's, data centre, and obviously now desktop. They also are supplying/supporting the two largest game console launches in history, split a few weeks apart, and also have an GPU division trying to claw back some market share, the common factor in all of these in 7nm wafer supply from TSMC which isn't unlimited and they have pre-determined quantity contracts purchased which are not easily increased.

So if AMD need to make all the things above, and they are wasting wafer space on an outgoing product, that would be the first to face cut backs and the supply chain requirements for the likes of OEM's would be prioritised if they still need the parts, retail would be left to fend for whatever is in the channel etc. causing the price to increase or supply to just disappear.

If you want to get a system built, up and running and doing something now, then you can always fall back on a Ryzen 3000G (£40-50), has a built in GPU and will likely lose nothing second hand other than the postage, means you can wait for the graphics card launches and CPU launches and see what is what, rather than paying an eye watering amount for the 3600 now.
 
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Hopefully there's a 12 core variant we can buy like the 3900. I don't care about the boost clocks on it, keeping 12 cores inside a 65w envelope would be perfect for those of us with smaller builds.

The Renoir CPU's still aren't available either,, and both B550 and A520 took an eternity to get here, AMD's decision making has been a little questionable lately.
 
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AMD are facing an uphill battle at the moment as they are starting to disrupt many previously non-dominant market places e.g laptop CPU's, data centre, and obviously now desktop. They also are supplying/supporting the two largest game console launches in history, split a few weeks apart, and also have an GPU division trying to claw back some market share, the common factor in all of these in 7nm wafer supply from TSMC which isn't unlimited and they have pre-determined quantity contracts purchased which are not easily increased.

So if AMD need to make all the things above, and they are wasting wafer space on an outgoing product, that would be the first to face cut backs and the supply chain requirements for the likes of OEM's would be prioritised if they still need the parts, retail would be left to fend for whatever is in the channel etc. causing the price to increase or supply to just disappear.

If you want to get a system built, up and running and doing something now, then you can always fall back on a Ryzen 3000G (£40-50), has a built in GPU and will likely lose nothing second hand other than the postage, means you can wait for the graphics card launches and CPU launches and see what is what, rather than paying an eye watering amount for the 3600 now.

That makes a lot of sense , thanks
 
Soldato
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I don’t think the 4000 release will have much effect on many of the Ryzen line up as the 3600, 3700 and 3900 are already bargains.
 
Soldato
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The right* time to buy will probably late February as the console will have seen massive sales numbers, the graphics card rush will be well over and retail will suffer a slump in sales. Plus we will probably be back in lockdown without furrow.
 
Soldato
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To be fair, even without new models I would expect Nov/Dec to be a peak time for consoles sales.

It's not about the sales of the actual consoles, it is about the fact that AMD/TSMC are making the SoC's for the consoles so have to have them made and supplied to Microsoft/Sony well in advance, in order for the consoles to be manufactured, packed, and shipped ready for release. :)
 
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