Microcenter has stepped up to be the first retailer bundling free RAM kits with select AMD Ryzen 9000 series CPUs.
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First up, Microcenter is offering AMD’s new Ryzen 7 9700X processor with a free 32GB kit of G.SKILL Flare X5 series DDR5-6000 memory (you can check it out here), with the RAM alone worth $100+ and the Ryzen 7 9700X processor costing $360 on its own, means you’re in reality, paying just $260 for the 9700X processor. Damn good stuff.
Moving onto the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and Microcenter is bundling in 16GB of the same G.SKILL Flare X5 series DDR5-6000 memory (check out this deal here), for $280. The 16GB kit of DDR5-6000 RAM costs around $50, so you’re paying about $230 for the 9600X on its own, a great deal as well, but not as good as the 9700X + 32GB deal.
3The reason? You wouldn’t want to build a new Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series system with only 16GB of RAM, so if you purchased the 9600X + 16GB deal through Microcenter, you’d really want to buy another 16GB stick so you’d have 32GB of dual-channel DDR5-6000. I wouldn’t recommend buying only 16GB of RAM, or would I recommend only building a single-channel-capable new Zen 5-based PC.
Microcenter does have other CPUs with RAM bundles, including the Zen 4-based Ryzen 7 7700X priced at $435 — more, yes — but you get the same 32GB of RAM kit, and an MSI B650 series motherboard which costs $150 on its own.