AMD’s Ryzen 7000 “Zen 4” CPUs have great performance, but as they use the new AM5 socket, upgrading to the new CPU means picking up a new motherboard – and DDR5 RAM. Thankfully, we’ve started to see a bunch of discounts on CPU and motherboard combos, including this one from Newegg bundled with a Ryzen 5 7600 CPU and MSI Pro B650M-A WiFi motherboard for the price. $324.99, $84 savings compared to buying both separately.
The Ryzen 5 7600 is the Zen 4 CPU of choice for most people, because it delivers performance is close to that of Ryzen 7600X while costing significantly less. With six cores and twelve threads, content creation tasks like 3D rendering or video transcoding aren’t as fast as the higher core-count Ryzen 7000 CPUs, but for gaming this is the highest value per frame above every dollar.
The motherboard is also a wise choice, with a simple and compact Micro ATX design that works in regular or slightly smaller cases, four DDR5 RAM slots, two PCIe slots 4.0 M.2 NVMe and built-in wireless connectivity. , Bluetooth and 2.5 gig network connectivity. This marks most of the great platform features, along with eight USB ports and HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 video outputs for the 7600’s integrated graphics. PCIe 5.0 isn’t supported, however, which is a bit disappointing. Expected – but perhaps understandable at this price point.
For comparison, the Ryzen 5 7600 itself costs $229, so you only pay $95 for the motherboard – a pretty awesome deal!
