Get the AMD Ryzen 5 5500 for £113 (was £176)
The Ryzen 5 5500 is pretty interesting actually, with the same core layout (6C/12T) as the Ryzen 5600X but slower clock speeds and a smaller 16MB L3 cache. It’s actually a cut-down Ryzen 5600G APU, which also means it lacks PCIe 4.0 support - a bit of a bummer. The lower frequency and smaller cache compared to the 5600X reduces game frame-rates and content creation workloads across the board, but the base level of performance with Ryzen 5000 is so high that you’re still left with quite a capable little chip. And because it’s based on the same 7nm process as the other chips in its family, it sips power and offers very high efficiency as measured by performance-per-watt. You still get the surprisingly decent AMD Wraith cooler with it, so you don’t have to allocate any additional budget to a thermal solution - a nice feature for a low-cost build. The Ryzen 5500 hasn’t had the full RPS review treatment just yet, but there are plenty of reviews and benchmarks out there - I saw Hardware Unboxed has done some good coverage, for example - so it’s well worth taking a look and then coming back to this deal if it sounds like it might be right for you. That’s all from me for now, but stay tuned for more deals and feel free to chime in in the comments if you’re after a particular category of product - it’s no problem for me to keep an eye out for you when I’m doing my deals rounds.
