If you're wanting to build a mid-range PC around Zen 3 or upgrade an existing supported platform to AMD's newest silicon, the Ryzen 7 5800X is a good option. Especially right now, because it is on sale at Amazon for $419, down from its regular selling price of $449.
The 5800X has been one of the easier Zen 3 parts to buy, as it has been in stock far more frequently than the Ryzen 9 5900X or 5950X. And while it may not be the most glamorous offering in AMD's stable, it is still one of the best CPUs for gaming, with strong performance at 1080p, 1440p, and even 4K, when paired with a capable graphics card.
Therein lies the rub, of course—GPUs are incredibly scarce at the moment. There's no onboard graphics here, so you can't bide your time with an iGPU. If you're building a PC today around the Ryzen 7 5800X, you'll need to somehow get your hands on a discrete GPU, or already have one that you can slot into your new build.
GPU stock challenges aside, the Ryzen 7 5800X is a good foundation for a mid-range gaming PC. It is an 8-core/16-thread processor with a 3.8GHz base clock, 4.7GHz max boost clock, and 32GB of L3 cache. And being a Zen 3 part, it supports the PCI Express 4.0 specification (X570 or B550 chipset), which means you can take full advantage of a blistering fast PCIe 4.0 SSD (some of the best models are rated to hit speeds north of 7,000MB/s).
There is a caveat, beyond the GPU. Though this is the lowest price we've seen the Ryzen 7 5800X, Intel's previous generation Core i7 10700K offers similar gaming performance, and is trending at around $319. That's a fantastic price, though It lacks PCIe 4.0 support, if that's important to you. There's also Intel's new Core i7 11700K based on Rocket Lake, which does support PCIe 4.0 and is selling for $399.99 at Amazon right now.
