(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
The AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D is AMD's brand-new Ryzen 7 CPU, designed to slot neatly between the 7800X3D and the 7600X3D. While it's not a stellar offering as a standalone CPU upgrade, in this bundle featuring 16GB of DDR5 RAM for $16, it's a no-brainer as the perfect start to an AM5 gaming build.Right now, you can get the 7700X3D at Newegg with an MSI Pro X870-P motherboard, 16GB of DDR5 G.Skill Ripjaws M5 (1x16GB), and a free Cooler Master Elite Liquid 240 CPU AIO for just $588, a $233 saving that gets you the RAM for basically nothing.
Check out this deal on Newegg
While this bundle does limit you to single-channel RAM for the time being — it's just a single stick of 16GB DDR5 — it's an ample start for a mid-range gaming build in the current economy. If you really wanted, you could buy a second stick for the list price of $249, and get yourself 32GB of DDR5 for $265, which is much cheaper than the current going rate for RAM. If you factor in the free cooler, you're also saving another $80.
The 7700X3D can't match the more expensive 7800X3D or the hallowed 9800X3D, but as you can see from our testing, it can sustain average frames of 164fps in our 1080p gaming test suite, making it a great option for 1080p and 1440p gaming. This Zen 4 chip has 8 cores and 16 threads, and features 104MB of Cache.
