If you already own an AM4 system, one of AMD’s more affordable Zen 3 CPUs might be a better option.

Thanks to the Sam Altmans of the world, the price of consumer memory, including RAM and solid-state storage, has become prohibitively expensive. Just 16GB of DDR5 RAM can now set you back as much as $300, making new AM5 and LGA 1851 PC builds unobtainable for most people. In fact, the price of memory has gotten so bad that AMD brought back its flagship AM4 gaming processor, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, just to give those still on an AM4 system a way to upgrade their PC.

But should you buy a 5800X3D in 2026? Let's take a look at some of the factors you should consider before deciding to spend $349 on a previous generation CPU.

I bought my 5800X3D in July 2023, or a year after it first went on sale in 2022. I've already gotten three years of use out of the 5800X3D, and can't complain about its gaming performance. If you came here looking for benchmarks, I'll point you to outlets like Hardware Unboxed that have done extensive testing of the rereleased 5800X3D. What I can offer instead are anecdotes from a few recent games.

I've been playing a lot of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered . While the original is now more than 11 years old, the remaster incorporates a new, optional ray-tracing pipeline that can be very demanding, even on the most powerful of modern PCs.

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