AMD is reportedly planning a price hike, not only for its GPUs, but also CPUs, affecting Ryzen 9000 & older lineups.
AMD Ryzen 9000 & Older CPUs Are Reportedly Going To Become More Expensive Tonight
AMD has already notified its AIBs and respective partners of a 10% price hike across its GPU families, such as the latest Radeon RX 9000 series based on the RDNA 4 graphics architecture. These price hikes are due to rising DRAM costs, such as GDDR6, which are used by graphics cards. Since September, the AI segment demand has prompted a sharp rise in DRAM and NAND prices, which are affecting global memory supply and prices of various products.
Now, as per Overclock3D, it looks like AMD is planning to raise the prices of its CPUs, too. According to the report, the CPU price hike will affect the latest Ryzen 9000 CPUs based on the Zen 5 architecture & also older lineups. We don't know the extent of these price hikes, if they will be in a similar 10% range or lower/higher, but it's kind of weird that CPUs are seeing price hikes, too.
OC3D has confirmed, via industry sources, that AMD has informed its partners of a new price increase for its products. These price increases will take effect at midnight tonight, so buyers will not have much time to secure affected products at their current, lower prices.
his price increase affects both Ryzen 9000-series processors and AMD’s older products. AMD’s planned CPU price increases will be implemented at Midnight.
Sure, for GPUs, the rising DRAM costs owing to poor supply make sense, but for CPUs, it doesn't make any sense since they don't feature any DRAM or NAND chips onboard the interposer. But what could lead to the price hikes is probably a shortage of wafers since the higher demand from the AI segment can lead to wafers being prioritized for AI chips instead of consumers. DRAM suppliers have already said that they are focusing on long-term profitability, and major chip producers such as TSMC might also be leveraging the situation.
The outlet also has a very specific timeframe for when the price increase will take effect. They state that AMD CPUs will see price hikes as early as tonight (Midnight Time UK). AMD's Ryzen 9000 CPUs have been available at very decent price points with the fastest gaming CPU, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, currently down at $399 at Microcenter in the US. Though these won't last long if the price hike claim holds.
In short, if the price increase does end up happening tonight, then it's even worse news for gamers who will be deprived of decently priced PC components. First it was GPUs, then memory, then SSDs, and now CPUs. What's left?
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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