There’s nothing we like more than a good sale and this is the kind of deal that only comes around once in a blue moon. Get this: the first-gen Ryzen Threadripper 1920X is selling for $199.99 on Amazon. (Disclaimer, we have no idea how long stocks will last and there’s no guarantee that this price will stick). Yes, we’re not kidding and no, you didn’t teleport into the crazy sale deals dimension when you were sleeping. The 12-core 24-thread 1920X is currently available for less than the launch price of the Ryzen 5 1600.
Threadripper was always mean to be a low-volume halo part. Something that gave AMD a viable SKU to compete with Intel’s HPC line, and targeted squarely at designers, video editors and the other ten people in the world who actually need what amounts to 2 1600s glued together. The initial $799 launch price reflected this: this was a value product only in comparison to Intel’s Skylake-X i9 abominations. At $199, this is something you want to slap the purchase button on, just as soon as you pick your jaw up from the floor.
What kind of performance are we looking at here, though? The 180W TDP has allowed AMD to keep clocks high, with a 3.5 GHz boost clock and 4 GHz Turbo. You’ll likely be able to push all cores at 4.0 GHz if you overclock. Performance in non-gaming workloads is nothing short of phenomenal: we’re looking at multi
If you’re just looking to game, though, the Threadripper 1920X is a good, not great choice. This is a first-gen Ryzen part so you won’t benefit for the IPC gains that make 3rd gen Ryzen such a solid gaming contender. Moreover, few games actually utilize more than 8 cores–by the time we actually need a 12-core processor to run games, the 1920X might be too old in the tooth to deliver
Further Reading:
X399 motherboards are still ridiculously expensive compared to B450 motherboards. Add to that the cost of buying a separate cooler and you’re looking at about the same total as buying a 3900x system, the latter which isn’t 2 year old tech, you get nice 7nm silicon and has significantly better IPC for gaming and overall productivity