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AMD Ryzen 5 1600X vs Core i5 Review
- Insanity 10y agoThe good thing about buying a slightly higher-end CPU is that it will last you for quite a few years. I got my CPU close to its release (2009) and don't feel like I am missing out on anything. Furhtermore turns out that the Ryzen 5 matches the price that my current CPU is selling for at the moment. I have an Intel i7 860 (1st gen). I still don't think that I would benefit from upgrading at this point. Of course, I use my system mostly just for writing code. Friends of me who are into computer animation and design follow changes in the hardware world more closely than I do. (And gamers as well).
- simias 10y agoWell yeah, for writing code you might as well use decade old CPU and it wouldn't really matter. Only compile times would suffer. If you use more performance-critical applications I think the best way to future-proof would be to buy an "unlocked" CPU that you'll be able to overclock when you want to juice out a bit more power (maybe at the cost of a better cooling system). At least that's what I do.
- user5994461 10y ago> Well yeah, for writing code you might as well use decade old CPU and it wouldn't really matter. Only compile times would suffer. 2007 is the era of the Core 2 Duo, which really are dated and slow compared to today processors. 5 years is reasonable, the evolution has been kinda slow lately.
- and0 10y agoI'll be going on 5 years this fall, which is my planned update period. Aside from some newer games, though, everything is great. Compilation times okay, heavy web browsing feels fine.
- user5994461 10y agoIt's been a few years since games can't run on core 2 duo. I had to processor because of that. (running at 10fps isn't running fine).
- simias 10y agoDoes it matter for writing code though? I have an old crappy 32bit celeron laptop with 1GB of RAM that's about 10 years old and runs Debian. I still use it from time to time when I want to code on the go, it runs Emacs and Firefox just fine. If I were to change something I'd probably replace the crappy HDD with an SSD before I touch the CPU. And the screen resolution is pretty poor too. But performance-wise it just works. I guess the key element for me is that I basically use the same software stack now that I did 10 years ago. Same shell, same window manager, same OS, same editor, same compiler. Only the web browser has significantly evolved in this time span.
- user5994461 10y ago1GB of ram won't run eclipse or visual studio smoothly. It's definitely not gonna run any test VM.
- hedora 10y agoIt should be ok for light docker usage. Builds might become memory bound. C++ compilers use lots of ram, and you might not be able to run one per core in parallel (assuming this machine has 2+ cores). I suspect some other languages are similar.
- lultimouomo 10y agoIt's only the linking stage that uses a lot of RAM and if you're building a single binary that's single threaded anyway. But if you need swap to link, it's going to take forever, and nowadays plenty of things need more than 1G to link (especially if you enable LTO)
- flukus 10y agoI remember when I first got Visual Studio, it used so much memory that it was the justification i used to get dad to spring for an extra 128MB of RAM, bringing the total to 256. I can't think of much it does now but couldn't then.
- Insanity 10y agoWell, of course when writing code you do want to run your tools that you are using without any issues. (IntelliJ, Visual Studio, profilers, ..) So it's not just the "pushing text into a file" which you could of course just do from the terminal as well if you were so inclined to do. The idea of buying an overclockable CPU does sound like a pretty good strategy. ;-)
- _e 10y agoI have built computers with the intention of overclocking down the road but never got around to it. If you are going to overclock then do it with the intention of doing from the get go. Historically, are unlocked CPU's more expensive than locked CPU's?
- SippinLean 10y agoYeah but all the other components on your motherboard will become outdated. Every few years you'd probably want a mobo with the latest memory and storage support.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoYour CPU is slower than the $50 G4560, and current high end CPU's are about 2 - 2.5X as fast as yours.
- dagw 10y agoSure, but whether or not you'll actually notice any difference is very workload dependent.
- Insanity 10y agoCompletely agree. I am aware that my CPU is not a blazing fast machine. But I do not really notice the difference all that much (if at all) for the work that I am doing on it. Which mainly consists of running : IntelliJ, Spotify, and maybe a few tabs in chromium on Ubuntu.
- copperx 9y agoWhat if you were running a few virtual machines to develop (very common workload)?
- jxi 9y agoI don't see how you could not notice a difference for any workload between a pentium class CPU and an i5 class CPU. You'll notice a difference by just opening Chrome.
- pantalaimon 10y agoAccording to [1], the i7-860 still has better multi-core performance and is pretty close overall. [1] http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-G4560-vs-Intel-Core-i7-860/3892vsm841 http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-G4560-vs-...
- neogodless 10y agoI agree. Still running a Phenom XII 940. Of course I've been upgrading the HDD all along (went through a Raptor, a VelociRaptor, an early 80GB SSD and finally a 256GB Samsung), and put in a new video card about four years ago (don't play latest games, anyway.) The Phenom cost me... $220. So the Ryzen 5 1600 has my name written all over it. But really, it would just make some things I do on my computer a little quicker. It would not have the profound effect that switching to an SSD did, in my opinion. I'll let the idea bake for a while.
- Insanity 10y agoYeah I upgraded other parts of my machine as well - just did not feel the need to touch the CPU. And actually, I had 8GB of RAM when it started out and I did not change that either. 8GB still runs fine for me. I should switch to a 256GB SSD as well though, that is on my list of things I want to upgrade.
- dbancajas 10y agoYou mean Phenom II right? I have Phenom II X4 925 from 6 years ago. On the same boat. To think that I worked on Ryzen performance while it was being developed/brought up. I'm a bit emotional but still not pulling the trigger.
- neogodless 10y agoYes, Phenom II X4 940. (I called it a Phenom II 940 in my previous post.)
- dlevine 10y agoI'm running a Phenom II 1055T (x6). It actually seems to be ok for pretty much everything, including gaming at 1440p (I've upgraded the GPU 3 times and am currently running a GTX 1070, 16GB of RAM, and an SSD). Not bad for a system that's almost 7 years old. The only issue is that I tried using the Oculus, and it won't work. Apparently the CPU doesn't have some instructions required for VR. I tried using a hacked version of the Oculus setup program that bypasses the CPU check, but it still won't work. Which is why I've been thinking about a Ryzen 5...
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoThe performance is lasting just fine for me as well. I've kept up with a couple SSD upgrades and stupid-cheap DDR3 RAM. But my performance bottleneck has always been storage, and the current champion (and next upgrade for me) is a PCIe SSD using NVMe. And old processors just don't support that.
- tertius 10y agoI have an i7 860 as well. I've added 32GB RAM, a new 1050 (cheap, but very fast for what I do with it, panoramic stitching.) The 860 is feeling a little sluggish these days for me. My laptop is about as fast... I'm excited about the jump once I decide to upgrade though and I've pretty decided that if it isn't a 2x improvement it's not worth jumping.
- CoolGuySteve 10y agoIf you really want bang for your buck, the non-X variants of the Ryzen chips are completely unlocked. So you can overclock/overvolt the chip to get within 3-5% performance of the high end model. Right now, I think the Ryzen 1700 with some overclocking is the best deal in the market. The R5 1600 and 1400 might be similar. This video has a quite interesting comparison of the price/performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RRt5WkVxuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RRt5WkVxuk
- utternerd 10y agoAgreed. I went with a 1700, and clocked it the same as an 1800X, saved $170 for effectively the same performance. The thing is a beast, for really cheap.
- quaffapint 10y agoThat's always the trick - whats the best bang for a buck while still future proofing. I'm still using my Q6600 doing development and playing the occasional game. Maybe the 1600 now to keep it at the 65W level.
- scholia 10y agoIt's closer than I thought to my 2011 vintage Core i5-2500. I don't see any point in upgrading either.... http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-860-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2500 http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-860-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2...
- chx 10y agoThis is true in a different way as well: the $135 off lease Dell T1600 workstation I bought on eBay with an E3 1245 (v1 / Sandy Bridge) CPU still decently compares to a Kaby Lake i5 and so the price/value is sky high. I didn't just get the CPU but also motherboard, RAM, PSU, chassis. Truth is, IPC growth has almost completely stalled, only 20% since Sandy Bridge https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/01/13/kaby_lake_7700k_vs_sandy_bridge_2600k_ipc_review/4 https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/01/13/kaby_lake_7700k_v... and so these ancient machines still serve us very well. And the E3 1245 had HT on which the i5 doesn't...
- beezle 10y agoMid 2013 I built my current workstation with the E3-1245 v3 ($290) that had just come out, maxed the ram out at 32GB. Been rock solid, great performer and expect to be using it for quite a few years more. The prior system was an again maxed out at the time dual pentium-pro that I kept kicking for 10 years. Everyone has different values, but for me maximizing the time a system is viable and my work environment is stable is most important; I'll pass on the latest shiny until absolutely needed.
- chx 10y agoNow I can't edit but to clarify: this machine I bought less than a month ago.
- nol13 10y agoSame, still going strong on my i5 750 here. That gen was perfect time to buy. My year old (cheap) laptop is actually significantly slower.
- 3princip 10y agoJust to mirror your point, my desktop and main work computer has an i5 750 (2009). There hasn't been a single reason for me to replace it, unless it dies. It's an excellent processor and does everything I need it to do. I also have an i7 7th gen in my laptop, to be honest there is no noticable difference between the two for my use cases.
- voltagex_ 10y agoFWIW a Skylake laptop chip still felt "slower" to me than an i7 2600k, which is several generations behind. In my case I know the Skylake chip is being throttled (XPS 9350 runs hot)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- shouldbworking 10y agoI too have a 750 from 2009, overclocked to 3.5 GHz since the day I bought it. Still benches about half the score as brand new ~$200 CPUs. I'll probably get one of these new fangled AMD raisens so I can have USB 3.0 and onboard LAN.
- neogodless 10y agoWhat are the most comparable benchmarks to web development work (i.e. Visual Studio compile/publish/debugging), or what do you recommend for making educated decisions around purchasing a CPU specifically for building software?
- cjbprime 10y agoSeems like the answer that more threads are better, and Ryzen has more threads.
- user5994461 10y agoHigher frequency is better. Most web languages are single threaded. Most operations, opening your IDE, running tests are also single threaded.
- trey-jones 10y agoThis statement is pretty badly outdated. Modern web tech is just as multi-thread capable as other tech.
- Rusky 10y agoIt's not. There's a reason Mozilla is pushing Servo.
- jhasse 10y ago> running tests are also single threaded Only if your tests modify global state / aren't thread safe. Good unit tests can be ran multi-threaded.
- the8472 10y ago> opening your IDE, running tests are also single threaded That very much depends on the IDE and testing framework
- 10y ago
- llomlup 10y agoFinally, multicore for the masses. A 6C12T based workstation is also a sweet spot for development work.
- jacquesm 10y agoMulticore has been 'for the masses' for a decade or more by now, even in mobile phones. What is different here than with other chips made by Intel or AMD that makes you say that?
- floatboth 10y agoIntel's offerings with more than 4 cores have been segregated into an "enthusiast"/HEDT platform (X99) with more expensive mainboards and the CPUs have been overpriced too. Ryzen is reasonably priced & has one socket for the 4, 8 and 6 core CPUs.
- jacquesm 10y ago4 cores still is multicore though. But ok, I see what you mean: anything with more than 4 cores that is affordable.
- llomlup 10y agoIntel's multicore CPUs (hexa-core and octa-core chips) have been available for for Intel's socket B/R systems, which are the HEDT grade. These systems came with a price premium, which isn't exactly the case for R5 and even R7 builds.
- cma 10y agoIntel has been putting die space into integrated graphics instead of more cores. Higher core machines have been available only at very high prices.
- thomastjeffery 10y agoWhich has been a bad move in the desktop market. Who want's to pay for integrated graphics when they are just going to put one or more discreet GPUs in their system? The only reason LGA 1151 has been so successful is that most of the market consists of "gamers" who are convinced that they need higher clock speed and IPC. AM4 should only be compared to LGA 2011v3, which has a very inflated price.
- jlebrech 10y agoIf you want decent upgrade path go for a 1151 based chipset, AMD CPUs are spread out over too many sockets. I'm considering getting a i3 or i5 based setup and upgrading to a 1151 i7 a year or two later.
- krastanov 10y agoIs that type of "future proofing" really worth it? Spending extra $400 today and using the computer until completely obsolete, instead of futile attempts to keep up part by part, seems cheaper and easier to me (unless your goal is to be able to play AAA games at max settings on release).
- jlebrech 10y agolooking at yearly mid range gpu upgrades. and the cpus must be able to scale too.
- onli 10y agoIt is Intel that is introducing a new socket with each new generation, and now even a new socket for their performance-but-not-X99-line. It will then have that new Socket 2066, plus Socket 1151, plus Socket 2011-3. Only that the latter will be replaced by LGA 3647. And I'm not even touching on server stuff here.
- floatboth 10y agohahaha nope Intel is the one with too many sockets. 1155 → 1150 → 1151 is just ridiculous, and 2011-v3 is electrically different from 2011 as well.
- jlebrech 10y ago1151 has the most CPU options right now, no?
- floatboth 10y agoEssentially two options: Skylake and Kaby Lake (which is a slightly more efficient update of Skylake). And seems like no future beyond that. Counting the individual SKUs is kinda pointless, they're just cut down versions of the same chip.
- DrNuke 10y agoMetal seems good & upgradable for deep learning but reports say software is nowhere near the Intel environment yet.
- floatboth 10y agoSoftware? You mean like firmware? Every new platform has problems with that… IIRC Intel X99 massively sucked at launch
- api 10y agoTL;DR: Intel is still faster for single-threaded tasks, but the AMD with all its cores and threads demolishes on parallel work loads. It doesn't lag far behind on single threaded performance either, so overall it's a big winner unless your application is stubbornly dependent on single threaded performance.
- dantillberg 10y agoWhen considering the switch from Intel to AMD, don't be fooled by comparing clock speeds! Intel has been ahead of AMD in the performance-per-clock game for a long time, and while some of these benchmarks look more promising than my disappointing experience (buying Magny Cours, and later upgrading to Interlagos), less-expensive (and lower TDP) Intel CPUs in many of these benchmarks still come out ahead of Ryzen. The tests where the Ryzen does shine generally seem to involve parallel workloads, but bear in mind that most of the stuff you wait for your computer to do are still bottlenecked by a single thread.
- jacquesm 10y agoI've used AMD hardware on a very heavily loaded webserver to good effect. This on a relatively affordable HP server with two CPU slots, two Opteron 6274's in there and a good amount of ram to go with it. Super stable and very good performance for relatively little money. Web stuff is one of those places where multi-threading and lots of cores is an easy win due to the nature of the workload.
- snuxoll 10y agoI imagine unless your workload is MS SQL or Oracle (if for no other reason than you'll spend more on licensing than your CPU, might as well get the most out of it) then Naples is probably going to be very appealing when it comes out later this year. Hell, I'm tempted to replace my 9 month old ThinkServer TD340 depending on how much the chips cost, I'm looking at $1000 to put a reasonable pair of 2nd generation E5 chips in this already.
- tutanchamun 10y agoIf the rumors [0][1] about Ryzen 9 (12 and 16 core HEDT CPU's for under 1000$) are true, and Naples starts at a similar price point things could get really interesting. [0] https://twitter.com/CPCHardware/status/844618089618722816 https://twitter.com/CPCHardware/status/844618089618722816 [1] https://videocardz.com/67649/amd-ryzen-cpu-with-12-cores-and-24-threads-spotted https://videocardz.com/67649/amd-ryzen-cpu-with-12-cores-and...
- Yhippa 10y agoOff-topic: what's the benefit of the Wraith coolers? A decent pack-in for cheaper than what you'd get aftermarket?
- onli 10y agoA decent cooler for effectively $0, since it comes included in the boxed version, which is mostly not more expensive than the tray version without the cooler.
- jrimbault 10y agoI wasn't actually reading the news at the time but: No one ever got fired for buying Intel (2000)[0] It seems this is still AMD biggest issue ? [0]: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/11/27/no_one_ever_got_fired/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/11/27/no_one_ever_got_fir...
- obstinate 10y agoIt's pretty wild that a CPU can have this much of an effect on game framerates. That definitely defied my expectations. I'm also fascinated that it's much worse on some games, and much better on others. Personally, I use my GPU for video encoding and mostly play games in the categories where Ryzen seems to underperform, so I won't be picking one of these up. But it's nice to know that AMD is bringing the heat on this front.
- exhilaration 10y ago> I'm also fascinated that it's much worse on some games, and much better on others. That's due to the all the Intel-specific optimizations that game companies have done. Here's an article about it: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3185466/hardware/heres-proof-that-ryzen-can-benefit-from-optimized-game-code.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3185466/hardware/heres-proof-... "Every processor is different on how you tune it, and Ryzen gave us some new data points on optimization," Oxide’s Dan Baker told PCWorld. "We’ve invested thousands of hours tuning Intel CPUs to get every last bit of performance out of them, but comparatively little time so far on Ryzen."
- banachtarski 10y ago> It's pretty wild that a CPU can have this much of an effect on game framerates. The CPU is the thing that provides work for the GPU to do (draw lists or draw bundles). Not every frame is fill bound (GPU bound) but some are and some aren't.
- mda 10y agoLooks like AMD is the way to go for compilation workloads. Very impressive. Check out the chromium compile benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/show/11244/the-amd-ryzen-5-1600x-vs-core-i5-review-twelve-threads-vs-four/9 http://www.anandtech.com/show/11244/the-amd-ryzen-5-1600x-vs...
- zeotroph 10y agoAll these nice graphs, but only few publications get that an indicator towards "better" (more points, fewer milliseconds, more fps, fewer watts) greatly improves comprehension speed, especially when multiple graphs using different metrics are used. <= better better =>
- simlevesque 10y agoI'm not sure what you are complaining about but there is such an indicator on the graph.
- zeotroph 10y agoIn the linked example it first says "Points" (implying more are better), and then "Lower is better" for some timed benchmark. That is not and indicator but text for which one has to slow down to read it, for skimming over a lot of graphs an arrow or triangle helps a lot, just like the already color-coded bars do. I can't remember where I saw it first, but for me at least it makes quite a difference.
- banachtarski 10y agoBetter is on the top for all the graphs...
- kbenson 10y agoThese are fairly easy to comprehend, as they are sorted from best (at the top) to worst (at the bottom). Having an indicator would be nice, but since all the graphs are sorted, it's fairly obvious.
- redsummer 10y agoI learnt on another HN thread that Ryzen is now working on Mac. 10.9 only at the moment, but hopefully that will change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntJLxbwurK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntJLxbwurK4
- otterpro 10y agoAt least until now, none of the AMD CPU can be used in Hackintosh, which is unfortunate (https://www.tonymacx86.com/ https://www.tonymacx86.com/).
- Rumudiez 10y agoMost interestingly to me, is that means OS X 10.9 is running DDR4, even though no Apple product to date that I'm aware of has shipped with anything faster than 2133MHz DDR3. [edit for highest DRAM frequency offered by Apple]
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jokr004 10y agoJust a heads up, you can view the entire article as one page by clicking the "Print this Article" button: http://www.anandtech.com/print/11244/the-amd-ryzen-5-1600x-vs-core-i5-review-twelve-threads-vs-four http://www.anandtech.com/print/11244/the-amd-ryzen-5-1600x-v...
- hu3 10y agothe hero we need
- tmsldd 10y agoWelcome back AMD. And of course, no doubt Intel has reaction power.. Competition is great!
- saosebastiao 10y agoI'm extremely excited for a competitive AMD again. Hats off to Lisa Su for turning around a fallen company. Just to make my wants clearer, I would love to have a Ryzen-based APU in a NUC like form factor. I have a 6th gen Intel i5 NUC, but would happily scrap it for a graphics system that plays nicer with linux.
- scopecreep 10y agoAgreed. Would be super nice to get full ECC support for 64gb of ram in a NUC form factor. The ram capacity is the only reason I don't have 2 or 3 NUC's right now for playing with.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kirse 10y agoturning around a fallen company AMD has been going through this cycle of down-and-turnaround for decades now. They tend to be like Microsoft OSes in that every other CPU architecture is the one that does really well, giving Intel some trouble... until Intel decides to crush AMD with lower prices and existing OEM/supplier relationships. Give it a couple years, AMD stock will be back down pushing new lows, at which point you can scoop up some shares and ride it out a few years for the next big win. AMD sticks around moreso because Intel needs them to exist, otherwise Intel would be a straight monopoly.
- ori_b 10y ago> but would happily scrap it for a graphics system that plays nicer with linux. Interesting -- Intel integrated graphics have always been the gold standard for graphics systems that play nicely with Linux (and other open source systems). As far as I know, they're still the only vendor with complete documentation.
- mmanfrin 10y agoMildly off topic but still on topic: Last night I was looking at user benchmarks for the Ryzen 7 vs the newer i7s and it looked like the i7s were beating the R7s in almost every practical category. I thought the R7 was supposed to be the 'bigger performance' sort of chip, but it can't seem to beat the i7, which hasn't really had a big performance boost in 5 years. What's going on? Is it that software testing the chips has not been updated to take advantage of the fancy new technology in the R7? Or is Intel just so far ahead that the R7 is a catch-up?
- AsyncAwait 10y agoThere are a couple of things going on here: - Ryzen is weaker in single-core IPC than KL, (it's at Broadwell levels) and many benchmarks are single core optimised. - There are lots of optimisations by software vendors as well as fixes by AMD yet to come, (a couple were already released) - Most of the coverage focuses on gaming, where Intel wins hands down, because of the better single-core performance - The Ryzen i7 is really aimed at content creators who export a lot of photos or 4K video and developers who do a lot of compilation, basically tasks that require and benefit from multiple cores - in those categories, the $500 Ryzen is neck and neck with the $1000 i7 Extreme CPU, this is where it really shines and is worth considering. The reason why most of the benchmarks are aimed at gamers and thus favour single-core IPC is because the PC market is such that if you want anything decent, you have to be a gamer. Want a good mechanical keyboard? It's going to be a gaming keyboard etc. because the Pro market is much smaller than the gaming market and thus these CPUs are rarely shown in comparisons where they really shine, one exception is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIIb5uZfukU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIIb5uZfukU
- cookiecaper 10y agoGood non-gaming keyboard: https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/ https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/ I agree on most other points. It is sad that good equipment is hard to get without a bunch of lights and MEGA-XXXTREME!!! stickers/labeling all over the place. I think the thing is that the gaming market is the largest "prosumer" market in the space. For real enterprises, they charge ridiculous markups on something similar to the gaming parts but labeled "professional" or "enterprise". For normal people, they produce the budget parts, because most people don't really care as long as Facebook works. The middle market in PC parts is gamers, enthusiasts who are willing to spend a little more to get decent quality/performance.
- hedora 10y ago"All the Ryzen 5 parts will support DDR4 ECC and non-ECC memory" This is huge for the NAS market. Mainstream intel parts do not support ECC.
- gozzoo 10y agoWhat makes NAS more different than other systems in regard of ECC?
- utternerd 10y agoBit flips when your storage is on the line is a Very Bad Thing(TM).
- nfriedly 10y agoThere's a presumption that NAS stores more-important-than-average data, so an error is a bigger deal. Also NAS systems often have check-summing and redundancy on the disk, but if an error happened in RAM, then that error will be propagated into the checksum and redundant copies.
- deelowe 10y agoDue to silent data corruption.
- mamcx 10y agoI wish Ryzen be useful for hackintosh, but is currently ill-advised to go there...
- sp332 10y agoI'm curious why so many of these charts show the 1600X beating the 1800X. This surprises me and it's not mentioned in the article that I could see.
- otterpro 10y agoFor a home server/NAS (or PC that runs 24/7), it's a "maybe" for me. According to the article, power consumption of Ryzen 1500x(65W TDP) at core is about 49 watts, while the Intel i5-7400 (65W TDP) sits at 30 watts at the core under full load. The difference is significant enough, not just in electric power consumption, but also for CPU cooling/heat and noise consideration. As for desktop, I'd give Ryzen a serious consideration, but the motherboards are still at a premium or out of stock.
- thomastjeffery 10y ago> the motherboards are still at a premium or out of stock. Premuim? Not at all. Compare AM4 motherboards with Socket 2011v3, and you will see a huge price difference. There are plenty of decent AM4 boards to be had around $100. The cheapest 2011v3 board on newegg.com is $140. Higher end 2011v3 boards approach $600. Out of stock? A quick glance at newegg doesn't show any out of stock. Where are you looking?