AMD Ryzen 9 9900X: What Real Users Actually Think

A $35 dual tower air cooler like a thermalright ps120 is more than enough for any amd cpu.

7950x3d is faster in productivity and gaming while using less power at stock for nearly the same price.

A peerless assassin can cool any am5 cpu well. Gone are the days of the shitty overheating intel 13 and 14th gen i7's and i9's that needed high-end motherboard and AIO just to survive. Just your average b650/b850 mobo and air cooler will keep the temps way down.

Yes. AIO is such a waste and dumb for 98% of cases.

I build a new system (went from AM4 Ryzen 9 5900X to AM5 Ryzen 9 9900X) and gave it a spin. Wow! I can not understand all the negativity around the Ryzen 9000 Series so far. This thing is a calculation monster! It can do nearly 45% more calculations in the same time with the same power-draw as my old R9 5900X! This is amazing! Yeah on gamings end the improvements are not that strong, but i use this system for work 1st and gaming 2nd.

Correction: Good for productivity and multi-core loads, admirable in gaming but not the best, obviously.

I do custom watercooling because... It's fun and it looks cool. But air cooling is way more affordable, reliable, and almost as good (and sometimes better) than AIOs and even custom loops. Just dust it out every 3-6 months and you're golden.

Yeah, I get a 60% improvement in my workloads. The chips are amazing.

I think the negative feelings come from the minor to almost no improvement from the previous generation (especially in gaming). Skipping a generation or two should show some performance increases though.

Well, most criticism is aimed towards the gaming performance which was advertised heavily. The x900X is usually not the cpu of choice for gaming, but for workloads which is one of the strong suits for zen 5. Glad you are happy with your choice. Your build looks great.

Good processor, however the 9000 series is barely an improvement over the 7000 series. Personally, I'd just get whatever is cheaper unless there's a small price difference between them.

Yes, in a lot of ways it's the golden age of air coolers. There are a ton of relatively affordable air coolers that trade blows with noctuas best.

It's a 120w TDP CPU. And they're not getting hotter. The ryzen 9 7900x was 170w TDP. A DeepCool AK400 would likely be enough.

9900X can be had for under $400 (I got mine for $380), while the 7900X3D and 7950X3D are still going for $600-$700. Needless to say, I truly appreciate all the hate everyone has been giving AMD's latest CPUs.

I'm air cooling a 9950X3D with a D15S and have thermal headroom to spare, even with PBO. You're good. These chips running hot is pure myth. They're incredibly efficient.

I was testing Mechwarrior 5 which is one of my favorites, and my 9900X absolutely creams my 13700K system. Its like a 2-generation leap. Average FPS with a 7900XTX is 30% higher (165 to 220), lows more than 50% higher (99 to 157).

I've also got a 9900X (sidegraded from 7950X believe it or not!) and am happy with it. The single threaded performance boosts are valuable and I am seeing better gaming performance too in a wide range of games.

9000 series is really good but obviously not something 7000 series owners should be looking at.

For both 9900X and 7900X, the best efficiency is obtained with eco 65W mode. Eco mode 105 has a less detrimental impact on performance for the 9900X compared to the 7900X.

I've had one for 3 months. I love it. I do not use Precision or core boost. Highest temps are 54.c It has plenty of single thread power and I game a lot. So personally I did not regret replacing my 9700x.

I just upgraded from Ryzen 7 5800x to 9900x. Been great so far. Also, I got it for $250 (part of a combo at micro center).

I've been loving mine in all honesty. Been handling everything I throw at it.

Simply, people are too damn black and white about stuff. Are X3D chips better at gaming? Yes. Does that mean you can't game with something else? Of course not. For productivity, it was a massive improvement. For gaming? Nada. The 7900X was already keeping up with what I needed.

9900X is one of the top CPUs for productivity (only bested by AMD and Intel's absolute top models), and will give you the right performance for the money you spent on it. For gaming? It's only as good as any other normal 9000X series CPUs -- that is to say, this CPU would be a terrible value for a PC that's exclusively for gaming as it's not any better than much cheaper 9600X.

I just upgraded from the 10900k to the 9900x, I got so much lag and completely unstable on the 10900k even though im rocking a 7900xtx then upgraded to the 9900x zero lag zero issues what a beast for gaming.

I have a rig with a 9900X. I use it for gaming and it gets the job done, but I think it does trip up a little when big chunks of game code need to be fetched from RAM. Not a huge problem for me personally, but if I was a serious competitive player it would be. It does demolish productivity work in splendid fashion though.

Do you need 8 really fast cores, or 12 kinda fast cores? Different purposes. If I was building a strictly gaming PC, console-like gaming experience, then I'd go for the 7. If I wanted a more desktop oriented experience for multi-program fun and some non-gaming purposes, then I'd get the 9.

Been using 9900x paired with RX 7800XT. no issues whatsoever. It runs smoothly efficient. Video editing smooth. Even it's 12c 24t alone can play AAA to my surprise, ngl. This is just my own experiences using it, though. All worth it for me and counting.

A 9900x is a really nice CPU to have for sure. In most of my games with a 4080S at 1440 I lost like 3% of my frame rate compared to the 9800x3d.

I have a Ryzen 9 9900X in my main PC and it handles everything just fine including gaming. It's noticeably faster than the Ryzen 9 5900X setup I had before, even with my pretty average RTX 4070 GPU. It's been 100% reliable and games do make use of all cores from what I can see.

You absolutely can play games on it, it's not a bad gaming CPU at all, but the 9800X3D is better for gaming. There also isn't any real benefit to getting the 9900X over the 9700X if you only play games. In fact in some cases the 9700X will be slightly faster due to being a single CCD with 8 cores instead of 6+6 cores on two CCD's like the 9900X.

It's fine for gaming but if all you are doing is gaming it's a terrible value. Spend the extra money on a 9900X3D or jump down to a 9800X3D. Or even a last gen 7800X3D/7900X3D. Those X3D cpus will all perform better than the base 9900X in games. Or save some money and just get a 9700x. It will perform identical to the 9900x in games.

It entirely depends what you're using it for. If it's for gaming it's not a great choice and you likely wasted a few bucks. If you're using a lot of software that greatly utilizes multicore and threading performance then it's good.

Got one of those recently too, went from 5950x and its quite a bit better for production tasks while giving a nice bump in gaming too.

This CPU is great. It lacks the 3d cache found in the best gaming CPUs, but is still powerful enough to brute force past that problem most of the time. Unless you're obsessing over framerates and looking up videos to tell you that you have a lesser CPU, you won't even know.

I've had this same build for a few months now. I like it. No problems. It's not the best of the best, but I use it with a 5k2k monitor and it crushes everything I throw at it.

I have this pc it literally runs everything and works very well I am very happy with it. Yes I wish I had a 9800x3d but this processor is still good. I use it to stream battlefield and I have had no issues with this pc. Had it for 6 months now and I am really happy with it.

9900x is fine, especially at higher resolutions. At 1080p it's an overall 12% drop compared to the 9800x3d. At 4k the difference is a negligible 2%.

Nope my 9900x is solid.

Absolutely not [bad]. However it is more suited for work loads. If your main goal is gaming you can probably find better CPUs (ie 7800X3D) at similar price range if not cheaper.

It's going to be completely fine for gaming. Sure the 9800X3D is technically better for gaming specific tasks but you're talking a couple extra percentage points beyond the already more than acceptable performance you'll already get.

New system I'd go Amd 9000 series. I have a 9900x and it is rock solid. One thing from all I've read and from personal experience is that 1% lows are better with 9000 series. Worth the upgrade from 7000. Probably not. But I did and did not regret it. They run cooler and performance was better.

For gaming 9800x3d is better, for productivity, like video rendering the 9900x. 9900x needs AIO, for 9800x3d is enough a good air cooler, like Dark Rock Pro 5.