AMD Ryzen price war breaks out online

Ryzen 7 1700x cut to £344.99, while Ryzen 5 1600 has been reduced to less than £200

AMD's Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 microprocessors have become the subject of a price war between online computer and electronics retailing giants in the UK.

The microprocessors, which have launched this year to generally favourable reviews, have seen almost £50 lopped off of prices that were already regarded as highly competitive. Some Intel parts have also been subject to price cuts over the past month as AMD has ramped up output of its new flagship devices.

The biggest price cut has been focused on the Ryzen 7 1700X, which eBuyer claims to have lopped £44.99 off, bringing it down to £344.99, with both Scan.co.uk (£351.49) and Amazon.co.uk (£343.99) responding.

Ebuyer also claims to have knocked £32.42 off the price of the Ryzen 7 1700 (£287.62), £30.99 off the price of the top-of-the-range Ryzen 7 1800x (£459.99), £21.57 off the price of the Ryzen 5 1600 (£199.17), bringing it under £200, and a modest £9.99 off of the current entry-level Ryzen part, the Ryzen 5 1400, taking its price down to £159.96.

Rivals, including Scan and Amazon, have been quick to respond with price cuts of their own. Scan is undercutting eBuyer on the Ryzen 5 1500x, pinning a £174.99 price tag on what ought to be a popular microprocessor choice. Scan has also squeezed a few more pounds off of the price of the Ryzen 5 1400, offering it for £155.99.

And rival Intel parts have also been caught up in the wave of discounting, with eBuyer cutting the price of the overclockable Core i7-7700K by £54.34 to £319.64, and the Skylake-based Core i5-6600K by £30.55 to £219.99.

The big online e-tailers all tend to keep a close eye on each other's pricing, often reducing their prices within minutes of rivals doing the same. With AMD's release of Ryzen 5 and 7 so far this year, competition has certainly intensified, although its AMD's legacy parts that have generally been slashed in price so far.

At Computex in Taipei at the end of May, AMD is expected to unveil the 16-core, 32-thread 'Whitehaven' CPU, aimed at deep-pocketed enthusiasts and higher-end workstations, while the low-end Ryzen 3 - broadly equivalent to Intel's Core i3 range - is expected to debut some time in July.

By then, of course, AMD is also expected to have finally launched its next-generation graphics cards based on its Vega micro-architecture.

All prices correct at time of writing at 5pm, 11 May 2017

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