This morning, a friend of mine waited in the cold outside of Brooklyn’s Micro Center retailer, specifically to buy this pre-built desktop. It’s a good deal, and they’d been wavering on a long-overdue PC upgrade for a while. But what’s interesting is that it’s packing a brand-new AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D CPU. This is a chip that, as far as I can tell, is only available in this one desktop at the moment.
There are a couple of interesting things going on here. One, this is a new chip in a slightly older generation—the Ryzen 7000 series—which has subsequently been replaced by the Ryzen 9000 on the …
This morning, a friend of mine waited in the cold outside of Brooklyn’s Micro Center retailer, specifically to buy this pre-built desktop. It’s a good deal, and they’d been wavering on a long-overdue PC upgrade for a while. But what’s interesting is that it’s packing a brand-new AMD Ryzen 5 7500X3D CPU. This is a chip that, as far as I can tell, is only available in this one desktop at the moment.
There are a couple of interesting things going on here. One, this is a new chip in a slightly older generation—the Ryzen 7000 series—which has subsequently been replaced by the Ryzen 9000 on the same AM5 socket. That’s not exactly unheard of, though. Earlier this year, AMD released new AM4 chips, which are compatible with motherboards that are almost a decade old at this point. And the X3D series, specifically built with extra V-cache to boost gaming applications, has been a smash hit for AMD on desktop PCs.
And it’s not as if retailer exclusives are anything new for AMD. The Ryzen 5 7600X3D—a 6-core, gaming-focused processor that’s immediately above the 7500X3D in AMD’s tier list—launched as a Micro Center exclusive in the United States last year. That CPU is sold both in pre-built desktops (including PowerSpec models nearly identical to the one my friend is buying) and in off-the-shelf boxes.
The new 7500X3D has received no announcement or fanfare from AMD. According to the specs listed on MicroCenter’s page for the pre-built desktop, it’s a 6-core 4.0GHz processor featuring 3D V-cache, which would indeed place it just a hair below the existing 7600X3D chip in terms of performance.
I asked a Micro Center representative if the new Ryzen 5 7500X3D would be made available as a separate purchase for PC builders, but they couldn’t share any additional information beyond the single pre-built PowerSpec desktop.
AMD is making money hand over fist on its X3D line of processors, which have been a hit with PC gamers for their ability to boost gaming performance in conjunction with easy upgrades on the AM4 and AM5 sockets. According to an August report, AMD gained 9.2 percent market share among desktop PCs in a single year (ending in Q2 2025), taking a huge chunk directly out of Intel. A more affordable 6-core entry in the most recent 9000 series, the Ryzen 5 9600X3D, was leaked this summer.
Micro Center is, in many ways, the last remaining PC-focused retailer in the United States. While competitors like Fry’s have disappeared, ceding ground to online retailers and big box stores like Best Buy, Micro Center is expanding. PCWorld’s video team took a trip to the newly opened Santa Clara, California location in June, interviewing fellow geeks excited for an opportunity to shop for PC parts and other goodies in person.