Scalpers are jacking up the price of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D
Blink and you missed it — the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is sold out everywhere. As you can read in our Ryzen 7 9800X3D review, it’s one of the best processors you can buy, and just minutes after the first listings went live, the CPU went out of stock. Scalpers on eBay are already capitalizing.
Dozens of listings are live, most of them over $900. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D has a suggested retail price of $479. These are “preorder” listing on eBay. Quotes are important here because, unlike a traditional preorder, these smaller sellers on eBay purchase a chip for list price and then flip it for a much higher price. In other words, scalping. None of the listings have sold yet, though one eBay shopper picked up the chip for $564 yesterday.
These early prices will drop once the Ryzen 7 9800X3D comes back in stock, but you should expect high prices for a while. On the AMD subreddit, some lucky shoppers are celebrating that they were able to purchase a CPU right as the listing went live. One buyer said the CPU went out of stock on Newegg as they were checking out, but they were able to find an early listing on Amazon and still secure a unit. Listings are live on Newegg, Amazon, and B&H Photo, though they’re all out of stock at the moment.
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On AMD’s official online store, the processor is also sold out, despite the CPU being limited to one unit per shopper. Thankfully, there’s still one place you can find the Ryzen 7 9800X3D for list price — Micro Center. As the brick-and-mortar retailer often does, it’s limiting the Ryzen 7 9800X3D to in-store purchases only. If you have a Micro Center near you, you should be able to pick up the CPU for list price, at least through the next couple of days.
Although scalpers are already trying to make a profit on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the price shouldn’t stay high for long. Especially online, we typically see new hardware launches released in waves. As the Ryzen 7 9800X3D becomes more readily available, prices on the secondhand market will drop. However, given how quickly the CPU sold out, there’s a chance it could take a few months before prices stabilize fully.