With Black Friday arriving this Friday, many unscrupulous sellers are taking advantage of the scarcity of the AMD Ryzen 9800X3D, which is by far the best CPU for gaming and the number one in Amazon’s best-selling CPUs list. If you search for “9800X3D” on Amazon, you’ll get four results of RYZEN 7 9800X3D 8-Core, 16-Thread Desktop Processor priced at $199.89, all of which are fake listings (h/t WePC). The details on the fake listing also look similar to the original one, although the legitimate post says “Visit the AMD Store” under the product name, while the fake one says “Brand: HHNDVZ.”
Fortunately, the company has delisted three out of the four fake entries, although you could still access one at the time of writing. The biggest sign that these items are fake listings is the price — AMD launched this gaming processor for $479, $279 more than what the fake listings are asking for. Furthermore, the average price on legitimate 9800X3D listings is already more than $670, with some even going for $795 due to the massive demand.
While there’s nothing wrong with looking for the best Black Friday deals on Amazon, you should still be wary of fake listings, especially for high-ticket items that are in great demand. One sign that an item isn’t legit is if it’s being sold at an unreasonably low price, especially if it has just launched and is out of stock before the sale. You should also check out buyer reviews on the item and on the seller, as scam accounts taking advantage of seasonal sales typically have zero or few reviews. But if you want to be sure that you’re getting a legitimate processor from a legitimate seller, you could also check out our best Black Friday CPU deals to find a discount.
If you’re really out on the market for a 9800X3D, you’ll have to wait for more stock to arrive as it’s out of stock in many sellers. Or you’ll have to spend around 50% more than the launch price due to the demand. Alternatively, you could settle for a 7800X3D. Although it only performs at about 85% of the performance of the newer chip, according to our review of the 9800X3D, it’s readily available from Amazon and other sources and is also much more affordable.
