The middle-child of the three main Zen 3 siblings (sorry, Ryzen 9 5950X) doesn't have as clear of a role to play, but that doesn't mean it's not a truly impressive CPU.

Announced in early October and unleashed on PC enthusiasts about a month later, AMD's new processors (CPU) based on the Zen 3 architecture are successors to the now-last-gen Ryzen 3000 desktop chips using the Zen 2 architecture. These Ryzen 5000 CPUs, including the Ryzen 5 5600X, Ryzen 7 5800X, Ryzen 9 5900X, and Ryzen 9 5950X, are, if nothing else, fast.