Motherboard: X870 Steel Legend

My motherboard is the ASRock X870 Steel Legend, a solid mid-range board. It features an AM5 socket and DDR5 support, PCIe 5.0, and USB-C connectivity, so it has what it needs, but not all the bells and whistles. I picked it up for $230, and it’s been solid, reliable, and handles everything I need without any fuss.

CPU: Ryzen 9 9950X3D

I bought the CPU for $670 on Amazon, a very hefty price tag. The CPU has been amazing and has proven to be very capable at anything I’ve thrown at it, like high-FPS gaming and 3D rendering. So it is a very powerful CPU, but for the majority of people, I would call it overkill for things like watching videos and even casual gaming. While it does shine at high settings, it’s just not enough to justify the price tag for most users.

Ryzen 9 9950X3D Specs:

• Socket: AM5
• Base Clock Speed: 4.3 GHz
• Cores/Threads: 16 cores (all performance) / 32 threads
• L1 Instruction Cache: 16 cores × 32 KB
• L1 Data Cache: 16 cores × 48 KB
• L2 Cache: 16 cores × 1 MB
• L3 Cache: 128 MB
• Passmark Rating: Very good thread rating

My Thoughts:

The CPU has been fantastic to use, running smoothly through basically any task, and will definitely be a solid choice for a long time. It handles gaming, video editing, streaming, and multitasking exceptionally well. But I would not recommend this CPU for the average person—most people will barely ever (or never) use this CPU to its full potential and would have a very similar experience with a less powerful one. I believe this is an amazingly capable CPU, but I would argue it is too much for most people.

This review is part of a classroom project.