Within a week of their launch, AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPUs are sold out wherever you look, despite the company "shipping tons of units."
The CPU shortages are particularly frustrating for customers who have already been left out in the cold over the Nvidia RTX 3000 series launch - one that has notoriously been plagued by shortages everywhere you seem to look.
That launch prompted one user on Twitter to complain that AMD's upcoming releases would be a "paper launch" as well - specifically that they would "launch" a product with very little inventory available for PR purposes.
This prompted a response from Frank Azor, AMD's chief architect of gaming solutions and marketing, assuring us that this would not be the case.
I look forward to taking your $10 :)September 24, 2020
Now, as retailers everywhere experience shortages of the new CPUs, Azor is getting some push back on Twitter.
5900X is a paper launch tho 🤷♂️🤷♂️ https://t.co/IYrG1v5GS9November 8, 2020
Azor and others were quick to defend AMD, saying that the shortages were the result of extraordinary demand, which is certainly believable given the amount of anticipation online for the new AMD silicon.
There's a big difference between a "paper launch" and shipping tons of units but demand exceeds supply.November 8, 2020
- Where to buy AMD Ryzen 5 5600X: find stock here
- Where to buy AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and 5950X: find stock here
- Where to buy AMD Ryzen 7 5800X: find stock here
Is it really a supply issue or a demand one?
Much like the Nvidia RTX 3000 series shortages, AMD is claiming that the shortages of their latest CPUs are a function of very high demand.
While this is a frustrating response for those who want to buy one of these processors and can't, that frustration is probably evidence that this is indeed the case.
There has been a lot of anticipation around the latest AMD CPUs, especially as leaked benchmarks showed them greatly overperforming people's expectations.
This almost certainly pushed some fence-sitters over the edge and drove up demand for the CPUs at launch, right when the supply of these chips were likely to be at their lowest in the near term as production begins to ramp up.
Product shortages are nothing new, as frustrating as they may be, but hopefully we won't have long to wait before the shortages let up and anyone who wants one of the new CPUs can find them.
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