Prices of AMD's popular Ryzen 5 series doubled since February 1st to $400 — nobody knows why, but here's what may have happened

• AMD's Ryzen 5 Zen 4 prices jumped from $200 to $400 without warning
• Average pricing chart shows an abrupt sustained spike beginning in February 2026
• Inventory shifts and supply constraints could explain the surge

Anyone tracking PCPartPicker’s pricing charts may have noticed a sudden upward spike in the average price of AMD’s Ryzen 5 series.

For more than a year, the selling price for models such as the Ryzen 5 7600X and 9600X sat between $170 and $220. That changed at the start of February 2026, when the average price suddenly shot up toward $400 and stayed there.

The chart shows not a gradual upwards trend but rather a sudden leap. One week the chip was a reliable midrange option, the next it cost nearly twice as much.

Memory crisis inevitably a factor

There hasn’t been a public statement from AMD outlining a formal price change, so it’s likely down to a mix of supply pressure and shifting priorities across the semiconductor market.

One factor, to the absolute surprise of no one, is memory. Large manufacturers including Samsung and Micron have moved production capacity toward HBM and enterprise DDR5 to serve AI data centers.

This has pushed consumer DRAM prices up massively year over year. As memory costs rose, distributors and retailers appear to have adjusted CPU pricing to protect margins across full system builds.

Production capacity is another piece of the puzzle. Ryzen 5 chips share advanced process nodes at TSMC with high margin AI accelerators.

When wafer supply tightens, higher priced silicon tends to get priority. Retail stock at major online stores thins out, leaving more listings in the hands of third party sellers, where prices climb quickly.

Even older AM4 Ryzen 5 parts have seen price pressures. With DDR5 kits reaching around $350 in some cases, some builders have shifted back to DDR4 platforms, straining remaining AM4 inventory.

The scale of the price increase is impossible to miss. Ten or twenty percent swings are common in the DIY market, but a sustained doubling for a mainstream CPU is more than a little unusual.

For now, the pricing chart shows a market out of balance. A processor that long defined the $200 sweet spot now sits at roughly $400, leaving buyers weighing their options.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.