I bought an AMD Ryzen 9700x from AliExpress, Real or fake? | TechManPat

Why buy a Ryzen processor from AliExpress?

The main attraction was price. At the time of the purchase, the Ryzen 7 9700X was listed on AliExpress for approximately $380 to $450 Australian, while the video describes retail pricing as around $600. The difference was considered large enough to justify waiting about a week for delivery, particularly for a budget-oriented computer build.

The pricing was not presented as an implausibly large discount. The video also notes that buyers need to add tax to AliExpress prices, so the final saving may be smaller than the headline listing suggests. Packaging can also differ from the standard retail presentation.

Unboxing and installation

The processor arrived in a box that looked unusual, although the CPU itself appeared to be the expected product. It was installed in an existing gaming computer with an AMD-compatible motherboard and a liquid cooler. The system already used an AMD processor, so Windows 11 did not need to be reinstalled and the existing drivers were retained.

The Ryzen 7 9700X is described in the video as an eight-core, 16-thread processor with a 3.8 GHz base clock and boost speeds up to 5.5 GHz. The video also highlights support for DDR5 memory and PCIe 5.0, along with the processor’s Zen 4 architecture and 4nm process technology.

Authenticity checks

After installation, the applications used to identify and check the processor all reported it as an AMD Ryzen 7 9700X. This provided an initial indication that the chip was genuine and correctly recognised by the computer.

The video acknowledges that software identification can theoretically be spoofed. However, the testing approach went beyond simply checking the name displayed in Windows or a hardware-information application. The processor was subjected to multiple workloads to check whether its cores and threads operated normally and whether its performance was consistent with other systems using the same model.

Benchmark results

AIDA64 was used for a CPU test, followed by the CPU Profile test in 3DMark and a Cinebench run. During the testing, the processor completed the workloads without crashes or reported issues. The cooling system’s fans increased in speed under load, indicating that the system was responding to the additional heat generated during testing.

In 3DMark’s CPU Profile results, the system recorded 9,429 points with maximum threads and 9,396 points using 16 threads. The result appeared around the middle of the comparison systems shown in the video, which was considered consistent with other Ryzen 7 9700X configurations. The video reports a Cinebench result of 20,000 points in the test shown.

The tests do not establish anything about the long-term reliability of this individual processor or the seller. They do show that the CPU installed, was recognised correctly and completed the selected benchmarks in the tested system.

What buyers should consider

An AliExpress purchase may offer a meaningful discount, but the buyer needs to account for tax, delivery time and packaging differences. A lower price also needs to be weighed against the uncertainty associated with purchasing a processor through a marketplace rather than a conventional local retailer.

The results in this video relate to one Ryzen 7 9700X purchased from one listing and tested in one computer. They should not be treated as a guarantee that every listing, seller or processor advertised under the same model will produce the same result.