> Man the lack of a 5700x is really making it hard for me to not justify getting a 3700x on sale

Sounds like a win-win for AMD. Either they sell to customers that demand the best absolute performance, or they sell to customers that demand the best value. Since they offer products to meet both demands, they don't really care which type of customer you are.

Zen 2 is still a fantastic processor, and it will certainly be more affordable than Zen 3 for the immediate future.

I got a 2700 for slightly less than $170. It is amazingly cheap.

Anecdotally, all of the PC gamers I know put aftermarket coolers on their CPUs. The box cooler is still in the box taking up space in their closet. The AMD parts especially benefit from additional cooling (higher turbo clocks). I think it makes sense to not include box coolers on parts so high up the performance chart that using a box cooler would just hamstring it.

FWIW I just upgraded from an Intel 4790K to an AMD 3900X and while I had a big Hyper212 cooler on the Intel at the moment I'm running the bundled stock cooler on the AMD.

I understand why they're doing it and I don't disagree with the logic that most of the DIY market at that level is going to use an aftermarket cooler one way or another, but it was nice to not have to worry about it off the bat.

Seems to be a mix. My two friends that game built systems with Zen+/Zen 2 systems and stuck with the stock cooler, as have I (though I do not game as much... I do hear it ramp up a bit during compilation.) My clocks are typically 4.2-4.3 Ghz on a Ryzen 7 2700X, so I don't think I'd benefit much from additional cooling.

My main problem with the AMD stock cooler isn't that they don't perform well, but that they are really noisy compared to most decent aftermarket coolers.

The rumor is that any cpus with TDPs of 65W or below will ship with coolers, and ones with above that will ship without.

The thing to watch is then going to be the "5700X", i.e. the Zen3 version of the 3700X, which, if the analogy matches, should have 8 cores and a 65W TDP. It isn't in the initial slate but they left room for it in the numbering.

Well I hope they release the 5700X soon. I was excited for Zen 3, but their price bump and lack of a middle ground option left me conflicted whether I should shell out more money for a 5800X or get a last gen CPU.