A surprise twist for owners of older AMD PCs using socket AM4: AMD is announcing one last (?) processor for the aging socket, a six-core Ryzen 5 5600X3D that brings the company's 3D V-Cache chip stacking technology to a $229 chip.

The catch? The new CPU will only be available through Micro Center, a brick-and-mortar tech retailer that doesn't ship most of what it sells to online buyers. The chip will only be sold for as long as Micro Center's supply holds out, though Tom's Hardware reports that the company will have "several months'" worth of stock.

AMD Zen 3 CPUs	Street price	Cores/threads	Clocks (Base/Boost)	L3 cache	TDP
Ryzen 5 5600	$129	6/12	3.5/4.4GHz	32MB	65W
Ryzen 5 5600X	$149	6/12	3.7/4.6GHz	32MB	65W
Ryzen 5 5600X3D	$229 (MSRP)	6/12	3.3/4.4GHz	96MB	105W
Ryzen 7 5800X3D	$289	8/16	3.4/4.5GHz	96MB	120W

Like the Ryzen 5800X3D, the 5600X3D combines a regular Zen 3 processor die with an extra 64MB chunk of L3 cache stacked on top. Relative to its regular Zen 3 counterparts—in this case, the Ryzen 5 5600 and 5600X—the chip will consume slightly more power and run at somewhat lower clock speeds, which can make it slower than the non-X3D chips in tasks that don't benefit from the extra cache. They also have limited support for overclocking and undervolting. However, games tend to like the extra cache a lot, benefitting people who want to pair a high-end GPU with the cheapest CPU that won't hold it back.

As its price has fallen from $449 to the high-$200 range, the original eight-core Ryzen 5800X3D has become a much more attractive upgrade for people with older-socket AM4 gaming PCs that they want to upgrade on the cheap (though eight-core chips like the 5700X and 5800X are still very capable and as much as $100 cheaper).

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The 5600X3D should also be a great gaming chip for the price, if you can get it. The Ryzen 7800X3D has fewer cores than the flagship 7950X3D, but it ran games almost exactly as quickly in our tests—we'd expect there to be a similar relationship between the 5800X3D and the 5600X3D.

Owners of old-socket AM4 systems should update their BIOSes before installing the new chip—AMD says that BIOSes that support 5000-series chips should at least boot with a 5600X3D installed, but that "AMD always recommends that customers update to the latest BIOS to take advantage of the 3D V-Cache technology." Last year, the company extended support for Ryzen 5000 CPUs to all socket AM4 systems, including motherboards with 300-series chipsets that date all the way back to 2017. Initially, only newer 400- and 500-series chipsets were supported.

The 5600X3D could also be an appealing alternative to Intel's Core i5 processors for people putting together a price-conscious high-end gaming PC—AM4 motherboards are still cheap and plentiful, and they use cheap DDR4 RAM rather than mandating an upgrade to pricier DDR5. If you can afford it, though, a socket AM5 platform will give you several more years' worth of chip upgrades, which might make the investment worth it in the long run.

If the 5600X3D sounds interesting to you and you live within easy travel distance of a Micro Center, the new chip will go on sale on July 7.