Unboxing and Photography

The Ryzen 9 5900X comes in a fairly large paperboard box. The front face features a brushed metal appearance (compared to the carbon fiber appearance of the Ryzen 3000 series). There are enough pointers to let you know you're buying a Ryzen 5000-series part. A small cutout on the side shows the actual processor inside the package.


The processor looks like any conventional AMD CPU with a large IHS dominating the top and a 1,331-pin micro-PGA for the bottom. The "Zen 3" CCD chiplet is made in Taiwan and the I/O die in the US, and the two are put together at a facility in China.


The retail Ryzen 9 5900X box does not include a cooler. Luckily, it can be paired with a fairly big selection of AM4-compatible coolers that have been released since 2017. Just make sure the cooler can handle thermal loads of 105 W.