Why is the i7 4790K and 4790 so expensive?

[The Chicagoan]

On Amazon the i7 4790K is going for 450 dollars. The i7 4790 is going for almost 500 dollars... The i7 9700 and 8700 are a lot better but so much cheaper.

The i7 4790K went for 365 dollars last month. So glad I bought it back then..

[Omega]

These chips have been taken out of production for nearly 4 years now. There are very few new ones still available.

Buy a used one.

Originally posted by The Chicagoan:

The i7 4790K went for 365 dollars last month. So glad I bought it back then..

that is a really bad purchase, you could have bought a modern flagship 8 core Ryzen and motherboard for that price which has well over 2x the processing power.

[The Chicagoan]

Originally posted by Omega:

These chips have been taken out of production for nearly 4 years now. There are very few new ones still available.

Buy a used one.

Originally posted by The Chicagoan:

The i7 4790K went for 365 dollars last month. So glad I bought it back then..

that is a really bad purchase, you could have bought a modern flagship 8 core Ryzen and motherboard for that price which has well over 2x the processing power.

Well it's too late now, but then again I'm not a fan of AMD, I'm more of an Intel guy. :p

[Kaihekoa]

I'd resell it if you can really find somone willing to pay $450 for it. Use the money to buy a current gen CPU and MB.

[The Chicagoan]

Originally posted by Kai:

I'd resell it if you can really find somone willing to pay $450 for it. Use the money to buy a current gen CPU and MB.

I personally don't like selling hardware unless it's needed. I've already paid 300 bucks for my motherboard, yes don't shame me on buying that either... I'm still happy with it either way, and I paid 300 dollars for 32GB of ram, yes I'm aware that's a lot.... So the things I would be losing to get a small performance increase isn't worth it.

[FeilDOW]

It's simple supply and demand. There are few 4790's since they have not been in production for 4 years and most people with a 77/87 chipset that have i5 are looking for one.

I hope it was not recently you dropped $945 on a 4 year old outdated motherboard/CPU/RAM.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Cause they dont make em anymore; when that happens, pricing usually goes up, not always down. Go fetch one off Ebay for around $100 or so.

[hawkeye]

Four years ago many people would have bought an i5-4 on the basis that games didn't need a hyper-threaded/overclockable cpu. Prior to that the i5-2500k was the go-to cpu for many. Even when the 6 and 7 series arrived, many bought i5's.

With the advent of games that benefit significantly from higher cpu performance, the choice was upgrade just the cpu to an i7-4790k or buy new cpu/mobo/ram/windows. It was cheaper and less hassle to buy the 4790k or other i7-4. Now that they are scarce, they command a premium price.

The 4790k has a very high single-thread benchmark score of 2500 at stock speed. The i9-9900k scores 2900. 4790k's will still get 120+fps on many titles with a high-end gpu. So for 60-144Hz montors there is no need to upgrade for anyone who has one.

(The i7-9700k is essentially an i5 with 2 more cores. On the few cpu utilization benchmarks that I have seen that compare it to the i9-9900k the advantage of hyper-threading seems to be well worth the extra money. The i9 cruises at 30% load versus the i7 at 80%. Admittedly that could be due to the way the load measurement software works. In the commercial world, cpus are bought for headroom just as much as current performance. In four years time will the people who bought a 9700k be wishing they had bought a 9900k? Probably not.)

[_I_]

short answer, they are the last good cpus that use ddr3
if you have good ddr3 and want to upgrade its he cheaper choice
4690k/4790k can oc to close to current gen cpu performance

[Arya]

They're in high demand, short supply, and the only alternatives are very expensive. That's a textbook recipe for high prices.

A whole generation of PCs with i5 4670s are reaching the point where people want to upgrade. Because they're the last DDR3 generation, upgrading to a modern CPU would mean a CPU, Mother and RAM switch. RAM prices are through the roof, making that an extremely expensive upgrade. Especially with Intel Gen9 also costing a fortune, resulting from Intel's supply problems.

All of that leaves the 4790K as the best option for thousands of people. With it long since out of production supply is limited, but with high demand sellers can demand whatever price people will pay. That's already cracked $500 and will only go higher, until the market starts to fall off with people instead migrating to cost-effective platforms like AM4.

----------------------------------

For my two cents, you may as well sell your 4790K while it's still low-milage. If you bought it for $350 you can easily flip it for a major profit. Just act quickly, the market is probably nearing apogee and if wait too long it'll crash. You can buy yourself something nice with the proceeds, maybe a modern AM4/DDR4 combo.

[Cathulhu]

Originally posted by The Chicagoan:

Well it's too late now, but then again I'm not a fan of AMD, I'm more of an Intel guy. :p

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-8400/2384vs3939
Could have gotten a cheap i5-8400. That thing is amazing value.

[Sapph]

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

Originally posted by The Chicagoan:

Well it's too late now, but then again I'm not a fan of AMD, I'm more of an Intel guy. :p

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-4790K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-8400/2384vs3939
Could have gotten a cheap i5-8400. That thing is amazing value.

i5 8400 isn't really cheap anymore. Remember that Intel is currently having shortage and it has greatly made the prices hike.

And even then, R5 2600 would stil be much better buy:

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-8400-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-2600/3939vs3955

[Omega]

Currently due to a Intel CPU shortage the 8th and 9th gen Intel CPUs might not be a good buy in your region.

Currently here in the EU the price on the 8400 has risen from 180 euro to 265 euro.

[Sapph]

Originally posted by Omega:

Currently due to a Intel CPU shortage the 8th and 9th gen Intel CPUs might not be a good buy in your region.

Currently here in the EU the price on the 8400 has risen from 180 euro to 265 euro.

And that's in Germany. In Netherlands they are above 300€ and here in Finland prices are still fairly low, but estimated shipping times are more than 2 weeks.

[Omega]

Originally posted by Sapph:

Originally posted by Omega:

Currently due to a Intel CPU shortage the 8th and 9th gen Intel CPUs might not be a good buy in your region.

Currently here in the EU the price on the 8400 has risen from 180 euro to 265 euro.

And that's in Germany. In Netherlands they are above 300€ and here in Finland prices are still fairly low, but shipping times are more than 2 weeks.

I am talking about the Netherlands. 263.01 euro is the cheapest on available with a 2-3 day delivery time.

The price has slightly dropped in the last couple of weeks.

But it's still nearly 100 euro more expensive then the Ryzen 5 2600 which is priced at 165.