- AMD Zen 5-based EPYC 9965 is on sale on eBay for just under $6,000
- With 192 cores and 384 threads, AMD's offering can handle up to 6TB of RAM per processor for AI-focused workloads.
- The CPU not only offers the highest core count of any x86 CPU to date, but also holds its own against the competition.
When AMD introduced its new EPYC CPUs in June 2024, one chip in particular caught everyone's attention, given how outrageously powerful it was compared to the competition.
The AMD EPYC 9965 CPU was also the company's most ambitious server offering to date, and it has held its own against the competition with relative ease thanks to its still-unmatched 192-core, 384-thread x86 configuration.
With a suggested MSRP of $14,813 (now $11,988) at launch, it's also one of AMD's most expensive products across the board, with only a few of its server-grade GPUs going up noticeably.
Why eBay Listings Are Kind of Hard to Swallow
Despite being introduced over two years ago, the EPYC 9965 CPU remains unchallenged by the competition, surpassing most benchmarks with relative ease. It remains the flagship server chip for AMD-based systems worldwide, and Team Red ships it worldwide, including China.
The chip itself is a real monster. The EPYC 9965 packs 192 Zen 5c cores and 384 threads in a single SP5 package, with a 2.25 GHz base, 3.35 GHz full core, and 3.7 GHz peak boost, 384 MB L3 cache, twelve channels of DDR5, 128 lanes of PCIe 5.0, and a default TDP of 500 W, AMD's highest so far. It's the densest part of AMD's 9005 stack, created for cloud providers looking to cram the maximum number of virtual machines into a rack.
Overall, it is primarily designed to serve hyperscalers and cloud providers, with a focus on efficient, low-power cores dominating such configurations.
Even at its reduced price tag of just under $12,000, eBay listings selling the same CPU for just under $6,000 seem inexplicable, offering less than 50% off current advertised prices and more than 60% off its original launch price.
This is even lower than the last time we tracked this CPU in 2025, but there could be some sort of explanation for what would otherwise be considered an anomaly. Most server-grade CPUs ship at prices below MSRP, with OEM and negotiated discounts quickly adding up to significant savings for large-scale deployments.
However, the other explanation that often applies to older server-grade CPUs that are often decommissioned or decommissioned by data centers; The EPYC 9965 doesn't have a successor yet, and it's hard to imagine any currently available CPU replacing AMD's most capable chip in a data center.
Other reasons for low prices could include excess inventory, canceled orders, or simply someone liquidating hardware in an industry that is increasingly focusing on GPUs and memory to meet its AI needs.
Most industry players prefer a direct OEM solution, especially given AMD's support for PSB (secure boot) locking on its CPUs for certain vendors, making them unwilling to purchase from third-party vendors. This also increases the risk profile for buyers, who could unknowingly end up purchasing a vendor-locked CPU, creating a rather annoying trial and return process.
With a shift in spending towards GPUs and memory becoming prohibitively expensive, this doesn't help matters much – while enterprise consumers are still shopping for the EPYC 9965, prices could reflect a market reality: they're unlikely to search eBay for their next monster 192-core CPU purchase, even assuming they have a compatible motherboard and memory modules to match.
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