When purchasing an AMD processor, customers received 16 GB of RAM as a gift. However, the online shop made an embarrassing mistake during this promotion, as the CPU and RAM are technically incompatible.
Online shops repeatedly advertise discounts and promotions to attract buyers. A PC retailer recently made an embarrassing mistake when a hardware bundle appeared in their shop.
The free RAM that came with the AMD processor was not compatible and therefore useless for buyers. However, there are also cases where technically everything fits together and the installation of the RAM fails for other reasons.
PC retailer embarrasses itself with useless hardware bundle
What kind of bundle was that? The online shop Newegg wanted to make a little gift for its customers. Buyers of an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor received 16 GB of RAM as a free addition for a short time.
What sounds like a great promotion at first turned out to be an embarrassing mistake by the PC retailer upon closer inspection. The bundle of CPU and RAM did not technically fit together.
Why is the hardware incompatible? The Ryzen 5 7600X belongs to AMD’s current 7000 series of CPUs. To use a processor from this generation, you need an AM5 motherboard and compatible DDR5 RAM.
Unfortunately, the free 16 GB of RAM consisted of DDR4 modules. These can only be used on the predecessor platform AM4 in conjunction with AMD 5000 series processors.
DDR4 modules, that can cause strange errors in the PC, do not fit on AM5 boards due to their design. DDR5 modules, accordingly, do not fit on AM4 boards.
A mixed operation of hardware from both generations is technically not possible. Unaware buyers, who might have been excited about the free RAM at first, would have noticed the problem at the latest when trying to install the hardware.
Why did the error occur? Presumably, the text for the promotion was typed in manually. Either the employee made a typo or simply didn’t know any better. The promotion has now ended, and there is no longer any indication of it.
Looking at the custom PC builder on the online shop’s site, only DDR5 RAM is suggested for a complete system when selecting an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor. Thus, the embarrassing mistake seemed to be limited to just that one promotion.
From an online shop that sells PC hardware, one would normally expect that all components fit together when relying on pre-packaged offers. This should especially apply to promotions where customers receive something for free, so that it does not backfire. If one does not want to buy a complete system and prefers to build it themselves, they should pay attention to some things: 5 beginner mistakes to avoid when assembling a new gaming PC
