Faulty Xbox Series X chips may be reborn for pre-built PCs

Faulty Xbox Serial X chips may exist reborn for pre-built PCs

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One of the reasons information technology's so hard to catch an Xbox Series X restock before information technology sells out is an ongoing flake shortage: a worldwide silicone scarcity that's even affected cars and washing machines.

However, some Xbox Series X chips might take been redirected abroad from the console and into pre-built PCs. As our sister site Tom's Hardware reported that Chinese retailer TMall is selling a PC with the AMD 4700S, a mysterious chip with stark similarities to the Xbox Series X'southward AMD-congenital CPU.

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The PC list, via Twitter user @momomo_us, confirms that the AMD 4700S is an octa-core chip with 16 total threads. That's not strange in itself, but it also gives the organisation retentivity equally 16GB of GDDR6 RAM — and a photo of the PC'south interior doesn't bear witness any memory slots for DDR4 memory modules, by far the most common RAM for desktops.

This all points towards the AMD 4700S beingness more of a organization-on-a-chip (SoC) than a traditional desktop CPU, like any of the AMD Ryzen 5000 series; as well notable is the lack of "Ryzen" in the name. What's more, it could potentially be a repurposed Xbox Series Ten chip: this is too an 8-core, sixteen-thread SoC with 16GB of GDDR6 memory.

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This isn't a dead certainty, as the clock speeds don't friction match up exactly: the Xbox Series X chip runs at a maximum boost clock speed of 3.8GHz, while the AMD 4700S appears to max out at 4GHz. Notwithstanding, the Xbox fleck has an integrated GPU, which AMD could accept disabled in order to reduce power usage and gain the thermal headroom needed to enhance the heave clock slightly. On this PC, the 4700S is paired with a dedicated graphics card, so would have no need for an integrated GPU.

Over again, it's non a smoking gun, merely in that location is testify to suggest AMD is selling Xbox Series X fries to OEMs as the AMD 4700S — after making a few tweaks. Not that there would necessarily be anything untoward about that, either: as Tom's Hardware suggested, information technology could be that these chips were originally Xbox parts with faulty graphics and were merely modified in such a way that would avoid breaking any exclusivity agreements with Microsoft while letting the chips go and exist useful elsewhere.

Sadly, recycling chips that take already been produced won't help the slow supply of processors in the first instance. As such, anyone wanting a next-gen console volition withal need to get lucky at finding where to buy the Xbox Series X and dig up PS5 restocks.

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James joined Tom'southward Guide in 2020, bringing years of feel in consumer tech and production testing. As Audio Editor, James covers headphones, speakers, soundbars and anything else that intentionally makes racket. A PC enthusiast, he also covers the occasional spot of computing and gaming news, ordinarily relating to how hard it is to find graphics carte du jour stock.