Possibly, if events had unfolded differently. But at the time, no.
The prices for the 7000 CPU's were not discounted at the time. So the 7700X was around £430-450 at the time. That's for the same core count as my old 4930k (at 4.2 to 4.5 Ghz) that I was coming from (and that was starting to struggle with certain stuff I did that a future GPU upgrade could not alleviate alone). For just another £150 odd (back then), I could grab the 7900X that had more cores and higher top speed, which is what I ended up budgeting for. Then before I bit the bullet, the price drop happened along with the Black Friday sales. The 7950X suddenly was in the price bracket of the CPU I had budgeted for, so that's why I ended up with that.
Had there been a 7800X, to be honest, I would have grabbed that instead, as there would have been a core increase that would have allowed me to assess better the games and non games I did was going to be fine for a while longer, or if I needed a lot more grunt from the CPU. But as there was no such chip, the only viable option was the 7900X, which as above, became the 7950X.
As for the Eco 65W mode, that's an unfortunate byproduct of the BIOS on the Asus Proart X670E motherboard BIOS that is available since Novemeber. Because it does not adhere to the Eco 105W setting entered into the settings and stays at 170W (full) mode only (it did on previous BIOS versions but those are also less stable). So the only way to reduce it (for now) is to use Ryzen Master software to drop it to Eco 65W mode. And for everything I've used it on so far, it works a treat. Once the BIOS is fixed and allows settings to adhere to what you set into it, I'll be onto Eco 105W mode. But until then Eco 65W is my only option other than full 170W.
