AMD’s Ryzen processors have indubitably reshaped the mainstream PC in the year since their release. Four-core, eight-thread CPUs reigned in those systems for the better part of eight years, but first-generation Ryzen parts brought core and thread counts typical of high-end desktop chips within range of the average builder for the first time.

The Zen microarchitecture has since proven itself worthy in a broad range of gaming and productivity tasks, and enthusiast-friendly perks like capable stock coolers, universally unlocked multipliers, and soldered heat spreaders have won the hearts of many a DIY builder. Some fundamental disadvantages of the Zen core versus Intel's Skylake architecture, like SIMD units that provide half the potential throughput of the blue team's cores, will require major architectural changes if AMD chooses to address them. Massive re-architecting like that will likely need to wait for the move to 7-nm-class process technologies and the bounty of extra transistors they could offer.