It was the beginning of 2017, Intel thought the year would go really smoothly for them in regards to their mainstream and high-end desktop launches. Intel launched their 7th generation core family, offering consumers the same architecture, slightly enhanced process and slightly higher CPU clock speeds, calling it a day. What they didn’t know was that their rival, AMD, was going to make an epic return just a few months after and when they did, Intel’s worst fears had come to life.

While Ryzen was anticipated to arrive on the mainstream consumer platform, offering IPC on par with Intel’s latest generation processors, it was Threadripper that no one, even the press had not expected. A full-fledged lineup of high-end desktop processors designed to tackle Intel’s Core X line up. AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper and the accompanying X399 platform is designed for enthusiasts, it offered features that are not available otherwise at an incredible value while the new Zen cores delivered CPU performance on par with Intel’s modern core architectures.