After all the doom and gloom this year, we thought it was high time we brought a bit of positivity into talk about the PC hardware world. Yes, 2026 hasn’t been a great year for our hobby, with the ongoing AI gold rush, and its subsequent impact on memory-related products making a whole lot of kit unaffordable, with some hardware completely disappearing. However, there are some cool new launches looming on the horizon, and that’s what we want to discuss here.

In this feature, we’ll cover the biggest upcoming releases, as well as some of their rumoured specs. Given that most of these launches aren’t expected for a while yet, and some of them haven’t even been officially announced, bear in mind that a fair bit of this information is based on rumours and leaks. While their accuracy remains to be seen, some of these early snippets paint an exciting picture, especially on the CPU side, as both AMD and Intel prepare groundbreaking shifts in their consumer chip designs. Not only that, but you won’t need DDR5 RAM for all of them either.

AMD Zen 6 desktop

Expected release date: Early 2027.

AMD’s Zen 6 CPU architecture represents a major shift in both design and performance. Officially unveiled with the company’s Epyc 9006 “Venice” server lineup, this next-gen architecture is slowly nearing its release on consumer desktop and laptop devices under the Olympic Ridge codename. Zen 6, specifically the Ryzen 10000 series (or whatever AMD decides to call it), looks set to bring substantial design overhauls tailored specifically for high-end gaming and desktop multitasking.

According to rumours, AMD’s Zen 6 desktop, and probably laptop, chips will finally shift from the long-standing 8-core CCD (Core Complex Die) design, introducing higher-density 12-core CCDs, which would bring the total core count on dual-CCD processors to 24 cores and 48 threads, a 50% increase over current Zen 5 chips, such as the Ryzen 9950X3D2. To pack that many cores inside the same socket footprint, AMD is expected to use TSMC’s advanced 2nm-class manufacturing, specifically the N2 and N2P processes. These are likely to be paired with a cost-optimised I/O die chiplet made using a 6nm node.

On top of boosting the compute performance of next-gen Ryzen CPUs, this increase in core counts should also mean these chips have much more L3 cache. The latter should reach 96MB on the 24-core model, and that’s without considering the 3D V-Cache variants, which could add 64MB per CCD. There are even rumours that more cache could be added to Zen 6 X3D CPUs, using multi-layer stacked 3D V-Cache.

AMD is apparently looking at big clock speed increases for its next-gen chips as well, with some rumours even pointing to 7GHz boost clocks on flagship models. This is all while remaining on the existing AM5 platform, which would make a Zen 6 chip a drop-in upgrade for Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 9000 owners.

AMD has yet to set a release date for consumer Zen 6 chips, but rumours suggest we may see it unveiled in January at CES 2027, with commercial availability coming a bit later in the first half of 2027.

Intel Nova Lake

Expected release date: Early 2027.

Like AMD’s Zen 6, Intel’s Nova Lake architecture represents a substantial architectural change compared to Arrow Lake and Panther Lake, with massive core count increases apparently on the way. Rumoured to be called the Core Ultra 4000 series, Nova Lake-S CPU reportedly brings chips with up to 52 cores split between Coyote Cove Performance (P) cores, Arctic Wolf Efficient (E) cores, and (low frequency/voltage) Arctic Wolf Low Power (LPE) cores, made using Intel’s 18A process.

Intel is said to be planning two major designs: a single tile (chiplet) CPU offering up to 28 cores (8P + 16E + 4LPE) to cover the entry and mid-range segments, and a massive dual-tile packing up to 52 cores (16P + 32E + 4LPE). For comparison, the current flagship Core Ultra 285K carries 24 cores split into an 8P + 16E configuration.

If you’re wondering why the flagship doesn’t have double the LPE cores, that’s because these cores reportedly aren’t located inside the same compute tile; instead, they apparently share the SoC tile with the memory controller, I/O interfaces, and media engine. Like Arrow Lake, Hyper-Threading is said to remain absent on the P-Cores to optimise thermal efficiency.

But that’s not all. Nova Lake is also expected to offer a direct alternative to AMD’s 3D V-Cache CPUs in the form of BFC or bLLC (Big Last Level Cache) models. These CPUs are rumoured to bundle up to an additional 144MB pool of L3 cache per compute tile, for a total of 288MB on the flagship 52-core model. That’s on top of the 32MB or so of L3 cache already reportedly present on each tile.

Needless to say, gamers look set to be in for a treat whether they go for AMD or Intel in this generation. Those who plan to take advantage of Nova Lake’s massive core count to build a workstation will also appreciate the rumoured AVX10.2 and APX instruction set support.

Rumoured specs	Core config	BLLC	TDP	GPU EUs	Part number
Core Ultra 5 4650KF	6x P-Core 12x E-Core 4x LP E-Core	No	125W	0	99DN0J
Core Ultra 5 4650K	6x P-Core 12x E-Core 4x LPE-Core	No	125W	32	99DN0H
Core Ultra 7 4850K	8x P-Core 12x E-Core 4x LPE-Core	No	125W	32	99DN0K
Core Ultra 9 4950K	8x P-Core 16x E-Core 4x LPE-Core	No	125W	32	99DN0L

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