It’s probably a good time to start updating that power supply wishlist, as the demands of flagship hardware appear to be growing considerably not only for the graphics card side, but CPUs as well. Greymon55 has leaked some of the purported specifications for two of AMD’s upcoming Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 “Raphael” desktop processors, and what is speculated to be the flagship part, a 16C/32T CPU, will supposedly carry a TDP of 170 watts. This is substantially higher than the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, which features the same core/thread configuration but is only listed with a 105-watt TDP. Liquid cooling is reportedly mandatory for the 16C/32T Ryzen 7000 Series chip with 170-watt TDP.
170W 16C 32T
— Greymon55 (@greymon55) March 24, 2022
105W 12C 24T
AMD Ryzen 7000 Zen4 “Raphael” desktop 170W SKU rumored to feature 16 cores (VideoCardz)
AMD is currently not planning a 120W Ryzen 7000 SKU, contrary to the leaks from August last year. The top SKU is supposedly launching with 170W TDP will require liquid-cooling with at least 280 mm radiator. This part would reportedly feature 16-cores and 32 threads, so exactly the same configuration as the current Ryzen 9 5950X CPU:
With no sign of 16+ core SKUs, AMD would have not updated its product stack for 2 generations now. It is not quite clear if Zen4 with more compute chiplets is planned, but such plans are being drawn for its successor, codenamed “Granite Ridge”. Whether that means mainstream desktop 24 or 32 cores in 2023-2024, that is yet to be determined.
It is important to note that Intel 13th Gen Core “Raptor Lake” series (also launching by the end of this year) will increase core count over Alder Lake series. The new series is rumored to feature twice as many ‘Efficient’ cores and as a result 24 cores and 32 threads in its full desktop configuration.