Introduction
Let’s take a look back at 2024, and take note of some of the best, or exciting, releases and launches of PC hardware components. We’ll focus on the main system components here, and not all of these we have reviewed, but we can still acknowledge exciting launches that happened this past year. As we look forward to 2025, we will be able to look back and compare our subjective thoughts and opinions of the hardware that was released in 2024.
It all started, as most things do, with CES of 2024 in January where some exciting announcements from NVIDIA and AMD took the limelight. Notably, right at the start of 2024 NVIDIA launched the GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series of GPUs, a refresh and upgrade to the existing GeForce RTX 40 series launched in the prior year. Also at this time, end of January, AMD launched a new Radeon RX 7600 XT video card, offering 16GB of VRAM at an appealing $329 MSRP. AMD followed this up with the 8000G series APUs in February, as well as the Radeon RX 7900 GRE coming to the US market.
All was quiet, until about June of 2024, when AMD announced the Zen 5 Ryzen 9000 CPUs, X870E chipset, and Ryzen AI 300 in mobile at Computex 2024 that summer. Intel also joined in on the conversation that summer with Intel Lunar Lake announcements in mobile. Then, the floodgates opened around the fall time of 2024, with the AMD Ryzen 9000 series CPUs launching en mass, along with the X870 and X870E chipsets on the AM5 platform.
Following very closely Intel launched a brand new generation and socket with its Intel Core Ultra 200S series CPUs (Arrow Lake) launches, bringing a new architecture and socket to the desktop. It was a complete flood of new motherboards for both the Intel and AMD camps in the latter half of 2024. Finally, AMD launched the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, literally flipping the script on 3D V-Cache performance for gaming and productivity. Rounding out 2024 Intel surprised again, with the launch of its very affordable $249 Intel Arc B580 (Battlemage) video card for the desktop.
Now let’s go through each major PC hardware category, and name our favorite launch or most exciting launch from that category that was released in 2024.
GPU
Since 2024 started off with some GPU refreshes and new GPU launches, let’s kick this off with our opinion on the GPU launches of 2024. NVIDIA announced the GeForce RTX 40 series “SUPER” series GPU refreshes at CES of 2024 in early January. At this time, the GeForce RTX 40 series had been established, with the entire range of GPUs already launched in the year prior. The GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series of GPUs were launched and released at the end of January 2024.
The GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER led the pack at $999 MSRP and offered more CUDA cores than the GeForce RTX 4080, replacing it, and lowering the price by $200. Next down the spec was the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, which was launched on January 24th with an MSRP of $799. It was a partner-only card, but utilized a cut-down RTX 4080 die, providing a CUDA core upgrade, memory bus upgrade, and VRAM upgrade over the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti previously. The final SUPER refresh was the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER, available January 17th with an MSRP of $599. The GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER provided more CUDA mores, more SMs, but the same memory subsystem configuration as the RTX 4070.
AMD had its own discrete GPU launches in 2024, starting with the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT which launched on January 24th with an MSRP of $329. The Radeon RX 7600 XT was notable because it offered a slightly overclocked Radeon RX 7600 in performance, but doubled the VRAM at 16GB. Therefore AMD provided a lot of value at the $329 price point with 16GB of VRAM on a video card, which made the Radeon RX 7600 XT a very appealing card for gamers at this price point.
AMD also had another ‘launch’, we put that in quotes because technically the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE was already a video card that existed in China. In February, however, AMD released this video card officially into the US market and made it available in North America. The Radeon RX 7900 GRE is a partner-driven card, and its MSRP was between $549-$599 depending on the model. The Radeon RX 7900 GRE is basically a cut-down Radeon RX 7900 XT, existing between the Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XT in performance. The other AMD GPU release worth mentioning is its 8000G series APUs, which were also released in February.
For the final GPU release in 2024, we have to move all the way up to December of 2024 when Intel launched its Arc “Battlemage” discrete GPU. That’s right, Intel finally delivered in 2024, by releasing the Intel Arc B580 (Battlemage) discrete GPU at an MSRP of $249! We have not reviewed one ourselves (yet), but all the reviews online seem to provide a positive reaction to its performance (especially in Ray Tracing) at this price point. It truly offers a price-to-performance value and has been quite an exciting launch from Intel, fixing the problems with the initial Intel Arc launch of the A770/750 series.
In terms of GPU, that has been all that was released in 2024. Technically speaking, there has been only one new architecture released in 2024 and it happened to come from Intel! Neither AMD nor NVIDIA launched new architectures in 2024, it was in fact Intel, who released a brand new GPU architecture into the fold with its Arc Battlemage GPU, and into a price point that is most exciting for a lot of PC hardware enthusiasts and gamers.
Therefore, we think the award for the most exciting GPU launch for 2024 simply has to go to the Intel Arc B580 GPU. For honorable mention, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER impressed us with its upgraded specifications, VRAM capacity, and the performance that it delivered. This is the GPU the RTX 4070 Ti should have been from the start, the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER fixed a problem, and provided a great option for gaming in the high-end.
CPU
If 2024 was remembered for one type of PC component launched, it would be CPUs, chipsets, and motherboards. The latter half of 2024 was simply flooded with CPU launches galore. This extended into new chipsets, new architectures, and a ton of new motherboards for both Intel and AMD.
Let’s start with the CPU launches. It all started in the summer of 2024 when AMD announced the Zen 5 architecture, and Intel announced its Lunar Lake architecture. Qualcomm even got into the game with its announcement (and launch) of its Arm-based Snapdragon releases on mobile, stirring up a lot of conversation for the summer of 2024. Windows on Arm became a huge topic in the summer of 2024.
Who was going to offer the most efficient mobile chip, Intel with Lunar Lake or Qualcomm with Snapdragon? This was the talk of the town and sparked a lot of debate. There were weaknesses, and strengths with both platforms. At the end of the day, Intel with Lunar Lake surprised a lot of people, while compatibility issues arose with Arm-based CPUs using Windows. While we have not tested either platform, the reviews of Lunar Lake seemed to be rather positive, and it looks like Intel has a win with that platform on mobile in 2024.
For desktop CPUs, the fun began in August when AMD released all of its AMD Ryzen 9000 series CPUs based on the new Zen 5 architecture to the AM5 platform. The AMD Ryzen 9000 series CPUs had the advantage of slotting into current AMD AM5 600 series chipsets.
The AMD Ryzen 9 9950X led the pack at $649 providing 16-cores/32-threads of CPU performance. Next down the lineup was the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X at $499 providing 12-cores/24-threads of CPU performance. Following that was the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X with 8-cores/16-threads at $359, and then the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X with 6-cores/12-threads for $279. Notably, all of these CPUs used the new Zen 5 architecture.
However, this launch got off to a particularly rocky start, to say the least, with performance expectations that were not met initially. After many updates, for both AGESA (BIOS), and Windows updates, performance finally started to creep back up, and over time these CPUs have faired better in comparisons.
The fun continued with Intel, also relating its own completely new lineup of CPUs in 2024, in October Intel released the much anticipated “Arrow Lake” CPUs for the desktop. The Intel Core Ultra 200S Series CPUs were announced in early October 2024, and released in late October 2024. Intel’s Core Ultra Desktop Processors (Series 2) are based on an entirely new architecture, called Arrow Lake on an entirely new socket platform LGA1851. The Arrow Lake architecture CPUs are noteworthy because they are based on Intel’s new tiled architecture based on an Intel packaged design, with tiles (Compute/SOC/IO/GPU) produced by TSMC, though still utilizing P-Cores and E-Cores.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K leads the pack at $589 and was launched on October 24th with 8 P-Cores/16 E-Cores, and no hyperthreading. The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is next with 8 P-Cores/12 E-Cores, and no hyperthreading for $394. Finally, the Intel Core Ultra 5 245K is a 6 P-Core/8 E-Core CPU, no hyperthreading for $309.
Rounding out the year of 2024 was from AMD, with the launch of the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D in November of 2024 with an MSRP of $479. The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is an 8-core/16-thread CPU featuring AMD’s 3D V-Cache on board, providing a very large amount of L3 cache. Utilizing 2nd generation 3D V-Cache, AMD literally flipped the script and put the cache on the underside of the CCD. The major advantage was that the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D could maintain higher clock speeds for both productivity and gaming. Our performance testing bore this out, and we were thrilled to find incredible productivity performance and gaming performance with real benefits.
To put it simply, there is no dispute that the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the best and most exciting, CPU launch of 2024. It provides the best gaming performance compared to every other CPU in existence, and is also no slouch this time in productivity, honestly earning its name with its productivity performance exceeding the Ryzen 7 9700X as well. Hands down, this is THE CPU to buy, if you want the best gaming performance and the best-performing 8-core CPU from AMD for everything else.
Chipsets/Motherboards
Along with the new AMD Ryzen 9000 series CPUs two ‘new’ chipsets from AMD were launched in 2024, the X870E and X870, though the X870 is literally a re-brand of B650E. The new X870 and X870E did force the enablement of USB4 using a third-party chip. This ushered in motherboard manufacturers the ability to create and produce a myriad of new motherboards with these chipsets and features.
It allowed motherboard manufacturers to update designs, provide new features, and re-position lineups. This means for the latter half of 2024, every manufacturer released new lineups of motherboards, and so there were a lot of motherboards launched in 2024 for the AMD AM5 platform. We have reviewed a lot of those motherboards.
In October of 2024, we also saw a new high-end chipset from Intel with the Intel Z890 chipset using the new Socket LGA1851 for Arrow Lake CPUs. This means that for the latter half of 2024, we also saw a flood of Intel Z890 motherboards launched with high-end features and specifications, new designs, and new lineups. Every motherboard manufacturer has a lot of motherboards, and we have reviewed a lot of those motherboards as well.
Overall, the latter half of 2024 was dense with motherboard releases on the Intel and AMD camps. The more ‘exciting’ boards are probably from the Intel Z890 LGA1851 lineups since these were heralding a new series of CPUs from Intel. The AMD X870/X870E chipsets did not offer any new features from a chipset perspective, to the platform. USB4 was being provided by a third-party chip, which had already been installed in some models of motherboards prior on the AMD side, it was just that now this was mandatory.
Otherwise, there were some exciting specific models of motherboards from manufacturers with refined configurations and features that we enjoyed, but this was specific to the motherboard manufacturer, and not inherently due to the AMD chipset. On the other hand, the Intel Z890 chipset motherboards did offer more PCIe lanes than the previous generation Z790 from Intel, so that was a bit more exciting from a chipset perspective in that regard.
When all is said and done, it is hard to name the best or most exciting chipset or motherboard release. Z890 is notable, just because it is completely new, and as we mentioned offered more PCIe options than previously. We were impressed by many of the major brands of motherboards in their high-end lineups, but if we had to put our finger on one specific model, we’d mention the ASRock X870E Taichi Lite, which provided all the features that mattered of its more expensive variant, but in a cleaner, less exuberant ‘all that you need’ kind of aesthetic.
Memory
There isn’t a whole lot to talk about in terms of system memory launches in 2024. During CES and Computex, there was a lot of talk about CAMM2 modules, and possibilities of CAMM2 coming to desktop PCs. However, these never surfaced in actual launches for 2024. If there is one type of memory to put our finger on that was the most exciting, we would say CUDIMMs are probably the most noteworthy for 2024.
The CUDIMMs offer a clock re-driver which allows frequencies to be pushed higher. It is required to hit JEDEC on Arrow Lake CPUs, but if you wish to overclock we have had good results overclocking CUDIMMs to 9000MT/s+. The future of CUDIMMs looks bright, and 2024 would be the year we can point back to and say that is the year it launched, and got its start. Unfortunately, they only work on the Intel platform right now, and not AMD, hopefully, this is something we’ll see come to future AMD platforms.
Power Supplies
There isn’t a whole lot to talk about in power supply land for 2024. We saw the continued evolution of ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 power supplies as well as 12V-2×6 connectors. While we haven’t taken a look at many power supplies in 2024, there have been new releases from the major brands in 2024 sporting native 12V-2×6 connectors, which seems to be an important inclusion for 2024 in power supplies. We are seeing more 80 Plus Platinum power supplies with these features now, where in the past 80 Plus Gold was more common, we are now seeing more efficient rated power supplies supporting the latest ATX and PCIe configurations for modern PCs.
Storage
It is very evident that 2024 was the rise of PCIe Gen5 x4 NVMe SSDs from storage makers. We can easily look back at 2024 and see many new series of PCIe 5.0 x4 SSDs coming to the market, but PCIe 4.0 x4 SSDs have not been left to the wayside either, as we also saw new PCIe Gen4 SSDs hit the market. Notably, we saw some more value-oriented SSDs hit the market utilizing more DRAM-less configurations to save cost. While there was a rise in SSD pricing in 2024, we also saw that countered a bit with these more cost-effective models.
A notable PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe SSD that was released in 2024 that we reviewed was the MSI Spatium M580 FROZR. This was a very fast Gen5 SSD, using the very performant Phison E26 controller. It is one of the new breeds of Gen5 SSDs that can top out at 14,600MB/s read and 12,700MB/s write sequential performance. It also has a completely passive cooling solution, with no running fans, at this performance level, which is quite unique. We saw SSDs like this rising in 2024 with passive cooling.
We also saw many PCIe Gen4 4.0 x4 NVMe SSDs released in 2024 with DRAM-less configurations, to save cost. Even on the PCIe 5.0 x4 side of things, there were alternate controllers to the Phison E26, such as the InnoGrit IG5666 released on SSDs in 2024. We are reviewing the ADATA Legend 970 PRO which uses that very controller as competition to Phison’s offering. Check out all our SSD reviews in the link.
If we had to place our finger on the most exciting release of 2024, it would certainly be the fastest Gen5 SSDs, like the MSI Spatium M580 sporting the Phison E26 controller.
Conclusion
When we take a step back and look at the most exciting PC hardware component releases of 2024, we quickly see that CPUs ruled 2024. Though the year started with some GPU refreshes, and even ended with an exciting GPU launch, most of the year was dominated by CPUs in some form.
Intel launched a new mobile architecture, and a new desktop architecture completely, and AMD also released a new desktop architecture and a new generation of X3D CPU. Combined with these CPU launches came new chipsets, and a ton of motherboards to support those CPUs. All of this culminated in almost an overload of new CPUs and Motherboard hardware for the desktop.
AMD’s Zen 5 got off to a rocky start, but that seemed to stabilize by the end of the year, and then AMD hit it out of the park with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Intel’s Arrow Lake also started off with a rocky start but is improving over time with new updates as well. Intel did hit it out of the park with its Intel Arc B580 GPU launch in December, however, and ended this year on a pretty big high generating a lot of excitement in the sub-$300 GPU space.
If we had to nail down the most exciting CPU of 2024, hands down it is the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. If we had to nail down the most exciting GPU of 2024, hands down it is the Intel Arc B580. Honorable mention GPU would be the Radeon RX 7600 XT for offering 16GB of VRAM under $350. Looking forward to 2025, it is looking like it will be the year of the GPU, as new architectures from NVIDIA and AMD release in 2025. 2024 was the year of the CPU, and 2025 is looking like the year of the GPU.