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AMD Ryzen 7000 Zen 4 CPUs arrive later this year, with a puzzling heatsink design

AMD's Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 series CPU is coming Spring 2022, and it'll feature a striking new heatsink and LGA AM5 motherboard socket

CES 2022 is upon us, and technology companies from around the world are showing off their gadgets, gizmos, and expensive gaming PC components. While Intel chose to revisit its existing Alder Lake lineup with some new entries, AMD finally unveiled its next-gen gaming CPU contender – Zen 4.

Unveiled during AMD’s Product Premiere event by CEO Lisa Su, the upcoming Ryzen 7000 series processors feature a striking heatsink that resembles a jigsaw piece. The processor also uses an LGA AM5 socket, meaning it’ll connect to your gaming motherboard with pads rather than pins.

While AMD provided us with a glimpse at its redesigned CPU Heatsink aesthetics and sockets, it held back in terms of specs. However, just like the red team’s upcoming Zen 3+ mobile CPUs, Zen 4 will boast DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support. Lisa Su also claims that the Ryzen 7000’s “performance looks incredible”, but we can decide if that holds true once the chips arrive in Spring 2022.

AMD has some catching up to do, but if its CES announcements are anything to go by, Intel’s current claim to the CPU throne could be short-lived. That said, the blue team also announced that it’ll bolster its Alder Lake lineup with a range of cheaper chipsets, and it also plans to counter AMD’s mobile Zen 3+ offerings with new H-series processors, set to release later this year.