What Zen 6 and Nova Lake Mean for Buyers

Neither AMD's Zen 6 desktop chips nor Intel's Nova Lake processors are on sale, and neither company has announced a desktop launch date or a price. If you need a PC now, buy one. If your PC works and you are curious, there is a sensible checkpoint in January. Below, we separate what the companies have said from what is still rumor.

What AMD has said

Zen 6 has started in the data center. AMD launched its Zen 6 EPYC Venice server processors this year and laid out a CPU roadmap running through 2028. None of that puts a Zen 6 chip in a desktop you can buy today.

The fact that matters most to buyers came at Computex in May, when AMD extended support for the AM5 socket through 2029. AM5 is the expected home for desktop Zen 6, but we have not seen AMD publish which existing boards will take which chips.

On timing, AMD's roadmap showed Zen 6 as a 2026 product, while a February report from Benchlife said the desktop Ryzen family, codenamed Olympic Ridge, would arrive in 2027. We have not seen AMD confirm that. Leaks point to new 12-core chiplets that would allow a 24-core flagship, and those are unconfirmed too.

What Intel has said

Intel has said more about timing and less about the chips. On its third-quarter earnings call in late October, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said Nova Lake will be Intel's first client product on its 18A-P process, that it is tracking ahead of schedule, and that Intel will share more at CES in January. Earlier this year he said Nova Lake was coming at the end of 2026.

Plan on a new motherboard. Tom's Hardware's rundown this month says Nova Lake uses a new LGA 1954 socket with 900-series chipsets including Z990, Z970 and B960, and that LGA 1851 has no new processors coming after the Core Ultra 200S Plus chips.

The rest is rumor. Leaked schedules have mass production starting in the fourth quarter of 2026, a first unlocked 28-core chip in the first quarter of 2027, and flagships with up to 52 cores later that year. The platform's reported DDR5-8000 base speed is worth noting too: slower kits should still work, but Tom's Hardware warns they could limit performance.

What is known and what isn't

The largest unknown for your wallet is memory. A new processor does nothing to lower what a 32GB kit costs, and the people selling that memory expect the shortage to last.

Should you wait

If your PC is broken or can't run what you need, buy now. Neither launch is close enough to justify going without, and memory is likely to be a bigger part of your bill than the processor.

If you are choosing AM5, buy the Ryzen that fits your budget today. Support through 2029 means you may be able to move to a faster chip later, provided your board maker ships a BIOS update for it. Our AM5 vs LGA 1851 guide and CPU rankings will help you choose.

If you are choosing LGA 1851, buy it for what it does today. Chips like the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus can be fine buys on their own merits, but do not count on another processor generation for that socket.

If your PC works and you want to see what is next, wait for CES. It is two months away, Intel has promised more there, and waiting costs you nothing if your current machine is fine.

If you are waiting for current chips to get cheaper, look at what they cost now. In our catalog on November 9, the 31 processors with both a launch list price and a street price sold at a median of about 14 percent below list, so much of that discount has already happened.

Expect the first wave to favor enthusiasts. Intel's first chips are rumored to be unlocked 28-core parts, and Tom's Hardware expects the cost of entry to be high for anyone without a fast DDR5 kit. When the chips arrive, they will go in our processor catalog with sourced specs and dated prices.