Ready for Zen 5? MSI has dropped a heavy hint that AMD's next-gen Ryzen CPUs could arrive soon

We've just had further bits of info drip through on next-gen Ryzen CPUs which suggest that Zen 5 desktop chips are set to arrive sooner rather than later.

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MSI's mention of next-gen Ryzen processors is the heavier hint of the two (Image Credit: MSI)

What will presumably be the Ryzen 9000 series has already been the subject of a couple of recent leaks in beta BIOS releases from ASUS and MSI.

Well, now those hidden-away-mentions have become official, with both of those motherboard makers announcing up front that their new firmware for AM5 chipset toting boards supports next-gen Ryzen processors.

As VideoCardz noticed, in the case of ASUS, this was mentioned in the release notes for the ROG Strix B650E-I motherboard, and MSI even announced its 600 series motherboards would support next-gen Ryzen in a press release.

This lends further weight to the notion that AMD's Ryzen 9000 processors for desktop PCs are coming close to release.

The rumor mill has floated the idea of a Q3 launch, likely to be preceded by an initial reveal at Computex in June. So, we might be able to buy Zen 5 CPUs as soon as July, maybe, or August.

That could really put the proverbial cat among the pigeons for Intel, as Team Blue's next-gen Arrow Lake isn't set to arrive until late in 2024 - which means Ryzen 9000 is going to blow away Raptor Lake Refresh, pretty much, even if it's a relatively modest generational uplift (as some speculation suggests).

Read more: NVIDIA RTX 5090 could launch in Q3 2024 to crush AMD in the gaming GPU arena