(Credit: AMD)
At IFA in Berlin this week, AMD introduced a new powerhouse desktop PC line, Threadripper Halo Station, designed to run AI models locally.
"This is the most powerful workstation in the world," says AMD SVP and General Manager Jack Huynh. "Designed and engineered for a complete new era of computing, capable of running AI models that are a trillion parameters."
The product is meant for businesses and software developers who prefer running AI in their office rather than in the cloud. The liquid-cooled desktop PC features a 96-core Threadripper Pro 9995WX CPU and two enterprise-grade MI350P GPUs. Buyers can even expand it to four GPUs. “This is about as close as you can get to a personal supercomputer,” Huynh adds.
Pricing and launch date were not announced. But the product will likely be extremely expensive, given that it can feature up to 2TB of system memory and up to 576GB of high-bandwidth HBM3E memory if equipped with four GPUs.
Threadripper Halo Station appears poised to compete with Nvidia’s DGX Station tower PCs, which support AI models spanning up to 1 trillion parameters, for at least $100,000.
Project Zenith Coming to Ryzen AI Halo PCs
AMD’s other notable announcement is Microsoft’s Project Zenith, a special flavor of Windows 11 designed for software developers and coders, which we first saw at Build. Zenith will arrive on AMD’s Ryzen AI Halo PCs, which launched in July as mini PCs for $3,999. Micro Center has been selling units with Windows 11 Pro or Linux.
Project Zenith stands out for offering a suite of preinstalled developer tools and focusing on a “distraction-free Windows experience.” Microsoft also created the OS for devices with 64GB or more of unified memory, enabling them to run large AI models locally.
We don't have pricing or a launch date, but Microsoft says, "Project Zenith is just the beginning," while hinting that it's working with a range of PC makers on more developer-friendly systems.
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I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.
Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.
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