The only processor of AMD thread ripper family worth buying is the 16 core 1000$, it's good to finally see amd make high end that outperforms intel processor, the 12 core or the 8 core thread ripper don't seem worthy, if you're gonna pay 400$ for motherboard and 250$ for memory and have the money to pay 800$ for 12 core processor you might as well pay extra 200$ to get 16 cores, 8 core processor is kind of a joke why would someone pay AMD 200$ over ryzen 7 to get PCI-E lanes and quad channel when intel offering them with no extra fee, 6800K priced at 300$ 6850K priced at 410$ on amazon, amd made good 1000$ processor and competes well against intel's mainstream and entry level processor, but somehow failed to fill 350-900 price range, also AMD's 1000$ 16 core processor worth considering if you're truly need it for professional heavily multithreaded programs, but at gaming intel high end processors still the fastest and even cheaper, we all know games aren’t optimized for new intel skylake x mesh architecture or AMD's ryzen processors, and games still perform better on intel's broadwell-E/Haswell-E processors, therefore an overclocked broadwell-E/Haswell-E processor are the best choice for high end gaming machine, broad well-E processors became very tempting after the price cut, 28 to 40 PCI-E lanes, quad channel memory, 6 cores overclocks better than AMD processors, more efficient compared to thread ripper and intel's skylake x, games optimization, the mother board cheaper than x399 and x299 within 230$ price range which is kind of affordable, honestly never been interested to spend over 400$ on processor for gaming machine, you better spend the extra cash on m.2 or second graphics card, though that might change when intel release 8 core processor on z390.