A New Chinese Gaming PC With A Surprising CPU
Thunderobot, a Chinese PC gaming brand, has launched a new desktop that does something we almost never see. It uses an x86 gaming CPU that is not from Intel or AMD. Instead it is powered by a 16 core Hygon C86 4G processor, a chip designed in China but built on technology licensed from AMD.
The system, called the Black Warrior Hunter Pro, is being promoted as China’s first domestically produced gaming PC. Photos of the machine show a large Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card, although the exact model and full specs have not yet been confirmed.
On the surface this looks like just another prebuilt gaming PC with a chunky RTX GPU. Under the hood though the story gets much more interesting because of how this Hygon CPU even exists in the x86 world that is normally locked down by Intel and AMD.
How Hygon Got Zen Inside
The Hygon C86 is not a completely original design. It is derived from AMD’s first generation Zen architecture, the same core design that powered the original Ryzen desktop CPUs back in 2017. That means this Chinese chip is essentially a close cousin of something like the Ryzen 7 1800X, just adapted and produced under Chinese branding.
To understand how that is possible, you have to look back to 2016. At that point AMD was in a much weaker financial position than it is today. As part of its strategy to raise funds and expand, AMD entered into a complex licensing and joint venture arrangement with Chinese partners.
The key player is Haiguang Microelectronics Co. Ltd, often shortened to HMC, a joint venture in which AMD reportedly holds a controlling 51 percent stake. The setup works roughly like this:
- AMD licenses specific x86 and Zen related intellectual property to HMC.
- HMC in turn licenses some of that technology to Hygon.
- Hygon designs CPUs based on the licensed Zen 1 architecture.
- Those designs are sold back to HMC, which then contracts a foundry to manufacture the chips.
- HMC sells the finished CPUs to Hygon, who finally markets them as its own products in China.
This roundabout structure is designed to stay within the boundaries of the tight cross licensing agreements and legal restrictions that normally prevent third parties from simply becoming new x86 CPU vendors. It is a bit of legal and corporate gymnastics, but it resulted in real silicon shipping as Hygon branded processors.
Performance And Gaming Potential
The Hygon C86 4G used in Thunderobot’s Black Warrior Hunter Pro is a 16 core, 32 thread chip with a base clock of around 2.8 GHz. That many cores instantly sounds attractive for heavy multitasking and content creation, but raw gaming performance is more nuanced.
In early Geekbench 6 numbers, the CPU reportedly scores around 1,072 points in single core performance. For comparison, an AMD Ryzen 7 1800X scores roughly 1,250 points at a higher 3.6 GHz base clock. If you normalize for clock speed, the Hygon chip is actually slightly more efficient per cycle, which suggests there may have been some tweaks or small improvements over pure first generation Zen.
Even so, you are still fundamentally looking at first gen Ryzen class performance. That was impressive in 2017 but is solidly mid tier by modern standards. For competitive high refresh rate gaming, modern Zen 3, Zen 4, or Intel 12th and 13th gen CPUs offer far higher single core and gaming performance.
Where the Hygon C86 could shine is not in raw frames per second, but in workloads that scale well with many threads:
- Video encoding and transcoding
- 3D rendering
- Heavy multitasking while streaming and editing
- Running multiple virtual machines or containers
With 16 cores and 32 threads, this chip can chew through parallel workloads, as long as the price is aggressive enough to offset its older core design and lower clocks.
For pure gaming builds, most enthusiasts would prefer fewer but faster cores. A mid range modern Ryzen or Intel CPU would almost certainly offer smoother and higher frame rates, especially when paired with a strong RTX graphics card like the one shown in the Thunderobot promo shots.
Availability And What It Means For PC Gaming
So should you be looking to buy a Hygon powered Thunderobot rig for your next build? For most readers outside China, the answer is simply that you will probably not get the chance. Thunderobot already sells gaming laptops and desktops internationally through platforms like Amazon, but all signs point to this specific Hygon based desktop being limited to the Chinese market.
Pricing has not yet been announced, and that is a huge part of the equation. If the Black Warrior Hunter Pro is positioned as a budget or mid range productivity tower with acceptable gaming performance on the side, it could make sense domestically. If it tries to compete with modern high end gaming rigs at similar prices, the aging Zen 1 base will be a hard sell for enthusiasts focused on maximum FPS.
Still, the system is important as a milestone. It represents:
- A rare example of an x86 gaming PC not powered by Intel or AMD branded chips.
- A concrete result of AMD’s past licensing strategy that helped it survive and grow.
- A step toward more diversified CPU ecosystems in regions that want domestic silicon for political or strategic reasons.
For PC gamers in general, you probably will not be swapping your rig to Hygon any time soon. But moves like this push the industry in new directions and may eventually lead to more competition, more experimentation with designs, and possibly better value hardware in the long run.
For now, Thunderobot’s Black Warrior Hunter Pro is mainly an interesting tech story: a gaming desktop powered by a Chinese made x86 CPU with Zen roots, paired with Nvidia RTX graphics, offering respectable but not cutting edge performance and likely aimed squarely at its home market.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/processors/gaming-pc-with-bizarre-chinese-made-but-amd-derived-16-core-x86-cpu-and-nvidia-graphics-goes-on-sale-but-only-in-china-for-now/
