I found it's a fairy capable machine for day-to-day uses, even building a relatively large project is not a problem. There is a performance hit after Meltdown/Spectre, especially when you disable hyperthreading.
But yes, I'm actively looking forward to try a non-x86 platform as my desktop, and I'm watching for this PowerPC laptop [0]. Another option is the MNT Reform ARM laptop that offers an interesting, hackable design [1]. For desktops, HoneyComb LX2K is an ARM motherboard that offers workstation-level specs [2]. But the first two projects are still in development. HoneyComb looks good but the 550 USD price tag requires me to consider carefully (the same money may buy me more interesting hardware in the near-future soon).
For POWER, the Raptor Talos II workstation [3] is the first choice comes to mind, but it's POWER, the 3000+ USD price tag is not for the light-hearted. For RISC-V, it costs around 2000+ USD (1000 USD for the CPU board [4], another 1000 USD for the PCI-E board [5]) to build a desktop from the current development system. I'm still waiting for an affordable RISC-V SoC that can be used as a 400-500 USD desktop.
I can pay 2000 USD if I decide it's the One True machine that can be used as my daily driver, but it's obviously not the case for now. So... waiting, waiting, waiting, and decision, decision, decision...
[0] https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231031
[2] https://www.solid-run.com/nxp-lx2160a-family/honeycomb-works...
[4] https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unleashed
[5] https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expan...
[1] https://developer.solid-run.com/knowledge-base/lx2160a-cex7-...
OTOH 2x SFP+ @10GbE is nothing to sneeze at. Regarding the 'Work-Station-level' specs, which GPU would you use in there, assuming you'd want more than a simple frame buffer? I mean one which is fully supported by opensource drivers for that architecture and special platform quirks?
Edit: writing this from some specced out Core i7-640LM docked into assorted cybertrash. Asking because experience taught me i can throw anything at old x86/x64, while that isn't the case with anything else, even if the physical slots/interfaces ARE there. At least not for now. Catch-22.
I've looked at generational numbers and only in the past year or two has it gotten kind of bad. Been itching to upgrade since last November, but held out for a 16c Ryzen, I wanted more Linux stability, but pulled the trigger early as I said my old system was acting up.
In the end, it's quite a jump just to an R5 3600 from the i7-4790K ... I don't know if/when I'll feel the need to upgrade again after next month.
I never stated that.
Edit: I updated the original comment to clarify that.
> They are losing the desktop wars hard to AMD with Ryzen, and starting to lose ground on the server front.
I never purchased any new Intel's CPUs (or AMD's CPU, for that matter) since Ivy Bridge. If I have to build a new x86 PC today, I'll definitely buy AMD.