CPU mining is in fact still profitable even without the Ryzen!
Gridcoin
Formed in late 2013, Gridcoin is a transparent, decentralized community which has developed a blockchain based incentive and reward structure for volunteer distributed processing. Gridcoin utilizes the platform BOINC (The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), an open source grid computing infrastructure released in 2002 at the University of California, Berkeley.
BOINC provides scientists and enthusiasts with a platform to host data which needs to be processed -- Data that might map the Milky Way, find prime numbers, fold proteins, test chemical and molecular combinations, Search for Extraterrestrial Life (SETI), or process any number of calculations.
Gridcoin developed a Distributed Proof of Research protocol (DPoR), also known as Proof of BOINC (PoB). DPoR rewards GRC to volunteers contributing processing power to BOINC projects. This system creates a decentralized currency which incentivizes the decentralized processing of the troves of data collected and created every day – from scientific, to mathematics, to social, to political – while also incentivizing the growth of the distributed network.
Gridcoin and CPUs
Community member @dutch has put together some tutorials with more information regarding Gridcoin and CPU profitability. I'd suggest you check them out:
Profitability projections
Project Selection
There is also active development for a profitability calculator. This is unique to Gridcoin because of our DPoR protocol -- We use stats from BOINC to create something called Magnitude then we use that Magnitude to distribute GRC. The stats from BOINC depend on your hardware and the projects which you are working on. SETI, for example, while fun, is worked on by many people with many flops which means a user with an i7 might struggle to maintain a positive cash flow if they work only on SETI.
This creates an entire ecosystem around creating and maintaining BOINC projects, which is a huge part of Gridcoin: Directing processing power to real world scientific applications.
Check us out! Our subit is loaded with information.
Thank you very much for this great comment, my questions have been answered. I will do much more reading about Gridcoin, and the links you have posted. For now I will be installing the Gridcoin wallet and BOINC to test it out first. Cheers