I was pretty pleased to see a news article on the x86/x86-64 emulator for RISC-V, felix86, recently, where they've had success running Steam and playing relatively complicated 3D games using a PCIe graphics card.

Dealing with MCUs for projects, RISC-V Espressif chips and boards are no-brainers now; I buy big bags of ESP32 boards from Seeed. I get some free ARM boards at work, which are neat - I always love playing with MCUs - but they're relatively power-hungry and expensive without a lot to show for it. I'm either using a ~$6 ESP32 board or a ~$1 ATTiny in a DIP package for home/fun projects. ESP32s are starting to show up in consumer electronics I find, too, along with the relatively pared-down ESP8266s which I'm not as fond of, though I can still flash them easily over USB-TTL at least, so whatever.

In the SBC space, ARM is competing with x86. RISC-V exists but only really for enthusiasts. RISC-V may start making inroads here soon. I picked up some Radxa Rock 2F boards (using ARM-based Rockchips) for ~$12 shipped a few months ago, they run Debian, and these have been fantastic for projects (though now ~impossible to source the cheap 1GB variant of). It's difficult to imagine it being worth getting involved in this nightmarishly competitive space, though obviously some still do. Most seem to try finding some obscure niche to justify a high markup.

In many workloads, it's more the GPU that matters. I need an MMU, a PCIe slot, and driver support. Most of us don't really need these outlandishly complex and CPU-centric $100+ ATX motherboards, or even CPU/RAM sockets/slots; just solder it on. -Like, how often do people even upgrade the CPU on a motherboard anymore? I'm more liable to throw the whole thing out because it doesn't have any 10PB/s 240GW USB9 quantum ports, so cut materials, decrease surface area, lower cost, and make it disposable.