arXiv:2610.11904v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Combining a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with a receive antenna array is a promising low-complexity architecture for multi-user uplink reception, but its performance analysis for more than two users has remained an open problem: the zero-forcing (ZF) signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) no longer admits an explicit, low-dimensional closed-form expression, and its distribution is analytically intractable for design purposes. This paper addresses this gap for a K-user, K-antenna uplink system in which a large-scale, L-element RIS, partitioned into K user-dedicated sub-surfaces, precedes ZF reception at the base station. Through an asymptotic analysis in which the sub-surface sizes grow without bound, we show that the orthogonal projector underlying the ZF SINR converges to a rank-one matrix aligned with the desired user's channel. We use this convergence to derive a closed-form asymptotic approximation for the average per-user SINR that depends only on deterministic channel parameters. Treating this expression as a tractable design objective, we prove that equal partitioning is approximately sum-rate-optimal at leading order regardless of path-loss asymmetry across users. We also develop a low-complexity greedy pairwise-transfer search that refines the partition beyond this leading-order optimum. Monte Carlo simulations across a range of system and RIS sizes confirm that the closed-form SINR tracks the exact simulated rate closely once the RIS is large relative to the number of users. The greedy search also yields consistent, if modest, sum-rate gains over equal partitioning, validating the theory as both an accurate performance predictor and a practical design tool.