wait...ddr5 early 2022? did i miss something? from what i read ddr5 wont hit consumer market for 1.5-2.5 years...at least that was samsung's read on it per tom's. @Pookeyhead are you going alderlake?
If it's any good, sure. I have no brand loyalty. I will buy whatever is best at the time. I guess I'll wait and see.
Buying "best" is a good way to go. Nothing stays best for long, especially not at the rate tech has been developing, but it will last you for a long time. I got my current rig new in 2017 just before Ryzen dropped, which is why I chose the X99 platform (and I have zero regrets). I think that obviously you should also consider what the best value is, considering upgrade paths etc. I know that 6/12 cores/threads is not "new" any more, but for general use it's plenty. I mean... your current rig is probably faster than what I've been running on a daily basis for the last four years, but my rig is snappy as hell and doesn't miss a beat, even in the latest games. Intel really knew what they were doing with the high end desktop stuff, starting with X58.
Alder lake will work with both DDR4 and DDR5. Intel expects to launch it Q4 this year........ whatever that means for us consumers I'm not sure. Each generation of Intel CPU generally last 1 year, give or take. So DDR5 will be with us within a year of Alder lake becoming available to buy, if not together with Alder Lake. My estimate to be early 2022, but as Gamer's Nexus says, usually need around 18 months for new DDR prices to stabilise and good performing parts to be good value. So check back mid-2023 and onwards for good value DDR5 build.
Seeing that the OP was 18 months ago... I'd wait at least until Alder Lake is launched to see what DDR5 holds. Rumours are suggesting a launch before the end of the year, so October/November? If you can wait 18 months, I'm sure an extra 2 or 3 won't hurt. From personal experience with previous memory transitions, you may well be burned financially by going directly to DDR5, but at the same time it may be better in the long run even if it costs more: I built my 1st rig in Feb 2008, with the last gen parts for LGA775. I intentionally bought a DDR3 board even though they were rarer and more expensive. So was the RAM. 2x1GB sticks @1333MHz was £150 in Feb 2008 - I bought a 2nd pair 2 months later for £100 (from memory 2x1GB 800Mhz DDR2 stick back then was ~£50 and 1066MHz DDR2 wasn't much more). Those sticks only worked at 1.8V - and therefore they've only worked on that LGA775 board. All 115x boards could only supply a max of 1.65V, so those sticks were were completely useless when I wanted to reuse them for my HTPC. But I've not had any issues installing the newer 4x2GB 1.5V DDR3 sticks into that motherboard. That's the advantage - you're likely to be able to install newer, faster modules down the road if you want the option to do so. For context, by Feb 2010 (so 3 years later) I got 2x2GB sticks of 1600MHz RAM for £100 and another pair a year later for £69 (though looking through emails to check details, I've just learned 10 years later that the 2nd pair have slower timings... not that it matters now, they've all worked together in the same build for at least 8 years and continue to do so). The point is that while the sticks were very expensive compared to equivalent DDR2, I certainly am happier that supporting the newer standard kept options open for faster modules that a DDR2 based board didn't offer. Whether that'swhat you want, only you can answer that - but I thought that sharing my experience may help you come to an opinion on it. I've only just built a DDR4 based system so I can't answer for the DDR3>DDR4 transition based on purchases - that said I don't remember seeing any such issues with that transition. On a related note I did upgrade my parents PC from an original 1st Gen 115x system to Skylake, and intentionally bought a replacement motherboard that would take their existing DDR3 modules rather than replace them with DDR4, just to save money (and from memory DDR4 modules were widely available at the time despite Skylake being the only platform that supported them). And the options were very limited, generally only a few models per manufacturer with the older RAM and then they were budget boards lacking features that you're going to want. If Alder Lake does split between DDR4 & DDR5 support, I won't be surprised if the DDR4 boards are all budget and manufacturers only offer a few options each vs maybe 10 models that support DDR5. The TLDR version - based on experience, going DDR5 immediately will probably cost more but you'll have more options in the long run. Going with a DDR4 Alder Lake board may be an option but I'm not expecting anything high-end to be available, mainly budget boards with only the basics though don't discount a z690 board with DDR4 support (Z170 Skylake boards with DDR3 were made, so I'm sure someone will do the same for Alder Lake).
Indeed. This PC has lasted 10 years, with a few GPU upgrades along the way. Oh yes. I was all ready to boards the Zen3 train when Covid, Etherium and scalping w4nk3rz put pay to that. Now so much time has passed, waiting for Alder Lake, or even AMD is not really an issue.
