Should You Buy DDR5 for Your Next Budget PC Build?

[Steve]

If you're about to build a new PC right now, and that requires you to buy a new motherboard and memory, we feel you're best off going with affordable entry-level DDR5 modules, but why?

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2529-ddr5-ram-for-budget-pc-build/

 

[fps4ever]

Seems like the the best bet is to stick with DDR4 3600. You can get 2x8GB for ridiculously low prices right now. But that also depends on the price of the DDR4 motherboards compared to DDR5. Of course you can roll the dice and see if DDR5 is going to drop like forecasted.

 

[DSirius]

Thank you for the article, and yes, better to wait new AMD Zen4 and Intel 13th gen processors to pair with cheaper DDR5 memory

 

[kira setsu]

I'm done chasing the greatest with pc tech, my ddr4 infused rig will be fine for a good while.

reading about the new stuff and then reading a comment about someone ready to play the newest cutting edge graphics heavy game on a......steam deck @ 720p really put the hardware chase into perspective for me

 

[takaozo]

Neah, I would stay away from all new gen at least 2-3 months until we have reviews for all that is about to come. Take the best decision after reading.

 

[p51d007]

Sometimes it is better to by the LAST of last years stuff, than the FIRST of this years stuff.
Less expensive, better bang for the buck and hopefully any bugs that were present, are gone.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I won't be buying DDR5 for at least four years. My next upgrade will be an R7-5800X3D and with my RX 6800 XT, I know that I'll be sitting pretty for many moons to come. My DDR4-3200 will do just fine until then and if I need more than 16GB for some reason, I'll just toss in my old DDR4-2400. Sure, the 3200 will have to down-clock to 2400 but 32GB is still 32GB!

 

[Colonel Blimp]

If you're building a budget PC, your current rig is likely to already have DDR 4, so just use that.

If you have no current rig then yes, DDR5 .

 

[Slappy McPhee]

My plans are to cut my teeth on DDR5 when the new 13th gen CPUs drop to into the market. I have a pretty solid plan. Build myself a new rig with either the 13700k or 13600k and 32GB of RAM, rotate my current 12600k/32GB DDR4-3600 to my Plex server, and give my kid the 9600k/16GB DDR4-3200 to refresh his PC. Going to keep my RTX 370ti for my main rig, probably sell off the son's 1070 FE card for what I can get and move him to a reasonably priced RTX card since those should be dropping a fair amount. These newer gen Intel CPUs are so solid for Plex that there isn't a need for me to even augment my server with a GPU for transcoding since for me it is minimal at this point.

 

[phsouza]

Okay, my takeaway is that for gaming I could stick with DDR4 and be fine. But you're missing the mark here in productivity loads. Why not include some productivity benchmarks to see if there's a difference in performance there?

 

[Sir Alex Ice]

That's a lot of lying and skewing the results to puff DDR5 when it is blatantly obvious that DDR5 4800MHz does not hold its own against DDR4 3200MHz.

You would have to go for 6400MHz to get consistently better performance, but that would skyrocket your budget. So DDR4 is the best choice now, factoring price in the decision.

 

[m3tavision]

The answer to this question is YES.

Because AM5 doesn't really use DDR4.

 

[waclark]

I think I responded on the previous article and initially agreed. But, I just put together a parts list for my grandson and ultimately decided to go with DDR4 and Intel Core i5-12600K. Now, this is not necessarily a "budget" build. I could have picked lesser components and probably saved another $250-400. But, the money saved on DDR4 gave me more to invest into the GPU. So instead of a 3060, I went 3070 which I think is a good choice of cards for him.

He'll have more than enough performance for what he does today and down the road he can upgrade the GPU and/or the CPU and get more out of the rig than he'll get today. He'll lose a little performance from the DDR4, but in 4-5 years when he needs to do a big upgrade he can go to whatever the best components are then.