Unless you have an absolute need for DDR5, DDR4 is still fine. And if you spend as much on DDR4 RAM as you are spending on DDR5 RAM, you can get faster DDR4 RAM than what DDR5 is currently offering. And it will be more difficult (read: more expensive) to get DDR5 RAM to DDR4 speeds. The chip that controls the communication speed of the RAM is built into the motherboard that supports DDR4. The chip that controls the communication speed of the RAM is now on the DDR5 RAM module. There are pro's and con's to this approach. Until DDR5 comes down in price, I would not look at DDR5 systems. Right now you need to pay way too much for DDR5, for what it delivers.
More importantly, you have to check if the CPU supports PCI Express 4. Because the difference in RAM speeds between DDR4 and DDR5 is not big and DDR4 still has the advantage. The motherboard for that supports DDR5 RAM is also a lot more expensive than it's DDR4 counterpart. Support for PCI Express 4 is more important, because that speeds up communication between your drives and the rest of your computer. That is a much larger performance gain than what can currently be accomplished with DDR5.
Then you also need to check how many 'PCI lanes' are available. AMD CPU's can support much more lanes than Intel CPUs can.
Now if your motherboard only has 2 PCI-Express slots, all the available PCI lanes are divided over these 2 slots. Usually the slot for the video card "eats" 16 PCI lanes. Whatever PCI lanes remain are accessible in the 2nd slot. If you use such a board, There will not be much difference between AMD and Intel. Intel CPU have just enough lanes for video, 1 Nvme drive and a 10 GBit network card. AMD CPUs can support more Nvme drives, as they can handle more PCI lanes than Intel does.
So it depends on what task you need to do on the computer. If you do a lot of things simultaneously, the AMD 59xx series CPUs are much better. If the main intent is to game, Intel is slightly better, if you can afford the higher costs of purchase, 3rd party cooling solution (as the standard cooler will result in thermal throttling much sooner, nullifying whatever advantage the Intel CPU had over AMD) and you'll end up needing to buy a better computer case that can provide enough air-cooling. Or you need to spend extra on water-cooling solutions, which will take much more time (and expertise) to build up properly. Yes, you can buy pre-made water-cooling parts, but those hardly fit into a smaller computer case, because most people that buy those, make use of nice, large computer cases and everything is specced for those.
Intel CPU's take the 'fastest gaming' crown, as those are easier to overclock. And the Intel CPUs that can be overclocked are i7/i9 12xxxK CPUs, or if you are really have an unlimited budget i7/i9 12xxxKS CPUs.
Intel dropped the ball and their 12th generation CPU is a proper answer to the brute force that the AMD 59xx series CPUs are. And only in the high-end gaming segment. AMD CPUs are still kicking their arse in practically all other segments.
What operating system are you planning to use on this new system? Window 10? Windows 11? Linux? Because Microsoft and Intel are better friends than Microsoft and AMD are, so you will notice that Windows 11 is a tiny bit better on a system with Intel CPU. There have been fixes for AMD CPU's, so that might not be the case any more.
Windows 10 and Linux work both fine on both AMD CPUs and Intel CPUs.
On a personal note:
I have a Windows 11 laptop here (Home edition) and I am not too impressed with it. The switch from Windows 7 to 8.x to 10 was no problem at all for me. But Windows 11 Home edition is too 'stupified' for my tastes.After the guarantee period has lapsed on that laptop, I'll buy another drive for it and will run Linux on that. I'll keep the original drive, just in case.
So if you are hell bent on running Windows 11 on your new machine, then an Intel CPU might be your best bet. Even if you are not hell bent on running Windows 11, October 2025 will arrive much sooner than you think and then you 'll have no choice but to run Windows 11 (or another operating system).
Still, I rather spend money on an AMD CPU and the money I save with that will buy my a much nicer video-card and/or much faster drives. If I had a budget to buy myself a new system, that is.
