I'm currently using an i5-9400f and have been looking at the i5-14400f, which has recently dropped in price. I'm considering upgrading to this CPU along with either an H610 or B760 motherboard. I've got everything else sorted: a good PSU, a 1TB NVMe SSD, an AMD RX 580 8GB GPU, and a 32GB DDR4 3200MHz kit. My main uses are general tasks, web development, Docker, and occasionally running a VM. I'm not much of a gamer, as I mainly use my Xbox Series X for that. Do you think sticking with my DDR4 RAM will hold me back for my usage? Upgrading to DDR5 would add about 50% to my costs, and I doubt I'd get much for selling my current DDR4 kit, maybe around €25-€30.
3 Answers
The main reason to switch to DDR5 is if you anticipate needing a lot of RAM in the future. If you're going to run many VMs or database servers, the extra memory bandwidth could help. I'm using 96GB of DDR5 because I compile a lot and use a bunch of VMs for testing, but that's probably overkill for most gaming needs. For your work, you'd likely be fine with 32GB of DDR4, but consider your workload - if you often push your RAM usage, the upgrade might make sense down the line!
Honestly, if all you're doing is general tasks and occasional VMs, you won't really feel the impact of sticking with DDR4. The performance for your use case will be practically unchanged, aside from some benchmark differences that don't matter much in everyday use. So go ahead with your plan!
Switching to DDR5 costs around 100€, but for many applications, DDR4 like your 3200 CL16 can keep pace with DDR5 6000 CL30 in latency. It's all about what you need it for, really. In most cases, you won't notice much difference unless you're pushing your system to its limits.
Yeah, it's good to remember that latency vs throughput plays a big role, but just for normal tasks, DDR4 should handle it well.