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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

"The problem I see with the AM5 socket is simply the fact that DD5 RAM to support it is just too expensive."

DDR4 is basically just as expensive. At least DDR5 gives on-chip error correction (not as good as full ECC).

For a geneal computer, there's not that much difference between AM4 and AM5 unless you really want the extra speed of DDR5, PCI 5, and the newest processors. You can build a very capable AM4 machine for slightly less money, but that savings is found on the CPU and motherboard, not on the RAM.

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I think for brand new computers/builds that's correct but where it hit me was wanting to upgrade an existing desktop. I already have more DDR4 RAM than I need and would have been willing to purchase a new CPU/motherboard and being forced to also purchase new RAM at the same time made it too big of a price tag all at once. I just found the best zen 3 cpu I could on ebay and called it a day.

I think your point still stands overall for AMD's business though, I assume a vast majority of CPUs are purchased in new desktops?

DDR4 looks to be around half the price of DDR5 on the used market to me. I wouldn't call that slightly less money unless you weren't planning to install much RAM.

On the new market, they are really close. Most consumers are buying new. If we want to get pedantic, we can compare buying used systems on Facebook marketplace to cannibalize the parts and resell the others to see net cost.

I don't think most people building AM4 systems currently are buying new, or at least not everything new, simply because depending on what you're looking for there might not even be any new parts.

The ECC in DDR5 is there just to make it work because of the errors caused by the density and the data rates. The ECC isn’t there for you, it is for the manufacturers.

I am still running DDR2 & DDR3 machines! I was going to finally make the big upgrade this year but am now holding off until the market finds a little bit more sanity.

I built a workstation / gaming pc in 2024, and I feel like I was on the last chopper out of 'nam

Agree, i just built a desktop for the first time in ages, it is a leap and change from using laptops with numerous components pplugged into them. i made the leap to desktop. everything was comparably reasonable except the RAM or anything that has memory chip on it ( RAM, NVME etc) so i did some research just to make sure. All in all i happy with the result i went with AMD 9900x no graphics card in this option, i skipped the graphics card for now.

I would like to add that, looking for bundles helps a lot. If you have micro center near you, utilize it to you full advantage they are the only ones given promotional items with bundles at the moment from what seen. The main objective is to skip the price gouge of RAM chips, they cost more than the CPU at the moment. I got CPU and motherboard plus 32g RAM fro $600 and that was a save. the RAM was $445 alone.

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