Now might be one of the worst times ever to build a new PC. Not only are GPU prices climbing , particularly at the high-end, but the RAM and NAND pricing apocalypse has pushed memory and storage — two components that are traditionally among the cheapest in many builds — to new highs. That makes building a new PC from scratch with DDR5 particularly tough right now. Upgrading, though, is a different story. If you have an old kit of DDR4 kicking around, and maybe an SSD, you can make a substantial upgrade to your PC without shelling out for insanely priced hardware right now.
We’ve put together two builds based on the latest chipset and processors that support DDR4, from both AMD and Intel. Intel certainly has the edge, as it supported DDR4 all the way up to its last-gen Raptor Lake Refresh chips. AMD stopped supporting DDR4 with Zen 3, and if it weren’t for some well-timed refreshes a couple of years back, you probably wouldn’t be able to find Zen 3 chips at all. If you have RAM and a decent CPU already, now is the time to buy a new video card, as prices are expected to further increase over the coming months. A modern Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB balances budget and performance at 1080p, and even into 1440p.
The builds here are complete, short of an operating system (which you can get for free or cheap ), but pick and choose components based on what you have to carry over from a previous build. If you have an older AM4 motherboard, you might be able to use it with a Ryzen 7 5800XT. Just make sure to check for compatibility with your motherboard manufacturer. Especially as we ride out the surge in RAM pricing, piecemeal upgrades are your best bet if you’re trying to take the value of your PC dollar the furthest. You could even buy 32GB today and sell your 16GB kit to offset costs.
If you’re coming from a really old build, you may not have a choice but to buy from scratch, and we have you covered there, too. For under $1,300, you can build a well-performing machine that not only plays games well at 1080p (or even 1440), but also serves as a solid productivity PC. In fact, you won’t be able to reach these performance levels until our $2,000 ($2,400 with RAM factored in) best PC build . Compared to DDR5, you’re saving at least $200 by using (or sticking with) DDR4.
Unfortunately, DDR4 builds are effectively a dead end. AMD moved past AM4 and DDR4 a few years back, and Intel abandoned DDR4 as it sunset the LGA1700 socket. However, these builds set you up for a full platform upgrade in the future. You might not be able to drop in a new CPU, but you’ll at least have all the other components you need once RAM pricing is under control.
DDR4 Intel Build
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
Intel had some fortunate (if unintentional) foresight by supporting both DDR4 and DDR5 on its 12th through 14th-gen CPUs. The Core i5-14600KF we chose for this build still remains an excellent processor. It’s less than 6% behind the Core i7-14700K on average in games at 1080p, and about 7% behind the newer Core Ultra 5 245K in multi-threaded performance. DDR4 represents an additional performance loss, though only around 5% (or less) in most cases. It depends on the workload.
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