New motherboards, old RAM, plenty of life left in yesterday's PCs

Gigabyte recently announced new motherboards that use DDR4 RAM, a standard that launched in 2014, and other vendors support even older standards in brand-new kit. Earlier this year, AMD released a Ryzen 7 5800X3D anniversary edition to mark ten years of AM4. For AM4 processors, Gigabyte offers the new B450M H ARGB, with two DDR4 slots, and the B550 X-Eagle with four slots. Those who prefer Intel chippery can now buy a B760M Aorus Elite. This is notable because of the age of the DDR4 spec. In case you lose track of these things, The Register first described the new DDR4 spec back in 2012, and a few months later urged the keen to wait a year or two. DDR5 supports higher transfer rates, and The Reg predicted its arrival in 2017. The DDR5 standard was agreed in 2020, with mainstream PC adoption following in 2021. …