Back in Spring 2011, I bought a shiny i5-2500K (Sandy Bridge) for my gaming PC… and never looked back. I’ve never had to touch this sturdy, unrelenting CPU. I never even bothered figuring out how to overclock it (which maybe contributed to its longevity); it just always worked great, and kept on going and going and going.
However, when I realized my DDR3 RAM was no longer one but two generations out of date… I had to admit it was time to upgrade.
Obviously, Intel has earned my loyalty with the i5-2500k, and I’m not seriously looking at other CPU brands. I have my eye on a sexy little i5-13600KF with a nice new LGA1700 motherboard, and I fully expect that combo to last me another decade.
However, I’ve been out of this game for a long, long time. I seek your advice. Would I be a fool to buy now? When will the next generation be out? Is the next generation going to be leaps and bounds ahead of the current gen, or just an incremental improvement? Eight or nine years from now, am I going to feel like a chump for grabbing Raptor Lake when I could have waited a few more months for Arrow Lake?
Thank you in advance for your advice.
upgrade now, the 13600kf is a great cpu. a 2500k is fine for web browsing (my parents pc has my old 2600k) but beyond that it is very slow. pc recycling centers junk anything older than 4th or 5th gen these days, so if you tried to donate it, it would literally get thrown into the trash. next gen will not make a huge difference, maybe 10% or so, and you’d have to suffer for another year with 2nd gen. there is no reason to wait with hardware as slow as yours. ddr5 is also very very cheap now, so it’s a good time to buy. if you have a microcenter near you, even better, since you can probably get a mobo/cpu/ram for $350-400.