I suggest to spend your money on something worth, rather than wasting 500$ on a pointless upgrade. Or, at lest, replace the CPU alone on the MB you already own. The Intel upgrade window is already incredibly small and you don't even take advantage of it?
Oh I was young as well once, it's normal at that age to look at incremental numbers rather than practical effects. Perhaps here I'm sharing my experience, not my opinion. My personal opinion is that I would spend those 500$ in a weekend with my girlfriend, or in something IT related that last like a good monitor, a good mechanical keyboard, a NAS. That's a personal preference, the DDR4/5 upgrade is not.
If you've already got Thunderbolt devices, stick with Intel. USB4 is good but not everything's gonna work...
You know why desktop PCs have PCI slots? When and if you need a TB connection just stick an add-on card with that function. Perhaps add-on cards are something you can reuse in the next upgrade, even if it's the next MB comes with integrated ports. In the future, maybe TB ports can be useful.
Microcenter is real, completely legitimate. You have to live near one of their brick and mortar stores to get their best deals. As I do live reasonably close (20 minute drive), my last 2 system upgrades have come from there. And I have built several computers for others using one of their "bundles". This spread over a period of several years.
1) DDR5 - I am not upgrading "just" to get DDR5. That just happens to be a part of the "bundle" at Microcenter. If I were deciding on memory for a new build, I see no reason not to go with DDR5 over DDR4 as the prices have come down considerably, and it is slightly faster. 2) good monitor -- I already have several good monitors. My main rig has a 31.5 inch at 2560x1440, and a 27 inch at the same resolution. My secondary rig has two matching 24 inch monitors, 1920x1200 (hard to find these days). And both rigs have mechanical keyboards. 3) NAS -- my main rig serves as my storage. It runs full time, with a Plex server, and has a 12 TB drive full of entertainment. 4) Girlfriend -- not a suitable subject for this environment And just to reiterate, once again, I am not looking for opinions on how to spend $500. I was simply asking which of the two options people here would choose, and why they would choose one over the other.
Indeed the "opinions" part was not directed at you, but just a a reply to who labeled as opinions my technical suggestions. Again I consider those two options perfect options for someone with a older machine than yours. Both of them are worth depending the budget. BUT In your case, it easier to direct your budget to a newer CPU. You can spend less getting more or less the same power, or you can spend the whole budget in a faster CPU than ones part of the microcenter bundle. I' can't see what's wrong or complicate to understand in that suggestion.
Never judge from the specs alone especially now that Intel complicated the matter with P/E cores. Depending the codec you use a Gen 11 or a recent Ryzen can me hugely faster than both gen 12 and gen 13 CPUs, because the AVX 512 thing
You are obviously not really paying attention. Take the case of the i9-12900k bundle. That cpu, alone, on Amazon goes for $401, and by itself at Microcenter for $399.. Just the cpu. The bundle at Microcenter has that cpu, along with a motherboard which sells separately for $199.99, AND 32 gigs of DDR5. All for only $50 over the cost of the cpu alone. You would have to have rocks in your head to consider buying just the cpu when that deal is available.
Where did you mention before that those bundles were super competitive with the price you can reach for the CPU alone? You asked about a comparison between the two microcenter offers and I replied to *that* question. Having to use the pliers to take out the right question isn't exactly "not paying attention".
PCI is legacy. You would need a PCIe slot. Even then, the add-on cards still require an Intel motherboard. ie, MSI Thunderbolt 4 PCI-E Expansion Card which only supports Intel 500 / 600 / 700 series motherboard...