Looking to upgrade your PC, but not sure if now is the right time? 2025 is set to be an exciting year to upgrade your PC thanks to new PC components and technologies on the horizon.
With new innovations such as DDR6 and Nvidia’s 50 Series GPUs, 2025 is the year to invest in your gaming PC and take your games to a whole new level.
It’s not just new PC hardware that makes 2025 a great year to upgrade your PC, as is the case after any new hardware is released, we can expect current-gen hardware prices to fall, making it the perfect time to upgrade even if you’re looking to upgrade on a budget this year.
DDR6: A leap in RAM technology
DDR6 RAM is one of the most exciting PC component upgrades coming in 2025. With speeds of up to 17,000 MT/s, which is more than double that of DDR5, it’s the perfect time to upgrade your PC.
The increased bandwidth of DDR6 RAM ensures faster multitasking, as well as seamless handling of resource-heavy applications. Whether you’re gaming, editing videos, or even running AI workloads, DDR6 will help keep your system responsive, even when under pressure.
As well as improving speed, DDR6 also boasts improved power efficiency and advanced error correction, making it much more eco-friendly, costing less to run, while also being more reliable.
Gamers should notice a reduction in latency with DDR6, as well as faster frame rendering, while professionals will appreciate the faster data processing, leading to improved productivity.
If you’re looking to make your PC future-proof for increasingly demanding software, waiting for the release of DDR6 is one of the best ways. However, if you’re not bothered about having the best gaming PC around, you could simply take advantage of DDR6’s release to pick up some DDR5 RAM at a bargain price.
DDR6 is expected to drop at the end of 2025 at the earliest, so you need to consider if it really is worth the wait, or if you need to upgrade your PC sooner. You will also need to take into account that you will need to purchase a DDR6 compatible motherboard too.
It’s also worth noting, historically, new RAM has been priced higher at the start of its production cycle, which is considered an early adopters fee, however, once it becomes more mainstream the prices should start to drop down.
New competition in the CPU market?
2025 is shaping up to be one of the most exciting years for CPUs in recent times. With Intel’s rather disappointing Arrow Lake launch this year, you might be hoping for a new Intel CPU in 2025. Sadly, that wont be the case, while Arrow Lake is set for a performance boost from Intel soon, the next generation of Intel desktop processors will be Nova Lake, which is expected to drop as late as 2026 or even 2027.
AMD on the other hand has been much more impressive than Intel as of late. With their Zen 5 architecture, built on a refined 3nm process, the Ryzen 9000 series offers impressive multi-core processing for gaming and work alike. Just like Intel, we don’t expect to see Zen 6 coming anytime soon, with it currently being slated for release in late 2026 to early 2027.
OK, so far not so great for 2025, right? Wrong, as this is where Nvidia steps in and says hold my beer, as rumors start to emerge that Nvidia are currently working on an Arm-based processor for PCs. While anything Nvidia cooks up isn’t likely to be announced until 2025, and hit the shelves beyond 2025, it might be the kick in the rear needed to get Intel back on track, and both duopoly competitors Intel and AMD lowering their prices to compete.
The Nvidia 5000 series will push gaming boundaries
Another exciting hardware release set to drop in 2025 is the upcoming Nvidia 5000 series. While there’s not been any official specs released yet for the 5000 series, one leaker on X, OneRaichu, has predicted an incredible 60% to 70% gen-on-gen uplift for the RTX 5090 vs the RTX 4090. Although, his predictions suggest a far more modest uplift for the mid-range cards in the upcoming series.
Although the top-end of the Blackwell lineup is expected to offer huge gains, it’s also expected that with a monstrous uplift, potential buyers can also expect equally as monstrous price tags. But, if you’ve got the cash, and you want to future-proof your gaming PC, waiting for the latest GPU to drop is always the way to go.
With CES 2025 only a few short weeks away, chances are we won’t have to wait long for Nvidia to drop some announcements on us. If you’re eager to see what the Nvidia RTX 5000 series is capable of, take a look at the new Witcher 4 trailer, which was captured on an unannounced RTX GPU, which most likely would be the RTX 5090.
Wi-Fi 7: super-speed connectivity goes mainstream
While Wi-Fi 7 was officially released back in January 8, 2024, it has taken some time for manufacturers to include the new Wi-Fi standard in their motherboards. As it stands, there are only a couple of good motherboard options with Wi-Fi 7 built-in.
As motherboards refresh to allow for next-gen hardware, we can expect to start seeing more on the market with Wi-Fi 7 included, although, to make the most of it you will need a Wi-Fi 7 router, such as the Netgear Nighthawk RS200.
Wi-Fi 7 offers a truly next-gen upgrade with impressive new features such as its theoretical speeds of up to 46 Gbps, ability to support more simultaneous connections, improvements to latency, and reduced power consumption.
It also features Multi-Link Operation (MLO) which combines frequency bands together into a single connection. Not only does this improve throughput and latency, but it also makes it much more reliable than its predecessor, Wi-Fi 6E.
MLO also helps combat congestion, helping to offer lag-free online experiences, even in crowded environments, making it an ideal PC upgrade for anyone in a busy household, or on a shared connection.
2025 is shaping up to be a great year to finally upgrade, with much more to come
2025 is lining up to be an incredible year for PC components. Whether that be new releases or announcements, there’s a lot to look forward to for PC building enthusiasts. With groundbreaking technologies like DDR6, RISC-V processors, Nvidia 50 Series GPUs, and Wi-Fi 7 making waves, 2025 is looking to set new benchmarks in performance.
Efficiency seems to be a theme in 2025 too, with DDR6, RISC-V, and Wi-Fi 7 all looking to make improvements to power efficiency, at least you might not need to worry about buying a new PSU to accommodate your PC upgrade (unless you go for the rumored 600W RTX 5090, but you probably already know what to expect).
Of course, with CES just around the corner, there’s still time for more surprise announcements and hardware releases, and hopefully some concrete dates for the hardware we already know about.