I expected this to be an article from Glenn Berry. He often tries to convince me to upgrade. I think so he can justify buying his own new hardware.

In this case, however, this is a note from Tom's Hardware that it's a great time to upgrade your CPU. The article is a few weeks old, referencing Cyber Monday deals, and it notes that CPU sales are at a 30-year low. This means there's a lot of supply and retailers are trying to clear out stock.

I don't know how many of you find your CPU slow, or if you have access to change the CPU (often you can't in a laptop). If you have a desktop, then you might not have a motherboard that supports the latest CPUs. Glenn would say upgrade your motherboard, but as I've seen in the past, this sometimes means memory upgrades as well.

Many of us work with server machines, but we aren't responsible for the hardware. We often can't even request different hardware. Glenn has written about which CPUs work for SQL Server, though not for a few years. Maybe this piece will get him to update that article.

SQL Server 2022 is the latest version, and the price as increased. The performance per core is more important than ever, so choosing the best CPU could have a big impact on the ROI of your database server. Even if you use the cloud, often there are choices in hardware, and expressing your reasoning for one over the other to the groups responsible for infrastructure can help ensure your organization gets the most performance for their billing.

And if you're the person specifying hardware, you definitely ought to understand the differences between the CPU choices and make the best choice for your budget.