Fortunately, Intel's Alder Lake platform supports DDR4 memory, but all Alder Lake-compatible motherboards are designed with a specific memory format in mind: either DDR4 or DDR5. This means that if you buy a DDR5 motherboard, its availability will be limited, making it difficult to find many RAM modules.
Most people are recommending DDR4 and DDR4 compatible motherboards to Alder Lake users as more cost effective solutions. While DDR5 offers higher bandwidth and higher performance with high-end DIMMs, its price tag is too high to be considered a good value by most consumers. Asus wants to help alleviate this problem of choosing a board with DDR5 or DDR4 using a converter card.
Get a DDR5 board now, which asus will allow you to use your DDR4
ASUS has been confirmed to be working on an adapter that allows the use of DDR4 memory modules with DDR5 Alder Lake motherboards. A user named BING, who could be an ASUS / ROG employee, has shown an adapter card that allows DDR4 memory to be used with ASUS 'ROG Z690 APEX motherboard. Since Alder Lake has a DDR4 memory controller and a DDR5 memory controller, Intel's 12th generation processors are capable of supporting both memory standards. So DDR4 memory can be supported by Alder Lake if connected properly.
The problems that the boards present are the pins and the power management circuit that can power the connected DDR4 memory modules. This makes the converter complex and can simply be something internal to the company without necessarily being a product open to the public.
This converter card would allow investment in the DDR5 ecosystem while maintaining DDR4 compatibility. So PC makers can buy DDR5 memory modules when they are more profitable, and more advanced in the future. Although it would be a product with a short useful life, since AMD is expected to abandon support for DRR4 with its future CPUs, and it is to be confirmed whether or not the future generation of Intel processors, known as Raptor Lake, will do the same.
Source: Overclok3d
