Does DDR4 CL14 beat DDR5 CL28 for Factorio?

Yes, DDR4’s tighter CL14 has lower absolute latency than DDR5’s CL28, so for CPU-bound games like Factorio, DDR4 is still the latency king. A DDR4-3600 CL14 kit has a true latency of about 7.8 ns, while a DDR5-6000 CL28 kit comes in at roughly 9.3 ns — that’s 20% worse. Factorio’s simulation loop is all about waiting on memory, so bandwidth doesn’t help, latency does. If you’re building strictly for Factorio, DDR4 is the smarter choice.