I'm thinking of building an AMD dev box. For enterprise consumers, if they're using 1U or blade servers, they could make the choice to switch to AMD for future nodes.
I strongly recommend that you go AMD. I went all-in on AMD - I agonized over the choice between 8-core Ryzen and 8-core ThreadRipper: ended up with a 12-core TR thanks to steep holiday-season discounts that lowered prices one rung down. TR4-socket motherboards a way more expensive compared to Ryzen ones (same-old AM4 socket).
I know my box is overkill for my needs now, but upgradeability is a big plus for me; I'm only using 16GB of RAM, but could up that to 128GB, and maybe I might swap out the CPU for a 64-core Zen4+ in 2022. For reference, my last dev box is from 2010[1](!) which I upgraded over time and this strategy has served me well. YMMV.
Linux or Windows? I've been doing dev on a large React app recently and the thought of running npm install on Windows makes me anxious about the performance vs my Mac - wondering if Windows has gotten better of late with lots of tiny file I/O.
I know my box is overkill for my needs now, but upgradeability is a big plus for me; I'm only using 16GB of RAM, but could up that to 128GB, and maybe I might swap out the CPU for a 64-core Zen4+ in 2022. For reference, my last dev box is from 2010[1](!) which I upgraded over time and this strategy has served me well. YMMV.
1. Westmere - 1st Gen 'Intel Core'