> These days, at most performance tiers, Intel+mobo combo are slightly cheaper than AMD's equivalent.

> Of course, Intel's CPUs have [...] lessor upgrade path

One big + for AMD is their socket system, and keeping it the same for multiple generations via a roadmap so people can plan. Contrast that with intel, who comes up with a new socket every generation forcing you to buy a new motherboard and likely new ram if you want to upgrade. AMD's Socket AM4 was released in 2016 and works with Zen+, Zen 2, Zen 3 and Excavator microarchitectures. If you upgraded every 2 years, that's 3 motherboards and memory sets you would have had to purchase if you went with Intel vs a single motherboard/memory and upgrading only the cpu with AMD. That's quite a premium.