Most of the information in the comment here is outdated or wrong.
You do can use host=localhost to connect via socket, which is faster than TCP, so setting 127.0.0.1 is a performance loss.
To use proper utf you should use utf8mb4, for example:
$db = new PDO('mysql:host=' . DATABASE_HOST . ';dbname='. DATABASE_NAME .';charset=utf8mb4', DATABASE_USER, DATABASE_PASSWORD);