MEMORY BUYER’S GUIDE

Chris Szewczyk takes a look at a range of DDR4-3200 memory kits and breaks down the things to look out for when shopping for a new kit.

Chris Szewczyk takes a look at a range of DDR4-3200 memory kits and breaks down the things to look out for when shopping for a new kit

“Whether you go for 32GB depends on your usage habits. 32GB is cheaper than ever and we aren’t far away from 32GB offering a better dollar per GB ratio”.

When you’re building a new PC, sometimes the memory can be almost an afterthought. Many buyers don’t look beyond three key parameters: capacity, speed and price. These are obviously important, but there’s more to it than that. Read on as we take a deeper look at some of the things you need to keep in mind when purchasing that shiny new kit of RAM. We’ve also got a roundup of kits from the biggest names in the market.

HOW MUCH RAM DO YOU REALLY NEED?

This is an age old question frequently found on tech forums. As DRAM prices continue to fall in 2019, 16GB is becoming the standard amount being equipped in new systems. Laptops or lower end systems will be fine with 8GB for the most part if you’re not doing anything too demanding. If you’re using your PC for everyday tasks and gaming, 16GB is fine, but if you’re one to have browser open with lots of tabs, productivity apps etc, and game all at the same time, and alt-tab between them, then you might want to consider moving up to 32GB. Taking it a step further, if you’re using professional apps or running virtual machines, then 16GB is probably going to be a genuine limitation.

Note that the 32GB kits we tested here have twice the number of memory chips as the 16GB kits (dual sided vs single sided) and this can lead to some performance gains as you can see on the benchmarks page.

Whether you go for 32GB depends on your usage habits. 32GB is cheaper than ever and we aren’t far away from 32GB offering a better dollar per GB ratio. Some applications will love it, but for the regular desktop user, it remains overkill.

SPEED AND TIMINGS:

WHAT EFFECT ON PERFORMANCE?

The primary performance metric after a memory kit’s speed is its CAS latency or CL. CL ratings are something of a misnomer as many consumers assume that a kit with a speed and CL of DDR4-3200 C16 is the same speed as a kit that’s DDR3-1600 C8. While it’s true that effective CAS latency remains the same between the two kits, it’s just one timing and any latency losses that occur are offset by the overall increase in speed.

As you can see on the benchmarks

page, we ran a series of tests at different speeds to represent what is considered generic (DDR4-2400 C15), to high performance (DDR4-3200 C14) and overclocked (DDR4-4000 C16) memory. When compared to our reviewed kits, some interesting results become apparent. Synthetic results including latency and raw bandwidth steadily improve, but the improvements in the benchmarks that show gains with memory bandwidth start to show diminished returns at higher speeds. The X.264 and gaming results in particular show decent gains when moving from DDR4-2400 to 3200, but significantly smaller gains when moving from 3200MHz to 4000MHz.

The results show that an affordable DDR4-3200 kit is currently the sweet spot for value and performance. You’ll gain a decent chunk of performance over a generic DDR4 kit without spending a whole lot more. The high performance and overclocking kits at DDR4-4000+ are usually a lot more expensive, while not providing a lot in the way of performance gain. They’re useful only for point chasing competitive overclockers or those who really want the best without compromise.

XMP

XMP stands for Extreme Memory Profile. It was developed by Intel to simplify the way to set the speeds and timings of a memory kit without having set everything manually. Most AMD motherboards also support XMP, but some also support AMD’s AMP. It’s essentially the same thing. XMP tends to work very well, but once you get into the higher speed tiers, it can be problematic. AMD’s Ryzen 1st and 2nd gen struggled with high RAM speeds, and Intel CPUs can also get finicky at high speeds. If you’re looking to buy a very high speed kit, be prepared to do some manual tweaking in order to have it run properly. Some high speed XMP kits may simply be beyond the capabilities of your CPU’s memory controller.

RGB IS EVERYWHERE

RAM manufacturers have extensive ranges of RGB equipped kits. A couple of years ago we’d have said that users seeking value or performance should stay away from RGB RAM. This is because RGB kits tended to be significantly more expensive. The gap is closing though.

The second reason is that RGB lighting tends to add electrical interference to sensitive RAM modules. You almost never saw high speed kits equipped with RGB for this reason. That’s all changing now with most manufacturers comfortable with offering high end RGB RAM.

So if you want to bling up your system, you can combine looks and performance for not much more that the cost of the equivalent non-RGB kit.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

As you can see from looking at our benchmark results, DDR4-3200 is the best choice right now. It offers the best combination of performance and value. The cost of RAM is continuing to fall and compared to where we were a year ago, 2x8GB of good quality DDR4-3200 is an absolute bargain. At 3200 MHz, performance is well ahead of generic RAM, but doesn’t lose out much to high speed enthusiast and overclocking kits.

RGB memory is a subjective topic. Do you want to show off your high performance PC or put it under the desk out of sight and out of mind? The choice is yours. Will we look back in 20 years with nostalgia? Or will we be cringing?

Whether you want to look at your RAM or not, prices are continuing to fall. It’s as good a time as any to upgrade your PC with 16GB or more of memory. If you’re coming from 8GB, you can look forward to more responsiveness, fewer page file accesses and the ability to multi task much more. If you’re building a new PC, then 16GB at DDR4-3200 is where you’ll want to be. Paying more for faster RAM means diminishing performance returns, while going for cheaper RAM will bottleneck your system. Just a few extra dollars over something like 2666MHz RAM will be well worth it.

“RGB memory is a subjective topic. Do you want to show off your high

performance PC or put it under the desk out of sight and out of mind?”