Does better DDR5 memory improve your gaming PC?

Over the past 25 years we have seen the transition from SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic RAM) to DDR (Double Data Rate) SDRAM, and then to DDR2, DDR3 and DDR4 on a cadence of five year cycles. Currently we are using DDR5 on both AMD and Intel platforms at monumental speeds up to 8,000MT/second at 4,000MHz. That may sound impressive but the obvious question is how much attention we should pay to our RAM rather than, say, our CPU, motherboard, graphics card, SSD or cooling.

To address that question KitGuru has recently had conversations with Dan Ragland of Intel and Martijn Boonstra of AMD about the role that memory plays inside your PC. Once we had listened and learned we lined up a selection of DDR5 kits from Corsair and gave them a run with Intel Core i5-14600K and AMD Ryzen 7 7700X to find out exactly what is going on with the memory inside your PC.

00:00 Introduction
00:51 The Corsair  Memory Kits
02:13 An Educational Crash course
03:39 Dan From Intel speaks to Leo
04:57 Martin from AMD speaks to Leo
06:48 Leo, 5 memory kits and two test systems
08:32 Manufacturers QVL lists – full story?
10:13 MHZ and Mega transfers ?
11:30 EXPO / XMP – or more?
13:22 Leos takes a closer look at the kits
16:26 Performance Test Results
18:17 Gaming Test Results
20:38 Leo’s Closing Thoughts

The Corsair kits are:
Vengeance 32GB DDR5-5200 CL38 XMP
Vengeance RGB White 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 XMP
Dominator Titanium First Edition 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 EXPO
Dominator Platinum RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-7000 CL34 XMP
Vengeance 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6800 CL40 XMP

KitGuru Says: Are you looking to buy a new memory kit? Do any of these appeal to you? Let us know in the comments on Facebook or over on YouTube.

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