🛑STOP🛑 Buying Bad RAM! Best Ram for PC Gaming 2022 | DDR4 vs DDR5 Gaming

stop making these ram mistakes let's get you the best ram for gaming 2022. hi welcome back to pc builder i'm jason now probably the single most confusing part of building a pc or upgrading one is the ram ram is complicated and because it's not as cool as the graphics card or cpu people don't take the time to get a basic understanding of it but there's nothing worse than spending all your money on a gpu and cpu then losing a massive amount of fps by making basic ram mistakes so we're going to tell you what you need to know to buy the best ram for gaming in 2022 including specific product recommendations for ryzen and intel systems if you get value out of the video give it a like it makes a huge difference to the channel subscribe and click that bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content let's start off with the basics where i see a lot of ram mistakes now ram is the memory used by your system to do everything right now this is different from storage like ssds which store your data long term the modern implementation of ram is double data rate or ddr memory meaning we transfer information two times during each clock cycle here's where so many get it wrong the speed of the ram is not in megahertz but in mega transfers so even though you buy 3200 speed ram it runs at a clock speed of 1600 megahertz which we then multiply by 2 because it transfers data twice per clock cycle and we get the 3200 mega transfer speed of the memory now you'll hear people mistakenly refer to memory speed in megahertz so often that i don't even bother to correct it anymore but here's where it is important when you're looking at diagnostic software or in the bios a lot of people will see their 3200 speed memory kit running at 1 600 megahertz and thinks something's wrong when in fact it's running correctly because it's double data rate so hopefully that saves you frustration trying to troubleshoot something that isn't broken so that's how ram speed works but what about that other number after the speed the cast latency cast latency often abbreviated as cl or c followed by a number is the number of clock cycles it takes to get the requested data from the ram now the smaller the cast latency means that data can be retrieved in fewer clock cycles which is good so generally when you're looking at ram kits higher speed is better and lower cast latency is also better but just know that the faster the speed of the memory often the looser the timings or higher the cast latency has to be in order to make the kit work the most commercially available ddr4 kits are 3200 cl 16 3600 speed either cl 16 or cl18 and 4 000 speed memory at either cl 16 or cl 18. now note there are many other timings associated with ram but i just recommend you ignore them unless you're planning to manually overclock your memory speaking of overclocking every ram kit you see is designed to be overclocked automatically using a manufacturer specified profile called xmp and that's short for extreme memory profile now here's where it can get a little confusing so pay very close attention because xmp was developed by intel and amd motherboard vendors didn't want to pay intel royalties to use xmp on amd motherboards they came up with their own ways of utilizing it called docp or eocp just know that for practical purposes if you see docp or eocp in your motherboard bios it's essentially the same thing as xmp so jason you said that the memory automatically overclocks do i just need to plug it in and i'm good to go well that would be really nice wouldn't it but no you absolutely need to go into the bios for your motherboard and activate the xmp profile now this is done most easily on the easy bios settings available on most motherboards you can typically do it in one click right there just know that if you don't do this your memory is going to run at its regular speed which is very very slow until you enable xmp quick note if you're looking to upgrade the memory on a prebooked gaming pc that uses proprietary or non-standard parts from a company like dell for instance the bios of many of those proprietary systems does not support xmp or any form of automatic overclocking profiles which heavily limits compatibility so if you do own one of those oem pre-built systems that doesn't use off-the-shelf parts you should check your motherboard and bios manual before buying ram so now we understand how ram works and how to avoid major mistakes let's talk about how to buy the best ram for gaming 2022 now first off you want to make sure to buy your memory in a kit of either two or four sticks this is going to ensure that you're using two sticks per channel or what's called dual channel using a single stick of ram can limit your fps by up to 20 percent and it greatly reduces 1 fps lows due to higher system latency one quick note here is that technically a stick of desktop pc ram is called a dim or dimm but i'm just gonna keep calling them sticks for simplicity as this video is just about desktop memory second let's talk about ddr4 versus ddr5 now as we recall ddr simply stands for double data rate memory and the number afterwards refers to the generation so ddr4 is the fourth generation of double data rate memory and ddr5 is the fifth generation of double data rate memory now ddr5 is very new and at the time of filming only 12th gen intel cpus can use it and only if they buy a motherboard specifically designed to run with ddr5 everything else currently on the market that's ryzen 5000 4000 3000 as well 10th and 11th generation intel cpus uses ddr4 memory 12g intel cpus also use ddr4 as long as you can make sure to purchase with a board that works with it ryzen 7000 cpus launching in the fall will be ddr5 only now because ddr5 is so new it's super high priced and while intel's 12th generation cpus can use it as usual with a new technology it actually doesn't perform as well in gaming as the more mature and much cheaper ddr4 memory so until ryzen 7000 or intel 13th generation cpus come out with a better memory controller for ddr5 you can just ignore ddr5 and focus on ddr4 okay so we know we want ddr4 at higher speeds and lower latency so we should just go out and buy the fastest memory kit we can get right actually that's wrong i know it's confusing right but there's two reasons why the first is price to performance because faster memory it costs more money but is it worth the price increase or should you spend that money upgrading something else in reviewing many third-party gaming tests and conducting several myself detailed in other videos the answer is that with the current generation of gpus the rtx 3000 series and the radeon rx 6000 series we only see differences of about five to seven percent fps in games when using an rtx 3080 or faster gpu and gaming at 1080p mostly in competitive shooters for the vast majority of gamers at 1080p using a mid tier or below gpu or gamers playing at 1440p or higher resolution where the gpu is the bottleneck not the cpu we do not see a gaming performance increase after 3200 cl 16 memory but we're nearing the introduction of the next generation of gpus which are reported to be 80 to 120 percent faster so it is possible faster memory will have benefits in the near future if you're planning on buying one of the next gen gpus secondly there is an upper speed limit to running memory as well in both amd and intel systems we want to run the memory controller at the same speed as the memory itself now that's called running one-to-one or running synchronously while in theory amd's controller can run up to 2000 megahertz so with ddr4 memory that's 4 000 mega transfer speed memory sometimes it can struggle to hit that speed similarly we want to run in what intel calls gear one which is the one to one speed with the memory controller but intel systems can also struggle to run memory in gear 1 using xmp profiles that are faster than 3600 speed so for less experienced users i'd suggest 3600 speed as the top end with 4 000 speed fine for more advanced users who don't mind troubleshooting compatibility issues so how much memory do you need for gaming well the great news here is that 16 gigabytes in a 2x8 gigabyte kit is really all you need for gaming if you want to have a lot of other tabs and other things running while you're gaming you might consider 32 gigabytes but just know that all that other stuff you have open while gaming is taking cpu and possibly graphics card resources away from your game not just system memory so i recommend playing the game with non-essential applications closed and that's why 16 gigabytes of ram remains my recommendation here for gaming focus builds if you also do professional level creator work like video editing 32 gigabytes is typically the minimum i recommend but you should check the system recommendations for the programs you use as they vary widely there's one more technical factor to consider which is whether or not the memory you get is dual rank not to be confused with dual channel which is just having an even number of sticks dual rank has to do with the memory chips on the stick itself now single rank memory accesses all the chips on the stick simultaneously hence the name single rank dual rank memory sticks essentially have two banks of memory that can be accessed separately which slightly improves performance about three to five percent possibly more depending on the application or gain now if you want a deeper dive on how this works i'll leave a link to an igor's lab article on it in the video description below so how do you get dual rank well either you buy a two stick kit that's designed to be dual rank or you get four sticks of single rank memory which acts like dual rank kits since almost all eight gigabyte six are single rank that means you can only get dual rank sticks if getting sticks that are at least 16 gigabytes in size or larger so then at a minimum you have a total system ram of 32 gigabytes or more and just to make things extra confusing while most 16 gigabytes 6 used to come dual rank due to the silicon shortage many of the memory vendors started making them single rank so it's almost impossible to tell which 16 gigabyte sticks will come dual rank as sometimes even two kits with the same model number ordered at different times will come with different ranks so to ensure you get it you should get four sticks of eight gigabytes for 32 gigabytes total you can either order a four by eight gigabyte kit or by buying two of the same two by eight gigabyte kits at the same time just know that using four sticks of memory instead of two is a little harder on the memory controller so there is a chance of this reducing compatibility the faster the memory is in my opinion just for gaming it's not worth chasing dual rank as it requires you to buy 32 gigabytes of total memory instead of just the needed 16 gigabytes that is money that is better spent on a faster gpu cpu better motherboard quieter cooler more ssd storage for your games or better ventilated pc case all of which will likely net you more performance or enjoyability quick intel reminder because they make memories so complicated if you're using a 10th or 11th generation intel cpu you will need a b560 or z series motherboard to overclock those or set xmp profiles above the slower speeds that they've set or if you're using 12th gen just know that the h610 motherboards will not allow you to apply xmp profiles above 3200 speed so choose your motherboard carefully let's jump into some specific product recommendations and we'll start at the low end and work our way up remember links for everything is going to be down in the video description there'll be links to amazon newegg and others uh check the pricing sometimes memory prices change and it might make sense for you to spend a little bit more if it's only a couple bucks but starting at the lower end for those of you who are playing 1080p primarily using a mid-tier gpu from this generation or lower and you don't plan to get a nice shiny gpu when they launch in the fall that's the rtx 4000 series or the rtx 7000 series at the high end remember the high end then absolutely 3200 cl 16 is all you need and 16 gigabytes is all you need in a 2x8 gigabyte kit now we have found that 3200 is about the floor you don't really want to go any slower so you don't really want to shave off another dollar too by going 3000 speed memory and these silicon power kits for about fifty dollars i found are really really beneficial again links to these are gonna be down in the video description check them out if you're looking for something with rgb for only ten bucks more you can get a really nice rgb kit we use this in our i5 12 400 build video we also use this in our 5600 g build video this kit looks really really nice but you can typically pick up the argb kits for about 10 more so you're looking to spend about 60 to 65 dollars here if you do want to jump up in memory speed maybe you want to future proof a little bit when you get a new gpu maybe in the fall if you're just planning to get one of the faster ones or if you've got a faster gpu at the higher end right now and you're playing in 1080p you're looking to push a lot of frames i would recommend for a no-fuss solution with no real compatibility issues you go for 3600 cl 16 memory i'd skip right over 3600 cl-18 it's about the same speed as the 3200 cl 16 memory kits so just jump all the way up if you're going to spend an extra 30 or 40 bucks go ahead and get the good stuff 3600 cl16 rip jaw's got a nice kit here you can find them right now for about 80 the the price of this memory does fluctuate quite a bit more than the 3200 cl 16 stuff just uh less of it out there i think but overall 80 bucks not a bad price for it for 16 gigabytes if you're looking for something with rgb on it for about a hundred dollars ninety five ninety six dollars we got the corsair vengeance rgb nice kit again i'll leave links to several kits down in the video description below that you can check out while we're here i do want to address a kind of kit of memory that i get questions about all the time which is 3200 cl 14 and people like well that's what all the testers use they use 3200 co 14. there's some very specific reasons that i'm not going to get into right now that testers use that primarily compatibility just works with everything so the problem with the 3200 cl-14 memory kits is i know everyone's so excited about them they don't really perform any differently than 3600 cl 16 kits and they cost a whole lot more because they're kind of rare they're they're basically a rare tuning so here's one for 130 this is about what you're going to pay for 16 gigabytes now look it's a nice rgb g skill kit but it's 30 bucks more than the kit we just looked at that's going to run just as fast at 3600 cl 16. so i'm not sure why you would get this but what if you absolutely want all the maximum performance to the point of total overkill maybe you've got a 6950xt maybe you're gonna go out and buy an rtx 4090 when they release and you just want to get your system ready right now well yes you can go out and you can buy a kit like a ddr4 4000 cl 16 kit and i would go cl16 yes there is cl 18 memory out there for a little bit cheaper but you're already past the point of uh you know diminishing returns why not just spend a couple extra bucks more and get the good stuff right so for about 130 to 140 150 ish you can typically find a non-rgb kit two by 16 gigabytes now if you're also committed to getting dual rank i would buy two of these kits and buy them at the same time and it's more than likely you're going to get two kits manufactured at the same time the serial numbers are usually like one or two away from each other when you get them that's to me the best way to guarantee it you can buy kits that are like four by eight gigabytes that are specifically packaged as such but they cost so much more money sometimes twice as much as simply buying two kits similar to the other kits if you are looking for rgb with that as well you can typically find it for about 20 25 more a g skill offers a number of these kits you often see them from corsair other typical brands out there and just remember if you are having problems with compatibility in this memory especially when you have four sticks you're really pushing that memory controller hard you may need to back off on the speed a little bit 3800 might be a good manual timing if you know how to do that or even loosening up the cast latency to something like 4000 cl 18. however now we're getting into manual tuning which this video is not about but just some potential guidance out there if you do run into some issues trying to push this super fast memory mr bear kitty remember if you get value of the video give it a like it makes a huge difference especially this guy right here and of course subscribe and click that bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content one of the coolest content out there of course is what's the best graphics card for gaming what's the best gpu for gaming we're gonna put up the video right here we go through everything you need to know to buy the best gpu for gaming in 2022 and we'll catch you on the next one

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Id: duFlFgDDXW0

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2022