Extremely high-speed DDR5 memory is becoming eminently more affordable, with this DDR5-7000 kit costing just $125 for 32GB at Amazon US. That’s an awesome deal, especially for a RAM kit with RGB lighting addressable via Corsair’s popular iCUE software.
DDR5 RAM’s advantage is that it allows for significantly higher transfer rates, but the base level JEDEC spec of 4800MT/s CL42 is far from ideal compared to affordable DDR4-3200 CL32. However, we’re starting to see RAM kits available for reasonable prices with considerably faster transfer speeds and tighter timings. Case in point is this Corsair 32GB kit, which is able to hit a mighty 7000MT/s at CL34 timings – super impressive stuff.
In my DDR5 vs DDR4 testing for Eurogamer and Digital Foundry, I found that there was a significant performance gulf between DDR4-3200 and DDR5-6000 – up to 35% in games like Ashes of the Singularity at 1080p, while later CPU testing I ‘ve noticed games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Flight Simulator 2020 also exhibited noticeable differences from 4800MT/s to 6000MT/s. DDR5-7000 RAM ought to continue that trend, and I’m looking forward to testing that out myself in the future.
For now, it’s worth noting that this RAM kit is “Intel Optimized”, as Intel’s 12th-gen and 13th-gen CPUs are bit better equipped to handle RAM speeds above 6000MT/s. Not all 12th-gen CPUs will be able to hit the full 7000MT/s spec, but 13th-gen processors should be able to do so consistently. Thankfully, Amazon’s return policy is quite generous if you do find the RAM unstable at this extremely high frequency.
I think that’s just about what it does, so thanks for joining me and stay tuned for more deals next week! Until then, farewell.