Dear reader, I have a confession: I still haven't played 2016 Doom. That's not due to any matter of taste, or particularly strongly held conviction—there are just not enough hours in the day to get to every game in my Steam library. However, Doom: The Dark Ages' dark fantasy twist has definitely bumped it up the list. And now that I've just stumbled on a devilishly good deal for 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, I now have even less excuse not to rip into it.
As you may already be aware, Doom: The Dark Ages system requirements call for 16 GB of RAM at minimum, and 32 GB to run at Ultra 4K settings. If you're hankering to don the Doomslayer's mantle once more on May 15, it may be time for an upgrade. Thankfully, B&H Photo is offering two sticks of Silicon Power's 16 GB XPower Zenith DDR5 RAM for just $83.
A total of 32 GB of DDR5 RAM for comfortably under $100 is a cracking deal. What's great about this particular pick of sticks is that Silicon Power's RAM offers 6000 MT/s on a silver platter; supports both Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO profiles, you can squeeze even greater speed out of your RAM just by selecting the corresponding profile in your motherboard's BIOS, though it's largely designed to land in the sweet spot for AMD Ryzen chips. The CAS latency of 30 will also be great for a Ryzen chip. You can read more about what XMP and EXPO profiles are in Jacob's explainer.
Besides dissipating heat through the fetching white finish of its aluminium heat sink, the relatively low voltage (between 1.25 and 1.35 V) and its power management integrated circuit also keep temps low—which is just as well because you do not want to see me turn the Doomslayer's helm into a bucket full of sweat.
Doom: The Dark Ages is far from the only release really recommending an awful lot of RAM for the best experience. Mafia: The Old Country, which has just set its sights on an August 8 release date, also recommends a full whack of 32 GB. Looking at all of 2025's upcoming games, I doubt it will be the last either.
That said, even if you upgrade your RAM, you may still be out of luck if you've held on to an older GPU. Mafia: The Old Country requires either the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT or the Nvidia RTX 2070 at least to meet its minimum system requirements.
Even the minimum spec for Doom: The Dark Ages requires a graphics card with ray tracing capability; with either a Nvidia RTX 2060 Super, an AMD RX 6600, or an even better graphics card, you'll be off to the races on the back of Doom's cyberdragon. Though release day is still a ways out, you can read Morgan's Doom: The Dark Ages review in the meantime.
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