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Despite some recent glimmers of hope, the raging storm that is the global memory crisis continues unabated. If you've been putting off upgrading the memory in your gaming PC or putting together a whole new build, you'll either have to wait until at least next year for DRAM prices to drop to their original levels or just bite the bullet and dive right in.
To help save you time hunting through the sea of overpriced memory kits out there, I've hunted down four sets that I would genuinely use in my own gaming PCs and test rigs. Two apiece of DDR4 and DDR5, covering 16 and 32 GB in capacity.
Quick links
- Silicon Power 16 GB DDR4-3200 CL16 - $124 @ Newegg
- KingBank 32 GB DDR4-3200 CL16 - $209 @ Newegg
- G.Skill 16 GB DDR5-6000 CL30 - $230 @ Newegg
- Corsair 32 GB DDR5-6000 CL38 - $321 @ Amazon
DDR4 dual channel kit deals
It wasn't that long ago when neither of these DDR4 dual-channel memory kits would have been a tempting purchase. Not because they're bad products, but simply because you could get a set of all-singing, all-dancing, all-RGB stuff for way less than this. Not any more, of course.
You might not recognise either of these brand names, but the components underneath the heatspreaders are perfectly fine. Cheap products might have a tendency to fall apart after a while, but I've had a very expensive DDR5 kit (one that currently retails at well over $700 now) come apart after a few months, so the price tag alone is no indicator of quality.
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What sets these two DDR4 kits apart from the rest is obvious: their price tags. You're not really going to get anything faster if you spend more, just RGB lighting and a nicer-looking heatspreader, so while everything is all horrible in the memory market, just go for the cheapest kits you can find.
In other words, these two. The Silicon Power set is just $124 at Newegg, and the 32 GB KingBank set is $209 at Newegg. With the latter, you're getting 100% more memory capacity than the former, but for only 69% more money.
DDR5 dual channel kit deals
For a little while, DDR5-6000 was horribly over-priced, because it's the ideal speed for today's AMD and Intel CPUs (though the latter happily runs on much faster DRAM). However, while there's a brief lull, now might be a good time to get a set of decent DDR5 for a new build.
If you're planning to put together a budget-level AMD Zen 4 or Zen 5 gaming PC, the G.Skill Flare X5 is ideal, as it's 'only' $230 at Newegg. It's important to note that G.Skill says the kit is not compatible with Intel Core Ultra 100 or 200-series processors, or Intel 800-series chipsets, which is a little odd, for sure.
For guaranteed compatibility (though not necessarily guaranteed to run at its rated top speed, as with all memory kits), grab a 16 GB Team Group DDR5-6000 CL38 set for $240 at Newegg.
The only problem with getting 16 GB is that while it is okay for doing nothing but gaming, you will need more if you use your PC for content creation or just multitasking with Discord, browsers, and whatnot, while gaming.
Unfortunately, all 32 GB DDR5 kits sport silly prices at the moment, and the best kit I could find is a set from Corsair. It's very plain-looking, and the CAS latency is a fraction on the slow side, but at least it's only a dollar and a bit over $320 at Amazon.
If you want a 32 GB kit of DDR5-6000 CL30, you're looking at spending $390 or more, and it's just not worth spending that amount of money for a specification that won't make a huge difference to how well your games will run.
👉Check out all of Newegg's desktop memory deals here👈👉You can find all of Amazon's DRAM deals right here👈
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