The memory market is still unpleasantly expensive

A few optimistic signs have appeared here and there, but the global memory situation is still very much a mess. If you have been delaying a RAM upgrade for a gaming PC, or waiting to start a new build, the uncomfortable choice is the same as before: either hold on until at least next year for prices to settle, or buy now and accept the hit.

To spare you from trawling through a swamp of overpriced memory kits, here are four options that are actually worth a look. Two are DDR4 and two are DDR5, split across 16GB and 32GB capacities.

Quick picks

  • Silicon Power 16GB DDR4-3200 CL16: $124 at Newegg
  • KingBank 32GB DDR4-3200 CL16: $209 at Newegg
  • G.Skill 16GB DDR5-6000 CL30: $230 at Newegg
  • Corsair 32GB DDR5-6000 CL38: just over $321 at Amazon

DDR4: the least painful bargains

Not long ago, neither of these DDR4 dual-channel kits would have looked attractive. That is not because they are poor products. It is because the market used to offer far fancier kits, often with RGB and more polished heatsinks, for far less money.

That is no longer the case, because the memory market has decided to become everyone’s problem.

The brand names may not be the most familiar, but the components under the heatsinks are perfectly decent. Cheap hardware can fail, of course, but expensive hardware can fail too. A DDR5 kit that once sold for well over $700 reportedly came apart after only a few months, which is a useful reminder that price is not the same thing as reliability.

What matters here is simple: if you are buying DDR4 right now, the cheapest sensible kit is usually the right kit.

That means:

  • Silicon Power 16GB DDR4-3200 CL16 for $124 at Newegg
  • KingBank 32GB DDR4-3200 CL16 for $209 at Newegg

The 32GB KingBank kit gives you twice the capacity for only 69% more money. In the current market, that counts as a rare moment of pricing logic.

DDR5: still pricey, but at least usable

DDR5-6000 has been badly overpriced for a while because it is the sweet spot for current AMD and Intel processors, even if Intel is also happy to run with faster memory. The good news is that there is a brief pause in the chaos, which makes this a reasonable moment to buy if you are building a new system.

For a budget AMD Zen 4 or Zen 5 gaming PC, the G.Skill Flare X5 16GB DDR5-6000 CL30 kit makes a lot of sense at $230 at Newegg. One important catch: G.Skill says this kit is not compatible with Intel Core Ultra 100 or 200-series processors, or with Intel 800-series chipsets. That is slightly awkward, to put it mildly.

If you want compatibility that is less likely to produce surprises, a 16GB Team Group DDR5-6000 CL38 kit is available for $240 at Newegg. As always with memory, compatibility does not guarantee it will run at the advertised top speed, but it should at least be a safer bet.

The obvious downside to 16GB is that it is fine for gaming alone, but not ideal if you also want to run content creation tools or keep Discord, browsers, and other background apps open while you play.

That leaves 32GB DDR5, which is where prices get especially silly.

The best option I could find is a Corsair 32GB DDR5-6000 CL38 kit. It is plain-looking and a bit slower on latency than the best kits, but at just over $321 at Amazon, it is still one of the least painful 32GB choices available.

If you want 32GB of DDR5-6000 CL30, expect to pay $390 or more. At that point, the premium is hard to justify for a spec that will not make a dramatic difference to game performance.

Bottom line

If you need DDR4, buy the cheapest reputable kit that meets your capacity target. If you need DDR5, 16GB is the easier bargain, but 32GB remains the better long-term pick if your budget can survive it. The market is still being dramatic, and memory prices are doing their best impression of a bad joke.