What Speed RAM Should I Get?

FuryV

Building a new PC and looking to get 16gb DDR4 ram.  My motherboard says "Dual DDR4 3400 (OC) support" if that is of any relevance.

My issue is, I have no idea which speed to pick. I'm on this website right now and it's got loads of different DDR4 speeds on the left, as it shows in this pic...




Got a £50/$73 budget for the RAM.  Which should I pick?

Thanks.

ceratop001

Sent you a private message.

Quizzical

For the most part, you want whatever speed is cheapest.  That's usually but not always 2133 MHz.  If something faster is essentially the same price, then you might as well get faster instead of slower.  But don't pay a substantial premium for it.  I could understand paying $1 for faster memory, but not $10, unless you need to feed integrated graphics from it or are doing something unusual.

FuryV

Having checked the site I'm buying from, the 2133 Mhz is in fact the cheapest, as you say.  Then again, for an extra $7 or so I could get 2666 Mhz.  Upwards from there the price starts to go up dramatically though, but that seemed the sweet spot.  What do you recommend, go with the $7 cheaper 2133 or go for the 2666?

Nightlite

For $7 I really wouldn't fuss anymore than you have.


2133 is the rated memory speed for Intel no matter what the MB says, but Intel is fine with faster and will even warranty it.  2666 will offer maybe a 5% improvement for memory intensive things; like WinRAR, encoding video, and so forth.

tbh, they are probably the same sticks of ram.. all you're paying for is the XMP profile with that $7.

Personally if it is still 1.2v RAM at 2666, that would be my choice.

FuryV

Much appreciated guys, thanks