The End of the DDR3 Era

DDR4 RAMI cannot claim that DDR3 was my first RAM-love; DDR2 has that honour. Or shame, if you prefer. But DDR3 has a special place in my heart, for it was the only RAM that was available when I built my PC. It was also the only RAM available when Orion and I built our office. For about a decade, it was the only RAM for normal users.

The Beginning of the End

With the launch of Skylake, mainstream adoption of DDR4 started. With Ryzen, DDR3 was mostly dropped, staying on our list only for the cheapest tiers with the cheapest APUs. A few months ago, these CPUs started becoming more difficult to find on sale. Very recently, they were not available for purchase on any major retailer.

And so it is, with a sad and heavy heart, that we are retiring DDR3 from the Destitute tier. We will miss DDR3, and the incredibly cheap Sempron 2650 that it was paired with, for there is nothing available that is as cheap.

As always, when we retire a tier, we move all higher tiers “up” (down the tier listings, up the page). And so every tier from Outstanding to Poor has now gone “up” by one. This happens roughly once a year, so our tiers slowly creep up over time. It also explains why the main chart’s star ratings are a bit (a bit? A lot!) outdated, as they do not creep up with the tiers. Sorry 🙁 I will fix it!

What has changed:

  • We have deleted the GPU, CPU, mobo, HSF and RAM from Destitute.
  • We have moved the GPU, CPU, mobo and HSF in all the tiers from Poor to Exceptional up the page by 1, filling in the holes in Destitute.
  • We have finally given the new Destitute some DDR4 RAM.
  • The new Exceptional tier is the exact same as the old Exceptional tier, except with a GTX 1080 Ti instead of a GTX 1080.

Since we are moving so many tiers, we have to be extra careful to make sure we move the CPU, mobo, and HSF correctly. We never want to recommend incompatible items! (If you notice any mistakes in this regard with any of the country versions, please do not hesitate to let us know.)

On the 13th and the 30th, AMD is expected to release new CPUs. On the 20th, rumours say that NVIDIA may release something too. So we will be having a full month of activity, with more updates!

DDR3 RAM

Good night, sweet prince.