Recently, we talked about memory channels: What they are, what they do, and why modern computers have multiple. But what happens when you aren’t using the common one or two identical sticks in each channel? What if you have one channel with one stick, and another with two? What if you aren’t using RAM from […]
If you’ve ever taken a look at a product page for sticks of RAM, or at the specifications for a CPU or motherboard, you’ve probably seen “memory channels” mentioned. For many beginners, this sparks questions like, “What’s the deal? Does dual-channel mean I can only use two sticks? What do multiple channels do that one […]
RAM prices took to the skies in 2017, and remained airborne throughout 2018. This year, RAM prices have landed, settled down, and are considering digging an underground cave in preparation for Armageddon, and are expected to go down even further.
Your computer has faithfully been by your side for all these years. You can’t replace it (for whatever reason), but with Christmas coming up, you decide it’s time to give your little friend a much-deserved gift. Or maybe it’s frustrating you with sluggishness. Either way, you’ve got a great excuse to give it a little […]
RAM Performance Explained: CAS Latency vs Clock Speed (Updated for 2026) Choosing RAM can be daunting, because this decision has a tangible impact on your performance. How many browser tabs can you keep open? How smooth is your video editing timeline? How fast will your game load? All of this is directly affected by your […]
I 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. […]
In the big wide world of hard drives, SSDs, RAM, VRAM, fancy CPU tech, and more—we felt it was about time to have a bit of a deep dive into data transfer rates. That way, even if you’re working from an example PC build in our main build chart, you’ll know exactly what kind of […]
Recently, a user asked about RAM speeds and why we don’t recommend the fastest RAM possible, or the RAM with the lowest latency. After all, isn’t faster always better? For all RAM, performance increases when speed increases and when latency decreases. However, the benefit from increasing speed far outweighs the performance loss of increasing latency. […]
RAM (short for Random Access Memory) is an essential part of every computer, because it holds all of the data your computer is currently using. Think of it as your computer’s short-term memory, whereas the hard drive is more like long-term memory. Why is RAM important? How much RAM do you need, and how fast […]