Corsair unleashes world’s fastest RAM and 16GB costs more than your gaming PC (probably)

Corsair has released the first commercially available DDR4 RAM to reach the 5,000MHz barrier, but if you fancy a piece of the high-speed memory action, be warned: it will cost you.

Corsair’s Vengeance LPX DDR4 5,000MHz kit, which gives you 16GB of the stuff in the form of a pair of 8GB modules, commands an asking price of £1,200 or $1,080 when bought direct from the company. Ouchie…

The DDR4-5000 Micron-based memory sports timings of 18-26-26-46 at 1.5V.

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Of course, the expense doesn’t end with buying the RAM itself, as you also need a quality motherboard for it to sit in. As Corsair notes, the RAM reaches “its full potential in select MSI X570 motherboards running 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen desktop processors”.

In other words, the Vengeance LPX has been tested and verified to hit that 5,000MHz speed using a Ryzen 3000 chip in one of the following MSI motherboards: MEG X570 Godlike, MEG X570 Ace, MEG X570 Unify and the Prestige X570 Creation (via these mobo’s automated overclocking tools).

Should you need further cooling on the RAM sticks when pushing them to their flat-out limits, Corsair bundles a Vengeance Airflow Fan to directly cool the modules.

Really Affluent Machine-builders

What does DDR4 RAM hitting 5,000MHz mean in the real world? Well, it’s certainly a majorly impressive figure to reach which underlines just how far memory makers have come in pushing speeds in recent times.

Although it’s more of a big flashing milestone number, as it were, than an actually useful development in most respects.

For starters, this is only a relatively small step on from Corsair’s Vengeance LPX DDR4-4866 which was released only last month.

And at any rate, spending a ton of money on stupidly fast RAM very much has diminishing returns. As you’re probably well aware, if you’ve got cash to the tune of a grand to really ramp up the performance of your gaming PC, it’s better spent elsewhere – like on a super-powerful graphics card.

Faster RAM will help you eke out at least a few extra frames – although exactly how many depends on your other components, as noted above, and mileage will vary from game to game as well – but gains will be relatively minimal broadly speaking.

Particularly the gains compared to something only slightly slower like Corsair’s 4,000MHz RAM kit, which would mean you’re ‘only’ paying £200 or $200 for 16GB, so you’re still getting plenty fast memory for an absolute fraction of the price.

Indeed, 16GB of the slowest Vengeance LPX memory (2,133MHz) runs to just $75 or £85. So if you’re still running with 8GB, beefing up the quantity (rather than quality or speed) is definitely something that should be at least considered, what with the low prices of RAM these days. And the increasing amount of contemporary games which seem to be demanding 12GB (like Red Dead Redemption 2) or 16GB of RAM as their recommended spec.

Still, if you want the absolute speediest RAM in the world which can be pushed to 5,000MHz without using ridiculous cooling measures, then here it is.