When it comes to PC gaming, RAM is an oft-overlooked part of the equation. Your graphics card and CPU are the most important determiners of performance, but fast RAM helps speed up anything CPU-limited – including PC gaming on a 1080p monitor. If you’re running slow or high-latency memory from a few years back, then upgrading to a faster kit can be worthwhile.
That’s why we wanted to let you know that Crucial is currently selling a 16GB kit of their Ballistix DDR4-3200 CL16 memory for £46.79, compared to £58.28 for the same kit on Amazon. It’s rare to see 16GB of RAM below £50, especially some from a major manufacturer like Crucial, so this is a pretty outstanding deal. The lowest price we can see for a similar spec RAM kit is £56, and that’s from a much less well known brand.
Rated at 3200MT/s CL16, this kit is precisely in the sweet spot when it comes to price versus performance. When going below 3200MT/s, you tend to lose performance pretty rapidly, whereas going beyond around 3600MT/s you start running into diminishing returns, with very marginal gains and much higher prices. There are still tons of PCs operating with 2133MT/s, 2400MT/s or 2666MT/s memory, and they’re leaving a bit of performance on the table. To check your memory speed, you can use Task Manager’s performance tab, or programs like Speccy or CPU-Z.
