Desktop RAM

Capacity – Capacity is the total amount of data a RAM stick/kit can store. 16GB is appropriate for basic home/office use or low end gaming, 32GB is suitable for intensive office work utilising large spreadsheets/datasets as well as high end gaming, and 64GB or more is suitable for extreme design/CAD work, server systems and extreme data crunching.

Generation – Currently in circulation there are only 2 generations of RAM: DDR4 and DDR5. RAM generations are not backwards compatible, as such it’s essential that DDR4 RAM is paired with a DDR4 motherboard and vis versa. DDR5 is the newer standard, and as such is faster and used on most current boards.

Speed – RAM speed is measured in MT/s, and the higher the value, the faster the RAM can transfer data to the CPU. Higher speed RAM can process and work with bigger sets of data, whether its gaming or data processing.

Overclocking Profile (EXPO/XMP) – To reach the maximum speeds advertised, RAM generally must be overclocked. RAM will come with overclocking settings pre-loaded, but these settings are tailored to either Intel (XMP) or AMD (EXPO) CPUs. As such, it’s important to select a RAM kit that can be overclocked on your CPU.