Best DDR3 RAM for Gaming
When it comes to building a gaming PC, the three components that will have the most significant impact on your gaming performance are your GPU, CPU, and RAM (Random Access Memory). You can of course throw the speed of your hard drive into this equation too these days, but these are the main three to consider.
With that being said, you ought to make sure you buy a good high performance RAM kit of sufficient size and memory speed to ensure optimal gaming performance. If your PC doesn’t have enough RAM, you’ll have trouble maintaining a steady framerate in-game.
Moreover, RAM speed has an impact on CPU performance, particularly on Ryzen CPUs. Having RAM that’s too slow – or not enough RAM in the first place – will make for a poor gaming experience, regardless of your system’s CPU or GPU.
Product Reviews
- Fantastic latency
- Great cooling solution
- Lifetime warranty
- Not the cheapest RAM
- Latency might be overkill for some users
- Heat spreader increases the physical size of the module
Corsair’s excellent Pro Series offers some of the best RAM performance in this category, with very high speeds and low latency over the Corsair Vengeance LPX series.
With a robust anodized aluminum heat spreader, this ram will be able to maintain optimal thermal performance even under load, and it looks fairly stylish as a nice bonus. This is particularly useful for anyone who intends to overclock their RAM and needs to think about power consumption rather than a low voltage.
Corsair has a reputation for building some of the best and most reliable computer kit, and they offer a lifetime warranty on all their RAM modules. Coming with low CAS latency, this is pretty much identical in many ways to the DDR4 ram version.
- Great value
- Reasonable performance
- Reliable brand
- High latency
- No advanced cooling design
- Not ideal for high-end gaming
This is a budget stick of RAM, and it’s priced accordingly. It’s not especially fast, with the highest latency in our lineup. It’s going to be adequate for gaming, but might be somewhat of a bottleneck for games with high RAM demands. Certainly, this would not be a good choice of RAM module if you’re interested in overclocking.
If you’re looking to equip your system with 8GB or 16GB of RAM on a strict budget, this is a decent option, but it won’t be able to match the performance of more premium RAM offerings such as the Corsair Vengeance LPX.
- Great speeds
- Well designed heat spreader
- Lifetime Warranty
- Not the most impressive latency
- There are cheaper alternatives
- Erratic stock for different color variants
This is a good performing DDR3 RAM module, with an attractive and compact heat spreader.
This RAM’s latency is a bit high, but it’s still a fast RAM kit offered at an affordable price. It is pretty fast, affordable, and reliable, making it one of the best DDR3 RAM options on the market. It comes with a Lifetime Warranty from Kingston, for peace of mind.
Different colors are available in these ram sticks, but stock for the different variations in this memory type is somewhat erratic.
- Lifetime warranty
- Good speeds
- Heatsinks for optimal thermal performance
- A little on the pricey side
- Aesthetic won’t suit all users
- Only comes in red
This memory kit has more than 2,000 reviews with an average of 5 stars. It offers a good price to performance ratio and– since this kit is manufactured by G.SKILL– you can rest assured knowing it’s backed by a lifetime warranty.
It’s slightly pricier than some of the other options from this lineup and doesn’t top the chart for performance, but it’s still a great option for ram sticks with low CAS latency
Things to Consider
Things to consider
Look at how many RAM slots your system has available, consider the current RAM modules you own, and if you may want to upgrade further in the future. Planning out how many RAM modules you can have in total and deciding on modules accordingly can save you from unnecessarily having to remove modules in the future to free up space for larger modules.
RAM Capacity And Clock Speed
RAM capacity, measured in gigabytes, refers to the amount of data that can be stored on a stick of RAM at any one time. A decent capacity is essential to an efficient system. Without sufficient RAM, your computer will be sluggish and have problems supporting parallelizing workflows.
8GB of RAM is generally considered the baseline for PC gaming, but if you need a system that can support intensive multitasking, we highly recommend going for 16-32GB RAM.
The clock speed of your RAM is measured in megahertz and determines how many times a second stored data can be accessed. Faster RAM ensures loading and boot times are kept to a minimum and that general system processes run swiftly and smoothly.
We recommend going no lower than 1600Mhz for a DDR3 build. This should be fast enough for most modern games, although you may need to apply a mild overclock to iron out the kinks in a RAM-heavy title.
Assessing the Nature of Your Build – A Note on Selecting RAM
Picking out a stick of RAM isn’t as simple as finding the biggest, fastest one. You need to figure out what your motherboard and CPU are capable of supporting.
It’s not a big deal to your motherboard if it can only support, say, 8GB, 1400MHz RAM, and you throw a 1600MHz stick into the mix; it won’t break it. However, it also won’t be able to utilize the excess and will proceed at its own capacities. That means you’ll have wasted money on RAM that’s not getting used.
Heat Spreaders
Heat spreaders run along the top of your RAM. It’s their job to transport heat from the PCB to the outer edges of the stick where it can be expunged by your cooling system. Materials have a vast impact on the efficacy of a heat spreader, but generally speaking, the larger they are, the better they are at keeping running temperatures at a minimum. That said, larger RAM can cause spatial issues, which brings us to our next point.
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