How does it affect my gaming performance? Most modern RAM sticks operate around 3200MHz, but you can always find some with higher clock speeds, especially on DDR5. The higher the clock speed, the more data your RAM can process per second. RAM clock speed is the speed at which your computer's memory (RAM) accesses data from the CPU. There are a ton of technical guides on this ( we recommend this one from PC Gamer), but we wanted to give an easy-to-understand breakdown. And I even read that some processors or motherboards might not even be able to take full advantage of high-clock-speed RAM.īut again, I was a noob, so I didn't even really understand what RAM clock speed was and if it affected gameplay. Being a complete noob, my immediate reaction was:įrom what I learned, if you wind up mixing RAM sticks that have varying clock speeds - it can actually throttle the clock speed of the faster RAM stick. But, while exploring, I came across someone mentioning how clock speed could also be a bottleneck.

x2 8GB sticks) due to motherboards having limited slots for memory. So when I researched RAM bottlenecking, I mainly saw posts talking about purchasing memory in fewer sticks (e.g., x1 16GB stick vs. It wasn't just important that I get the best performance, but that I also have something that's worth upgrading.

I'll be real with you - when I built my first PC, I was on such a low budget that I wanted to make sure every dollar counted. POV: You're already stressed trying to figure out how much RAM you need, and now the clock speed is confusing you. Do you want to know why it doesn't matter? Keep reading. Do you want to figure out if a fast RAM clock speed matters for gaming? The answer is probably not - just stick to 3200MHz.

Bets ram speed for gaming