G.Skill has announced its flagship Trident Z5 DDR5 RAM, one of the first waves of commercially available kits designed for PC gamers. Alongside Teamgroup’s T-Force Delta kits, you’ll soon be able to buy RGB memory ready for the release of the next generation of motherboards and processors.
G.Skill is especially favored by the PC gaming community owing to its creative designs, such as the aforementioned Z series and especially blingy Trident Z Royal kits. It announced DDR5 preparations a few weeks back via Twitter, but this is our first look at the memory modules that will be hitting the market in November 2021.
DDR5, now with RGB
DDR5 is predicted to become the new standard of RAM by 2023 so you have plenty of time to upgrade before DDR4 is considered to be ‘outdated’, but previously announced kits from the likes of Samsung have left something to be desired as far as aesthetics are concerned.
We also don’t know the price, but TeamGroup, another memory manufacturer, suggested that 16GB will become the new standard for memory modules in an interview with TechRadar Pro.
We sadly still don’t have any pricing information (we have reached out to G.Skill for clarification) but TeamGroup is pricing its own 32GB, 4,800 MHz kit at $399.99 (around £300, AU$550). As pricing for DDR4 4,000 MHz (32 GB) kits currently sits at around $299-$399, this feels fair, but G.Skill is under no obligation to follow suit, especially as the lowest frequency available in its DDR5 kits is 5,600 MHz (followed by 6,000 and 6,400 MHz).
Analysis: Fastest fingers wins
We’ve been cautious to recommend that people jump on buying DDR5 kits too early, but given the ongoing chip shortage and the current DIY PC building market, it might finally be time to start looking at buying now to avoid disappointment.
With graphics cards and processors still being a pain to locate at MSRP (or even available on the shelves at all), anyone desperate to be the first to upgrade to this new memory standard would do well to buy a kit while they can. It’s worth bearing in mind though that DDR5 could become more affordable over the next few years, and DDR4 is still very capable of running even the most demanding applications available these days.
Both AMD and Intel aren’t expected to launch DDR5 supporting ranges until sometime in 2022, so you’ll also need a new processor and motherboard to complete the upgrade, adding the concerns over product availability.
If you’re happy with your current system then sit tight for now, but for those of you who like to have the very best of everything right out of the gate, keep your eyes on currently releases kits and future announcements from other major memory manufacturers – or else you might be scrambling for what little stock is available when we finally see the arrival of intel’s Alder Lake towards the end of the year.
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