How to choose the right RAM and what is worth buying today? Practical advice and specific tips from the editorial staff – Živě.cz

When putting a computer together, not much emphasis is placed on RAM, but the wrong choice can lead to a loss of up to tens of percent of performance. Which parameters to pay attention to and what mistakes to avoid?

RAM is becoming a big topic among the community of computer enthusiasts, mainly due to AMD Ryzen processors, which are more sensitive to speeds and timing. With better quality and correctly set memory modules, performance can be increased by higher units or lower tens of percent, depending on the application. RAM specifications have always been important, but this was not such a hot topic during the dominance of Intel processors, because these CPUs are not so demanding on RAM and the increased performance usually did not correspond to the required effort or higher price.

1. RAM types

In the first step, you need to find out what type of RAM you need for your PC. Modern motherboards are equipped with DDR4 memories, older models will require DDR3, and conversely, from the turn of 2021 and 2022, DDR5 memories will also be on the market. These generations are not compatible with each other, so DDR4 cannot be inserted into a DDR3-enabled motherboard at all due to different cutouts.

Furthermore, the memories are divided into DIMMs intended for desktops and SO-DIMMs for laptops. If you want to upgrade the memory of laptops, you also have to focus on the details, because not all of them have the option of replacing RAM. Increasingly, they are soldered directly to the motherboard to save space and manufacturing costs. For laptops, the selection is also limited to capacity and frequency, clocking or fine tuning is not possible here, with rare exceptions.