Extra memory can breathe new life into your PC and make heavy tasks like gaming and multitasking a breeze. Fortunately, RAM deals are pretty easy to come by as it’s one of the cheapest components you can buy for your PC. However, there are plenty of choices on the market, so we’ve put together this handy guide to give you a decent edge in finding the best cheap RAM out there right now.
Even if you’ve been thinking of buying a brand new Mac, MacBook, or pre-built PC instead of building your own setup this year, you can often save some cash by not paying extra for an upgraded RAM model. This can be quite an expensive way to add memory, and instead buying RAM separately is much cheaper, especially if you can find the best RAM deals we’ve found below.
We update prices daily on this page, so it’s worth bookmarking and checking back regularly if you don’t find a RAM kit at the price you want. The RAM itself is usually quite cheap for big seasonal sales like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, although there are always some great deals that pop up every season from specialty retailers as well.
The best DDR5 RAM deal
If you want the fastest and latest RAM setup on the market, you’re going to have to pounce on a DDR5 die set. These usually don’t come cheap, but the latest iteration of Corsair’s well-known Vengeance RAM series is actually quite competitively priced. While it’s not the fastest DDR5 RAM kit on the market right now, it’s still damn fast with a base clock speed of 4800MHz. It also works pretty nice, so there’s a lot of potential headroom if you want to overclock it along with other components.
Best DDR4 RAM deal
The Corsair Vengeance series of RAM has been around for many years and it’s always been a solid choice, whatever your use case. The 3000MHz RGB variant in particular is a fantastic all-round solution for those with motherboards that only support DDR4 RAM, as it’s really reasonably priced considering you’re getting RGB and a hefty heatsink. While DDR5 memory has surpassed this generation in terms of speed, 3000MHz is still fast enough for gaming – and is more widely supported by a large number of motherboards.
The best budget gaming RAM deal
DDR4 RAM was damn expensive when it came out a few years ago, but now you can get a standard 2x8GB setup on a fairly low budget. If you don’t care about bells and whistles like RGB, the Corsair Vengeance LPX is a great choice. Not only is it widely available in most specialty retailers, but its reasonable price, low profile and number of clock timing variations make it a truly reliable buy for both upgraders and builders on a budget. Of course, it’s not as fast as DDR5 RAM, but it will be more than enough for most builds for the next few years.
The best deal of RAM for gaming laptops
While some gaming laptops are starting to adopt DDR5 RAM, the vast majority of mobile gaming rigs still run on DDR4 compatible motherboards, which means you’ll be probably you want to opt for a pair of these commonly available chopsticks (definitely check your model though). Our pick for a solid, reliable and fairly cheap RAM upgrade for gaming laptops is the Kingston HyperX Impact series. These low-profile sticks draw only 1.2V of power, but are still capable of clock speeds of 2666 or 3200MHz, depending on which variant you choose. With excellent plug-and-play compatibility, Kingston HyperX Impact will work with both Intel and AMD based gaming laptops without having to modify the BIOS.
Best laptop RAM deal
MacBooks aren’t the only laptops you can add extra memory to. As long as they’re not glued together like a Surface Laptop, upgrading your RAM is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your notebook’s performance. TimeTic makes relatively inexpensive Hynix IC RAM kits that can seriously increase memory capacity.
The best RAM deal for Mac
Running on an old Mac? Most newer models have memory soldered in and therefore cannot be upgraded, but some older models can actually be upgraded (usually those released before 2013). Generally, for these older models, you’ll need DDR3 RAM – which isn’t the newest or fastest RAM on the market, but thankfully is still fairly widely available. Our choice for upgrading the RAM on older Mac models would be Crucial’s DDR3 kits. Not only are they reasonably priced, but Crucial is a reliable brand that offers plenty of options for both the 16GB and 32GB memory kits – more than enough for older Macs still in daily use.
What is RAM?
RAM is short for Random-ANDaccess mmemory. It is one of the fundamental pieces of the computer puzzle alongside the CPU (or CPU) and classic storage (usually invented as a ROM for Reat ABOUTJust mmemory).
RAM is needed to facilitate the transfer of data to and from the system storage (it can be a hard drive or a solid state drive). The processor is the one that does the calculations, calculations, etc., and right next to it is the cache, which is a super-fast version of RAM, but only available in small amounts (up to a maximum of several hundred MB).
Then comes RAM (usually around 16GB on standard PCs) and beyond that comes system memory. The farther they are from the CPU, the cheaper they are per memory unit and the slower they are.