Best RAM for Game Development

Vengeance is Mine

If you’re developing for Unreal Engine 5, RAM is not to be neglected. A lot of people will lie to you on this, “16GB is fine!” they say, “Oh yeah, Unreal 5 can actually run on 8GB RAM.” are the tales emitting from their brilliance…. Please ignore these people, you need 32GB RAM, minimum, if you’re developing for Unreal Engine 5. I would recommend 64GB RAM, if you use 16GB you’ll get crashes, you’ll get so many crashes you will buy new RAM so why bother, just ignore the naysayers and buy high quality RAM at 32GB if you’re not thinking, and 64GB if you’re serious about your game development career.

So today we’re going to look into the best RAM for Game Development, focusing on the different types of RAM, the best on the market, the best value for money, the cheapest RAM that does the job. We’ll also touch on the requirements for Unreal Engine 5.

There is nothing more beautiful than , well, rarely is a thing more beautiful, than plugging in your RAM to your new machine, with a nice powerful GPU, and a CPU that can make use of it, and powering up your benchmark game, and playing it, and seeing that silky smooth 90FPS on a high grade, top of the line, market leading game.

Before we go any further, you should have a look at our article on The Best GPU’s for Game Development.

And you can also have a look at our CPU’s game dev article HERE. It’s super effective!!!

What type of RAM is best for gaming?

Best RAM for Gaming 2021:

• VENGEANCE RGB RT 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 DRAM 4600MHz C18 Memory Kit ($404.99)
• VENGEANCE RGB PRO SL 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Memory Kit – Black ($209.99)
• DOMINATOR® PLATINUM RGB 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 DRAM 4000MHz C19 Memory Kit — White ($399.99)
• VENGEANCE® RGB PRO 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Memory Kit — Black ($259.99)
• VENGEANCE® RGB RS 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Memory Kit ($124.99)

Is 32GB of RAM good for gaming?

32GB will do for gaming, but you should have 64GB, overkill is always safer when it comes to RAM. For game development in Unreal Engine 5, it’s a different story, you will need the extra RAM to avoid crashes, lag, & stuttering. 64GB is recommended, 32GB is the mandatory baseline, 16GB is crazy.

You can get a more authoritative take on this matter with this article from PC GAMER:

THE BEST RAM FOR GAME DEVELOPMENT IN 2021

THE BEST RAM ON THE MARKET RIGHT NOW

RAM is a bit harder to quantify. But after scouring the internet for a little while, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the best RAM on the market right now.

VENGEANCE® RGB RT 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 DRAM 4600MHz C18 Memory Kit – Black ($404.99 CAD)

It’s high quality RAM, you’re getting 2x16GB sticks with this. It’s DDR4, so it’s good RAM. Overall, you could do a lot worse than buying two of these kits for your new game development desktop. Let’s say you had, TWO of these kits plugged into your machine, so 64GB of the best highest quality RAM on the market, with a Geforce RTX 3090 graphics card, and an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU, and 4TB of SSD Hard Drive Space, and of course a power supply capable of running it. You have for all intents and purposes acquired the most powerful machine on the market, right now. You could develop top tier games for a AAA Development Company with that kind of rig. There’s literally nothing you couldn’t make. You would have to wait for new releases before you could even make full use of your own power. That’s how I’d feel.

So we’ve gone through what the best RAM on the market is right now, next up, let’s get into what I consider the best value for money.

VENGEANCE RGB PRO SL 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Memory Kit – Black ($209.99 CAD)

Will you really be able to tell the difference it’s just RAM. Both of these are VENGEANCE RGB RAM, both of them are clocked at 16GB a stick. So you won’t miss too much of the difference when this one is clocked at 3200Mhz C16 while the other RAM, at a cost of double the price, is 4600MHz C18. Woot woot woot. You’re saving 200 dollars, even with my get the best attitude, that’s still a pretty big chunk of change. My instinct is still to get the best of the best of the best when you’re buying a computer…. But well…. between the GPU ($1499), the CPU($900), the RAM($800), the SSD(another $500), the power supply, etc, my recommendation would set you back at least $3700 dollars.

This is not an insignificant amount of money.

When it comes to your game dev career? I have to say that it is worth the money for the investment. To keep your boss happy, and make the highest quality games a human can make, yeah it’s worth investing in your future and buying that computer, but if you wanted to save 400 bucks, and only spend $3300 on your computer, a little more manageable, you could get this RAM and I promise not to tell anyone.

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Especially if you’re a beginner, with a bit of help, you can learn everything you need to know to become self employed in the game industry. You can use sites like Upwork and you’ll never stop getting job offers, then when you have a nice resume full of skills, portfolio pieces, and a few years of job experience under your belt, as well as anything you self publish, you can totally displace your food service/security/retail dead end jobs and instead make money working from home as a private contractor. Do good enough, get enough experience and a big company will hire you on, and you can decent money. It’s a real career, not dead end food service where you have no opportunity for advancement.

You’ll wonder why you ever worked a normal job at all.

MOST ECONOMICAL OPTION

This is a hard one to write. I think the most economical option is also the best value for money, just look up. Look at this RAM I just showed you. It costs only 209 CAD for two sticks of 16 GB.

Now compare that to the “economical” option.

VENGEANCE® RGB RS 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Memory Kit ($124.99)

When you get this RAM, what you’ll be saying is that, you’re going wish you were me, that’s what my life is gonna be from now on. You’re gonna wish that you were me. Cloaked in outward moral indignation that my GPU isn’t really good enough to justify a CPU like that, and therefore the RAM is pointless. You will just be super jealous, and you will wish that you were me, when I have the above RAM. Then you will say, maybe you don’t need your RAM anymore, I could take it off your hands for 50 bucks. I will laugh son, nobody is going to take away my RAM.

Consider this ram on offer. $124.99 for 2 8GB cards.

Are you nuts?

If you think you can develop in Unreal Engine 5, with a set of two of these cards, you have departed from sanity and have no plans to return. 16GB isn’t even remotely enough to develop comfortably in this environment. It’s just not gonna happen. Sure you can run Unreal Engine 5, but can do you do all the high level content, with all the advanced features enabled? I doubt it. In fact I know you can’t, not with this. You need at least 32GB to develop in Unreal Engine 5. You SHOULD have 64GB to be safe, and develop in a professional setting. But if you buy this card, even if you buy a second set, you are plugging in 4 RAM slots just to get 32GB RAM. You could plug in 4 of the above RAM and clock in at 64GB of the best RAM in existence. You won’t even have enough slots to hit 64GB with this debacle.

In fact if you bought 4 of these you would not be smart.
You can get 2 16GB cards from the value for money option above, for less money than you would spend buying 4 of these to be slower. Then you can upgrade to another set of 2 16GB Cards, and you’re sitting pretty at 64GB RAM, it just takes a while to build it.

🙂

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NORMAL RAM AND DDR4?

DDR4 is flat out better, straight upgrade. No argument. Strictly better card. It is more energy efficient, this allows for power savings, this energy efficiency allows for higher speeds, and less power consumption, lower cooling requirements.

DDR4 RAM is just flat out better.

There is no argument to be had, there is no debate warranted, you can get angry if you want, trying to tell me why I’m wrong, but at the end of the day, reality still exists, in an objective sense.

DDR4 will get you performance gains across the board.

WAIT A MINUTE, WHAT IS RAM???

RAM stands for Read Only Memory, not everything takes place in the CPU, let’s say you’re copying something over somewhere, it will be transferred to RAM and then sent where it’s going.

If you don’t have enough RAM, you get memory leaks, crashes, things like that. RAM is very important to keep your program running, if you run out of ram, you get a crash, or maybe even a freeze.

RAM is very important to game development, especially in an Unreal Engine 5 environment, if you want to be able to run and develop your programs and games in a stable environment, without worrying about crashes and breakdowns and damage to your system.

It’s easy to neglect RAM, you can spend all your time focusing on your CPU, your GPU, and not even think about the RAM, this is a mistake, you need RAM, if you don’t have RAM, you will have problems. It’s one of the things you shouldn’t skimp on. Ignore it at your own risk.

FINAL THOUGHTS

When you’re building your computer don’t skimp on the RAM. End of story. There’s no point building a 3000 dollar computer that crashes every time you run a game or load up Unreal Engine 5 with all the features enabled.

It’s easy to forget RAM, don’t.

This is an important part of your computer, and one of the less expensive ones to get right, not to mention one of the most costly if you don’t. You need good RAM, so make sure to pick some up, while you’re building your computer. I say don’t settle for anything less than a 16GB stick of RAM. It is the best, you want your computer to have 64GB RAM, accept no substitutes.

To reiterate, if you’re developing in Unreal Engine 5, you need 64GB RAM to develop without problems of any kind, get good RAM. If you can’t do that, then make sure you get at least 32GB RAM, I have that, and it’s not enough.

What you must avoid at all costs, however, is 16GB RAM, just kiss your career goodbye if you do. You would have crashes, memory leaks, lag, stuttering, performance issues, slowdown, and additional crashes to be friends with your other crashes. At least if you’re developing in Unreal Engine 5. I have 32GB and it crashes a lot.

Be safe, be smart.

Get good quality RAM. You won’t regret it.