Memory makers split between silence and ultra-fast kits as prices stay high

Memory kits are painfully expensive right now. Lenovo presented a forecast at a high-performance computing event that said DRAM supply and prices will remain extremely high for many years and may never return to 2024 levels. Despite that outlook, major kit makers have taken a binary approach: keep quiet or push ever-faster, niche products.

Recent releases include G.Skill's DDR5-9200 CL72, Geil's DDR5-8000 CL64 and Team Group's DDR5-8000 CL54, while brands such as Kingston and Lexar have largely stayed silent. Those ultra-fast modules are CUDIMM designs that use a small chip on the memory PCB to boost the clock and only work in Intel LGA 1851 motherboards.

Not every Arrow Lake processor will happily run its memory controller at such speeds; the latest 200K Plus chips are the most likely to cope, and even then gaming rarely benefits unless you pair a Core Ultra 7 270K Plus with something like an RTX 5090 and play at 1080p.

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