What Does RAM Do For Gaming?

Curious what RAM and memory is all about? There are a lot of people that hear about it quite a bit, but don’t know exactly what it does. They at least don’t know these things until they start seeing errors like “This application has crashed unexpectedly” or “your computer is low on memory,” among many other error types.

RAM is extremely important for your computer’s operations, and often determines how responsive and speedy applications are. But what does RAM do exactly for gaming? If you follow along below, we’ll show you, and show you a couple of our top picks for memory sticks and gaming.

RAM and Gaming

You know RAM is important for your PC, but is it important for gaming? Well, it completely is! There’s a reason why there’s that recommended memory line on the game’s system spec requirements list!

When you’re playing games, especially intensive strategy games like, say, Starcraft 2, there are hundreds, if not thousands of temporary files — created by the game — that need to be stored and swapped. The game could put this on your hard drive, but the hard drive just isn’t fast enough to handle the quickness required. That said, these file transfers generally happen over RAM.

Once you run out of RAM, you’ll almost always see a slowness. This is because those files will start using something on a hard drive called a swap file. It’s extremely slow, because as we mentioned, hard drives are much slower than RAM, but will still keep your game or application operating.

That said, by making sure that you have ample RAM available for gaming, you’ll keep your game running at a quick rate. You’ll see better responsiveness, and overall better frames per second.

That is why adding the right amount of RAM is essential for gaming to meet the demands accordingly and see better FPS.

And games today do require a ton of RAM. Games today are more demanding than ever, due in part because of insanely detailed 3D graphics. So how much RAM do you need exactly? Most computers ship with 4GB of RAM, but many games today require that you have at least 8GB for optimum performance, and there are some out there that say 16GB.

What Does RAM Do For Gaming

1. HyperX Predator DDR4

Coming up first on our countdown, we’re looking at the Predator by HyperX. HyperX is a well known brand in the industry, offering top tier memory for your gaming and application needs. One of the benefits to this one in particular is the aggressive aluminum heat spreader, giving this RAM stick plenty of heat dissipation.

The Predator is also the perfect choice to match up with your case’s RGB lighting. You can very easily set up lighting or pattern effects on your memory modules without cables or extra LEDs. With this memory stick, you’ll boost your frame rate, keep your streams smooth, and power through your highlight reel rendering with speeds up to 4000MHz and low CL15-CL19 latency.

Buy it now: here

2. HyperX FURY 16GB RAM Kit

HyperX makes another excellent memory kit, this time called the FURY. This is actually a bundle, giving you two 8GB sticks of RAM, for a total of 16GB of RAM for your system.

One of the highlights of the FURY memory is that they have lower power requirements. That gives you less heat that you have to deal with in the system, as well as higher reliability. Low 1.2 volts draw less power from your system for a cooler and quieter PC, also making it something that you don’t really have to take into consideration for buying a PSU.

This one has a plug and play setup, and is actually some of the first RAM sticks out there to have automatic overclocking up to the highest frequency published. Get the speed you want, and without too much technical know-how.

Unfortunately, there isn’t any RGB lighting features in here, so your RAM will have to go LED-less!

What Does RAM Do For Gaming Verdict

As you can see, RAM is very important for gaming, often determining how fast and responsive a game is. It’s so important so that you can have an enjoyable experience, and even more important if you’re doing any sort of competitive gaming. It gives you that cutting edge that you need in your gameplay — after all, you don’t want your computer chugging down for a moment to lose you the game.

Do you have some favorite RAM that you use for your computer? Let us know what it is in the comments section below, and it may just make our list in the future!