Alder Lake-S will be the first consumer-market DDR5-equipped platform with some motherboard makers already making it known that their LGA1700 boards for Intel’s 12th-gen CPUs will be running DDR5. With that being said, some may be gunning for the new DDR5 kits that are coming with speeds going for DDR5-4800, DDR5-5000 and DDR5-5200 opening the speed classes. These speeds can be matched to DDR3-1600 or DDR4-2400 when they first came out so their not as high as say a DDR4-3000, should DDR5 extend to that level. At capacities of 16GB or 32GB sticks, there’s also the size advantage for most options and given those higher specs, first gen DDR5 will be coming with a similar first-adopter tax.
These early listings SOLD and SHIPPED by Newegg lists Taiwanese memory maker GEIL and their DDR5 2x16GB DDR5-4800 kit going for $349. The kit is listed with a CL40-40-40-77 timing and runs at 1.1v DDR5 voltage. While their specs may justify, this does come as a surprise as debuting RAMs have tended to be more on the conservative side, even gaming ones.
Still, this doesn’t seem to be that distant from current DDR4-4800 RAM with G.Skill’s top-end DDR5-4800 TridentZ Royal and Royal Elite are going for $300-$400 respectively. They do have tighter timings and more mature ICs and with Alder Lake supporting both DDR5 and DDR4, gamers will still have the option of choosing which extortionately expensive memory they want… or just drop to a more conservative DDR4 speed.
