Mushkin released three 96GB DDR5 SODIMM memory kits, however, we only know of one place where one of the SKUs was pre-ordered, and you’ll probably never guess where.
Head to South Africa where Wootware is already taking orders for MRA5S480FGGD48GX2 for 5449 rand (opens in a new tab) (around $285) for 96GB (two 48GB Redline Aries modules).
That’s a significant discount from the recommended retail price of 6,599 Rand (around $340), but still a pretty hefty premium over what you can get with DDR4. For example, Amazon sells two 32GB memory modules for just under $98. That’s about $1.5/GB compared to $3/GB for the Mushkin part.
Check out our detailed explanation on differences between DDR4 and DDR5.
Up to 50% more RAM
The online retailer says the merchandise – rated CL40 and clocked at 4.8GHz – is due for release on May 23, but we don’t know if other US retailers (Newegg, Amazon) will. I couldn’t find any available SKUs (MRA5S520HHHD48GX2 and MRA5S560LKKD48GX2), both of which had higher clock speeds (5200 and 5600MHz respectively), nowhere else on the internet.
Corsair and Crucial are also expected to launch 24GB and 48GB DDR5 SODIMMs later this year.
Besides being the first memory type to offer ECC (error correcting code) by default, DDR5 is the first to offer non-binary memory, delivering 24GB and 48GB in a single module to bridge the capacity gap between 16GB and 32GB and the latter, and elusive, just-to-market capacity of 64GB. This is a 50% improvement over DDR4 and great news for all users who need a lot of memory for demanding applications (video editing, photo editing, rendering, etc.).
For owners of laptops with expandable memory slots, that means it’s very thin laptops theoretically expandable to 48GB DDR5 memory in traditional notebooks i mobile workstation laptops (and mini PCs with four free slots) can go up to 96 GB and 192 GB of RAM respectively. Now we are not talking about luggable models such as a-X2P multimedia station (which is essentially a portable PC workstation) but more from the current crop laptops that can offer 128 GB of RAM.
RAM and more
It is worth noting that the official maximum memory capacity of any laptop is often only a theoretical limit, as manufacturers cannot test all existing (or future) memory modules. RAM upgrade is the easiest way speed up your laptop like, unlike, say replacing the hard drive to an SSD drive, it doesn’t require any disk cloning or operating system migration.
The general rule of thumb is that the faster the memory, the better, and the more memory slots a system has, the more memory bandwidth is available. System memory has evolved over the years to provide more bandwidth while using less power (resulting in low-power DDR or LPDDR memory). HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) is another special type of memory that provides very high bandwidth to power the CPU (Apple M2) or GPGPU (like Nvidia H100).
The future of memory could very well come from a relatively unknown company called Neo Technology looking to bring 3D architecture to the current 2D RAM manufacturing process – similar to what happened to NAND with a technology called X-DRAM 3D.