What is RAM? Here’s everything you need to know
Random-access memory, or RAM, is an essential component in everything from desktop computers to smartphones. RAM is a high-speed, short-term storage solution that gives applications, games, and the operating system itself, quick access to important information. That saves it the time of retrieving the data from much slower storage, like hard drives and SSDs.
Like other components in your devices, though, there are many different types of RAM. RAM speed can be affected by its type, the model, or its generation, and its price can vary wildly depending on the capacity you’re buying, and what device it’s going into.
If this is all semantics and you need to know how to install some RAM or want to find out how much RAM you need, we have guides for that, too.
What is RAM, and what does it do?
RAM is essentially a device’s short-term memory. It reads information that an application or operating system might need in the near future and stores it temporarily for quick access by the CPU, graphics card, or any other component that might need it. That information stays in the RAM, readily accessible, until you shut down the program or restart your device. Then the RAM is cleared and ready to receive new, relevant data.
Like the cache on a CPU, RAM makes it so that other components don’t have to fetch data from the device’s slower storage — like a hard drive or even a solid-state drive (SSD) — every time you request a new browser tab or load a new enemy to shoot. As fast as modern storage is compared to drives of years gone by, they’re still far slower than RAM. However, those storage components are necessary because they provide the longer-term storage of that data when the RAM is no longer powered.
What are the different types of RAM?
“RAM” or “memory” typically refers to dynamic random access memory (DRAM), or more accurately for modern systems, synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM). The terminology doesn’t matter beyond technicalities, but it’s useful to know that
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