I'm probably going to sound very ungrateful here. A port in a storm, a flashlight in a cave, a spring in a desert; you should always appreciate the small victories in life, but there's a certain degree of irony to Corsair running a 25% sale on its best RAM for gaming right now.
We're in the middle of a RAM pricing apocalypse due to AI stealing the world's supply, so prices have inflated by gargantuan margins. Where 16GB of DDR5 would have cost you $65.99 at Amazon before, it'll now set you back a torturous $249.99 at Amazon - a whole 309% pricing increase over what was a very affordable upgrade for your gaming PC.
Corsair is doing what it can to alleviate these stupid, awful, rubbish pricing woes by running a sale that's exclusive to its own website. It offers you a (brace yourself) 25% off any of the RAM available over there, which is both beautifully generous at this particular point in time and also a laughable excuse for anyone to call a "discount".
Maybe I'm just bitter at the sheer margins AI infrastructure is impacting all sorts of consumer markets, but come on. 25% off is not going to do an awful lot to make the $1,071 price of 64GB of DDR5 any easier in reality. You still shouldn't consider paying $800 for some computer memory after a 25% reduction. While I'm one of those weirdos who is actually kind of fond of RAM, even I wouldn't argue you're going to notice serious performance increases from that kind of purchase when gaming compared to spending the same amount on a new graphics card or processor.
But on balance, a few of these offers aren't a complete waste of time. The one I've highlighted above does help to bring an entry level set of memory sticks down to a somewhat helpful price (by today's standards). I still want to vomit at the thought of recommending you 16GB of DDR5 for over $150, but desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.
I don't blame Corsair here, since I don't think the brand is at all trying to use malicious sales tactics, but a little more context around this "sale" would be welcome. There's no information to say that its collection of memory has increased massively in price lately, so if a newcomer to PC building has been out of the loop and goes to upgrade now, they might not realise that they're being robbed in blind daylight.
To be fair to Corsair's marketing, it's not like the brand is really broadcasting that this is a big sale. The brand hasn't had the gall to use strikethrough prices on its memory to indicate "was" and "now" pricing. Instead, you'll need to use the code "DDR5-25SHOP" to get your 25% "saving".
Before you do grab something through Corsair's website right now, please check if you actually need to upgrade your RAM first. Also, feel free to compare the kit you find with the absolute best DDR5 RAM deals I could find last week. If you're not married to a big-name like Corsair, you might be able to save yourself even more of your hard-earned cash.
For more, take a look at the best gaming PCs, the best gaming PCs in the UK, and the best CPU for gaming.
