DDR5 Confusion - What should I be looking to buy

S33A

S33A

S33A

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So, I'm building a new machine, finally.

4090, 13900k, Asus Maximus Hero Z790.

Looking at memory, watching countless youtube content videos, I'm still confused about what I should be buying.

I play a lot of different games, from WOW, to MW2 and then quite a bit of DCS. Work wise, it's Photoshop, Illustrator.

If I were buying DDR4 I'd be pushing for 64gb or more, specifically for DCS benefit. However on DDR5, I'm not sure if that's the best option. I've seen some content saying going above 32gb at the moment, cripples performance. Others saying it's fine. Given the price of DDR5, it's not something I want to buy, then replace because I bought the wrong kit.

I've then read loads / watched loads about wanting to have Hynix over Samsung etc.

Basically, I think I'm at a point of over consumption of content. But with it being Black Friday, ideally I'd like to sort memory this week and get the system moving forward.

Long story short, what is the recommended DDR5 setup, based on the system above and roughly for my use case?
 
Performance of DDR5 in gaming and productivity seems fairly agnostic to what you buy, in the benchmarks I've seen practically any kit offers decent performance and bog-standard reasonably priced 5600 C36 (or 6000) is sufficient.

I assume the issue you're referring to, about going above 32GB, is in relation to having 4 sticks? Since there's been a lot of trouble with running 4 sticks in 12th gen systems (not sure about AM5, or 13th gen) and both Intel and AMD heavily de-rate their supported memory frequencies if you run 4 sticks. I don't believe the issue applies to the same extent, with 64GB kits (2x32GB), but these will be dual rank, which places more load on the memory controller than the single rank 16GB sticks, so there's a potential for problems there.

For me, having seen the benchmarks, I'd buy the 32GB DDR5 5200 Corsair kit you can get for £130 (if you buy two, you'll have 64GB cheaper than most 32GB kits) and because it is so cheap (relatively), just accept whatever it will run at. But, since you're buying a 13900K and Z790 Hero, I doubt that's going to be a palatable option.
 
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DDR5 issue was about 4 sticks, not capacity.
Going dual 32GB is possible, but price and latency will suffer a bit.
I would aim at 5600 minimum. 6000 maximum. Faster will cost much more and won’t net much gains, at least for now.
 
FYI i have the Z790 Hero & 13900k, i just have some Dell 4800 plain green sticks which i can run 7400Mhz, but as i daily profile i stick with 7000 C32 with tight sub timings. If i were to buy a kit i'd most likely have a decent Hynix m die kit such as G skills 6400 kit, these will run fine at xmp but also tune well to 7k+ with low timings. Most kits that are rated 7200mhz+ are Hynix A die based and these can scale to 8000mhz and beyond but i personally think these would be a waste on the Hero with it being a 4 dimm board design. The A die kits need to be run high to match performance of good m die.
Also check on the Asus support page for QVL, try and get something on the list for better compatibility
rog.asus.com

ROG MAXIMUS Z790 HERO | Gaming motherboards｜ROG - Republic of Gamers｜ROG Global

The ROG Maximus Z790 Hero makes builds soar with its immense 20-stage power solution, hyperspeed DDR5 memory, and next-gen PCIe 5.0 connectivity. It features five M.2 SSD slots with heatsinks, Thunderbolt™ 4 and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 support, Wi-Fi 6E, AI Overclocking, AI Cooling II, AI Networking...
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