- ASRock has revealed a new trick to beat high RAM prices
- HUDIMM DDR5 RAM modules are considerably more affordable
- They cut back on performance, however, so it's a trade-off here
There's a new type of DDR5 RAM in town, and it's cheaper, but before you start rejoicing that all your memory-related prayers have been answered, bear in mind that there are weighty caveats attached here.
Tom's Hardware noticed the announcement from ASRock about its new HUDIMM DDR5 RAM module for motherboards with Intel chipsets. In a nutshell, these are designed to be a good deal more affordable, but to achieve that, performance is dropped considerably.
A standard stick of DDR5 (UDIMM) uses a two-subchannel architecture (2 x 32-bit), but with HUDIMM (the 'HU' stands for Half Unbuffered), you get a single 32-bit subchannel instead.
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That sounds very technical, but what's happening is simple enough — the bandwidth and density of the RAM stick is effectively halved. And sticks that need fewer memory modules can, of course, be made a good deal more cheaply, because you're only buying half the chips to produce them.
As the company observed on X: "ASRock's HUDIMM architecture reduces chip count and cost, enabling more affordable and flexible system builds for users and system integrators worldwide."
Intel's Robert Hallock, VP and GM for its Enthusiast Channel Segment group, commented: "Innovations like ASRock's One sub-channel DRAM technology are crucial to ensuring desktop computing remains accessible despite the rising demand and costs for DDR5 memory.
"Intel's grateful for ASRock's support in bringing this to market for our 600/700/800-series chipsets, ensuring Intel users have more access to the benefits of DDR5 memory in the years ahead."
So, as noted, these new RAM offerings are compatible with ASRock's Intel 600, 700, and 800-series motherboards.
ASRock has hooked up with TeamGroup to produce these HUDIMM sticks, and needless to say, they'll be entry-level offerings. This RAM will also be manufactured for laptops, too, in the form of HSODIMMs.
Asus is reportedly looking into this type of memory, too, as per leaks on X, so we could see a broader shift towards HUDIMMs as the year progresses.
Analysis: sign of the RAM times
The catch is that the cutbacks made to this RAM mean that performance is going to be a lot slower. Is that a compromise you want to make? Perhaps it is, given the cost of DDR5 RAM right now, which has reached extortionate levels, frankly.
The twist is that ASRock's new way of working here can run alongside standard DDR5 RAM, which remains compatible in these motherboards. HUDIMM offers asymmetrical dual-channel support at the BIOS level, so you should be okay to put a HUDIMM next to a standard UDIMM, and they'll work fine in dual-channel mode (with 3 x 32-bit subchannels active — one from the HUDIMM, and a pair from the UDIMM).
If you had an 8GB HUDIMM stick alongside a 16GB UDIMM, this would, in theory, be a faster implementation than a single 24GB UDIMM stick. So you could, say, start with just an 8GB HUDIMM (or 16GB), and then expand with a UDIMM later (when pricing drops back down to a more reasonable level).
As Tom's points out, though, ASRock's marketing indicates a not inconsiderable 90ns latency with this RAM standard, and the proof will be in the pudding of how these sorts of theorized combos work out.
Meanwhile, HUDIMMs certainly represent one shortcut to lower DDR5 RAM pricing, but the compromise in terms of performance (away from mix-and-match scenarios) is going to be a heavy price in itself. Still, this may be an option some people wish to exercise, and I can't say I blame them, looking at what retailers are asking for run-of-the-mill DDR5 these days.
What this also serves as is a reminder of just how bad the RAM crisis has got, and the fact that hardware makers are looking at longer-term solutions such as this scheme isn't much comfort as to the prospective duration of this whole affair.
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