Is RAM faster than an SSD? Honestly, it is a stupid yet intelligent question. RAM is much faster and much more accessible than SSDs. Even the slowest RAM can be about 2.8X faster than the fastest SSDs. My calculation comes from a few comparative studies.
The SK Hynix Gold P41 SSD is the fastest on the market and is also one of the most reliable drives to purchase.
Here are the specifications of the drive:
- What is it? – SK Hynix Platinum P41 1TB PCIe NVMe Gen4 M.2 2280 Internal SSD
- What are the Sequential Read speeds – Up to 7,000MB/S
- What are the Sequential Write speeds – 6,500 MB/s
- Random read IOPS (4K/QD32) – 1,400,000
- Random write IOPS (4K/QD32) – 1,300,000
- Warranty – 5 Years
- Endurance rating – 750 TBW
- MSRP (1TB) – $149.99
- How many layers of NAND? – 176-Layer NAND Flash
I know you would want to compare this to the fastest RAM. Honestly, G.SKILL Trident Z5 Breaks DDR5-8704 Overclocking World Record. To my knowledge, the vanilla non-clocked fastest RAM available on the market is G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin SDRAM DDR5 6400.
Do you still want to see the overclocked version? You can check this video from the link below.
Here are the specifications of the RAM:
- Model Name: G.Skill F5-6400J3239G16GX2-TZ5RK
- Memory Type: Unbuffered DDR5
- What is the memory Capacity – 2x 16GB capacity
- Rated Latency: 32-39-39-102
- Transfer Speeds? – 6,800 MT/s
- Read Speeds – 35,785 on our testing kit ( Results may vary )*
- Write Speeds – 32,607 on our testing kit. ( Results may vary )*
- XMP 3.0 memory profile? – Yes, supported.
- Operating voltage – 1.40V
- Warranty: Limited Lifetime
- XMP: Intel XMP 3.0 Ready
- Price: $569 | £555 | AU$1,079
The transfer speeds on the new DDR5 RAMs are 6800MT/s. 1MT/s equals 64 Megabit per second or 8 Megabytes per second. Do the calculations. The new DDR5 RAMs are capable of transferring 54400 Megabytes per second.
Is RAM faster than an SSD? Here are the results (SSD vs RAM Speed):
| Model Number | G.Skill F5-6400J3239G16GX2-TZ5RK | SK Hynix Platinum P41 PCIe NVMe Gen4 |
| Type | RAM | SSD |
| Operating voltage | 1.40V | 3.3V ± 5% |
| TransferSpeeds | 6,800 MT/s | 7,000MB/s Read / 6500MB/s Write |
| Warranty | Limited Lifetime | 5 Years |
| Price | $569 | £555 | AU$1,079 | $149.99 |
The SK Hynix Platinum P41 1TB PCIe NVMe outputs about 7000 MB/s Sequential Read speeds / 6500 MB/s Write speeds. The comparison is quite a gap. SSDs are fast but nowhere near the speed of a Random Access Memory. The fastest Hynix Platinum P41 PCIe NVMe outputs about 7000 MB/s which is 7.8x slower than the fastest G.Skill F5-6400J3239G16GX2-TZ5RK RAM.
An interesting fact, an SSD can be used as a swap memory for RAM. We can see this implementation with a few Android smartphones and MacBooks. Anyways, if you have other results, let us know in the comments section below. Does your friend have this question, “Is RAM faster than an SSD?” Share this article with those friends.