ASRock and MSI have announced that their motherboards now support up to 256GB of DDR5 RAM. That includes mid and low-end consumer-grade models, bringing higher capacities to all users.
For a long time, the maximum RAM capacity consumers could hope for was 128GB. But during this year we saw the debut of 192GB support by Asus, MSI, plus many other brands. Today, with the advent of 64GB modules, this limit has been further pushed to 256GB. 128GB on dual-slot, and 256GB on quad-slot boards, to be exact. SFF PC builders rejoice.
Yet the best part is that you won’t even need a fancy board like ASRock’s Z790 Nova or MSI’s MEG Z690 Unify. MSI demonstrated this capacity on a £250 Pro X670-P WiFi motherboard. Moreover, both Intel and AMD platforms will be compatible. This should offer even higher multitasking capabilities for those who need it regardless of the product tier.
In both instances, it seems that Kingston is providing its Fury RAM kits. According to CPU-Z, these are DDR5-6000 CL36 modules made with Micron chips. However, these kits were not running at their rated frequency during validation. In the case of MSI, they run at 4,800MT/s, with ASRock opting for a slower 4,400MT/s. Apparently, there’s still a bit of work left before prime time.
Finally, MSI indicates that it’s working towards full support for this enhanced memory capacity, and will reveal compatible platforms and BIOS updates soon.
If you own boards from other brands, you can expect official support announcements soon. Just give them time to make sure everything works as intended. No one likes bad surprises.
