4 reasons you might need an SSD with DRAM in your gaming PC

When searching for a new SSD for your gaming PC, you may have come across the term DRAM or DRAM-less SSDs and wonder how this feature translates to performance in a gaming PC.

While upgrading from an HDD to an SSD can really boost your performance while gaming, upgrading from a DRAM-less SSD to an SSD with DRAM has a less noticeable difference. That being said, there are a few reasons why you might want an SSD with DRAM for your gaming PC.

What is DRAM?

Let’s find out

DRAM is an additional chip found on some SSDs that acts as a short-term memory or cache for the SSD. It stores a mapping table for your SSD, which keeps track of where data is on your NAND flash memory. It also acts as a short-term storage location for metadata and handles communication protocols between your SSD and processor.

DRAM-less SSDs perform the same way, except these processes are stored in the SSDs’ memory. This means it takes a DRAM-less SSD longer to perform these actions as it has to search through all the data to find these protocols instead of using a dedicated chip.

DRA

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How important is DRAM in SSDs?

Let’s break down why DRAM is a big deal for making your SSD work like a champ.

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Performance

A slight performance boost

SSDs with DRAM offer a minor performance boost over SSDs without DRAM in gaming, but this only accounts for a slight improvement that is mostly negligible for casual gamers. If you play games daily, though, this minuscule amount of time can add up and can offer you better performance, in addition to a longer lifespan for your SSD.

However, there is one specific area in gaming that can benefit from DRAM and that is in games with procedural generation, base building, as well as strategy games. This is because you are constantly adding new information to your game’s system and save files, which can take advantage of the way DRAM SSDs write new data.

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Using your PC for more than gaming

DRAM can help you in other areas

Usually we use our PCs for more than just one thing and while DRAM won’t give you the biggest boost in gaming itself, that doesn’t mean that it won’t be able to help your PC in other areas. For instance, if you are someone who records their gameplay and live streams while gaming or who edits videos using programs like Adobe Premiere Pro, then DRAM can help a lot.

This is because the processes are write-heavy, which means the DRAM can help your PC do this slightly faster and cause less wear and tear on your drive over its lifespan. Having an SSD with DRAM on your boot drive can improve speeds overall, but if you are just buying an SSD for long-term storage, then the drive won’t benefit as much.

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Updates and downloads

More efficient burst and sequential write speeds

While SSDs with DRAM do perform slightly better than DRAM-less SSDs, this performance boost is mostly negligible when it comes to gaming. For the most part, the performance boost will mainly be affecting write speeds on the SSD and not read speeds.

Unfortunately, most games rely more heavily on read speeds, with write speeds only being prevalent when saving the game or updating it. But if you are someone who constantly installs and uninstalls games from their PC, then DRAM can still benefit you.

If you play games that regularly add patches or updates, having DRAM on your SSD can speed up these processes. At the same time, installing and uninstalling new games or moving large game files across drives can benefit from DRAM and cause less wear on your drives.

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Longer lifespan

DRAM SSDs have better wear-leveling

When data is written to an SSD, it stores that data in memory cells. Unfortunately, every time data is written to a cell, it degrades slightly. To mitigate the degradation of memory cells, the SSD moves this data to different cells in order to prevent certain memory cells from degrading faster than others.

This process is called wear leveling and is performed by the controller in both DRAM and DRAM-less SSDs. Because the data is continually moving around different memory cells, the SSD must continually search for particular data.

This is where having DRAM gives you a slight edge. Because the mapping table is stored in the DRAM, it translates the stored data to a physical address, which makes it much easier for the SSD controller to find and retrieve it. On top of this, storing temporary data in the DRAM instead of the memory cells means fewer cells are damaged from constant re-writes of unimportant data.

In DRAM-less SSDs, the mapping table, communication protocols, and metadata are all stored in the NAND flash memory, which is also continuously rewritten and moved around the memory cells. This degrades the cells slightly faster and takes the drive longer to find the data it needs as it has to search for the mapping table and then search for the required data.

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How to tell if an SSD has DRAM

There are a couple of ways to tell whether you have a DRAM or DRAM-less SSD

So, is DRAM worth the extra cost? This entirely depends on your priorities. The average user probably wouldn’t notice a major difference when using a DRAM or DRAM-less SSD.

But if you want to build the best gaming PC possible, and you don’t mind spending the extra money on an SSD with DRAM, then there is no downside to getting it, and for some gamers, a split second here and there can mean the difference between life and death in a game.