Surprise! DDR3 isn’t dead—and it might be the budget PC gaming answer you need

Go back to DDR4 because of memory shortages? Nah. That’s too new.

DIY builders are already making do with older hardware. Many are squeezing more life out of AM4 systems—building newer configs around existing DDR4 memory kits. But the real champions? They’re kicking it all the way back to DDR3.

When I first heard news about this last week, it seemed a novelty. Something being done halfway across the globe, in a market different than my own. But as it turns out, you can actually run Cyberpunk 2077 at about 60fps on an overclocked Core i7-4790K, RTX 2060 Super, and 32GB DDR3-1866 RAM.

YouTuber RandomGaminginHD pulled Intel’s venerable Devil’s Canyon back into commission, just to see how it holds up in 2026. And surprisingly, it does pretty well—Team Blue’s 2014 flagship processor can still handle modern AAA games, with average benchmark results hovering near or exceeding 60 fps in Balder’s Gate 3, Battlefield 6, Counter-Strike 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, GTA 5, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, and Red Dead Redemption 2. Most of the games were tested with High presets or textures, with some other settings downgraded to Medium to coax out this level of performance.

Does this mean I’ll immediately dust off my own Devil’s Canyon system and put it back in service? Actually, yes—for reasons I think many fellow enthusiasts will understand. RandomGaminginHD’s findings show positives, but also 1 percent and 0.1 percent lows that significantly drop from the average. (Fortnite posted 115.2 fps on average, but 1 percent and 0.1 percent lows of 40 fps and 20.1 fps, respectively.) I’d like to remind myself how that feels before I start making deeper-cut recommendations to friends, or even giving away my older systems.

I’ve already been fielding questions on what to upgrade and when to upgrade. Some have hunkered down. Others want to help get their kids into PC gaming but aren’t sure where to start or if they can afford it. Many of you doing informal tech support will probably end up doling out advice in the coming months, too. 

But not all of us still have a full range of older hardware to try out with newer games. For that reason, I appreciate this direction of coverage from the DIY building community—a nice way to make lemonade out of lemons.

The folks who will keep putting in the work to dig out old hardware, they’re going to be among our DIY heroes for the near future. Letting us know which modern games we can play on various old-school configurations, what settings to tune to reduce spikey frame rates, and how far back we can go if someone is targeting their backlog instead of the latest and greatest. (A very realistic option, given how many great games have launched over the last decade alone.)

Because you know what? I’m using this info right now to help others. But if my own PC ever goes down and I can’t afford an upgrade for a while, this work will help me, too.

In this episode of The Full Nerd

In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith discuss the supposed death of the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5060 Ti (and the actual likelihood of survival of those cards), plus the reports of fried 9800X3D CPUs. We also answer a boatload of audience questions, with some coming in hot and heavy.

Adam also tests the limits of German Mindesthaltbarkeitsdatum recommendations (analogous to our “Best By” dates in the U.S.) by eating a BiFi Roll XXL one day after its “expiration.”

He also made everyone sitting near him smell it. As you might have guessed.

Alex Esteves / Foundry

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And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds.

This week’s varied nerd news

Sure, plenty of news this week emphasized things we already knew about AI, including SSD and memory pricing. But around the edges of that was more typical January quietness—and some unexpected reports, like deploying drones to deal with bears. Yeah.

DJI

• Uh, what? I literally said this when I read the headline about a Japanese city having to use drone warfare on bears. I had no idea going four hours north of Tokyo would land you in the middle of bear country.

• Speaking of DDR4 builds: Curious how much it costs for a DDR4 build right now? Tom’s Hardware did a quick set of Intel and AMD sample builds with an RTX 5060 Ti, with the damage hitting around $1,300.

• Nope right out of that: Use Starlink? You should probably opt out of allowing the company to use your data to train AI.

• When capitalism works in your favor: A rare moment when a company with too much money makes a decision that actually benefits you very unexpectedly. Enjoy your free 5080, u/spaceman329.

Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry

• AMD’s 9850X3D hits soon: We have a launch date and price for the upcoming X3D chip at last. Looks like we won’t have to wait long.

• Space-brain is real: Apparently, hurtling yourself into space reorients your brain within your skull. Yeah.

• “Damn, it’s pretty”: So said my colleague Michael Crider when I sent him this link about a Alien-themed cyberdeck, built with a Raspberry Pi. It is pretty cool. (I still refuse to watch that movie because I’m a big wussy baby.)

• I am not the person I was: Thankfully, Google recognizes that as well. We can all now finally revive old accounts we had to retire because addresses like [email protected] weren’t exactly a thing to put on a resume.

• Why? Why not: In case you missed it: Gamers Nexus hung out with a repair shop owner who made an RTX 4090 with 48GB memory. Yep.

I’ve been feeling slightly chilly in my corner of the world, but you know what? After hearing from Brad about the coming snowpocalypse, I’m just gonna stay quiet over here. And be grateful I can go outside without freezing my face off. Stay warm and safe out there, east coast U.S. folks! (And anyone else affected by the polar vortex.)

Alaina

This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld.