The DDR5 era has officially begun. This means that the first consumer kits of DDR5 RAM are now available on retail sites such as Amazon and Newegg, but if you buy one, you will have to wait until Alder Lake comes out later this year.

This is because the consumer platform does not yet support DDR5 memory. But that will change if Alder Lake and its accompanying Intel 600 series chipsets are released before the switch to the new year. However, TeamGroup decided not to wait and released a 32GB DDR5-4800 kit to retailers.

The "Elite" kit, as it is labeled, consists of two 16GB modules. Timings are quite loose, 40-40-40-77. To put these numbers in perspective, G.Skill's 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-4800 Trident Z RGB memory kit has much tighter timings, 20-30-30-50.

Technically, you can choose between DDR5 and DDR4, as Alder Lake will support both DDR5 and DDR4 memory types when it comes out. However, they will not be on the same motherboard, and it remains to be seen how DDR4 boards for Alder Lake will compare to DDR5 boards (both in terms of performance and available features). But that is a discussion for another day. [A few weeks ago, TeamGroup announced that 32GB DDR5-4800 memory kits would be available for $400 by the end of the month. It was actually a bit cheaper, selling for $311 on Amazon and Newegg before selling out.

Considering the speed, capacity, and the fact that it is a new generation product, this price is not bad. But don't buy it even if it restocks, for one, TeamGroup's first DDR5 kits are true to JEDEC's baseline specs; DDR4 sells a 5,333 MT/s kit, well above JEDEC's 3,200 MT/s.

Newegg's first DDR5 kits sold for $311, which was a fraction of the price of the JEDEC kits.

Second, there is no point in buying a memory kit only to leave it for a few months; you can use one of the DIMMs as a short back scratch, but there are much cheaper alternatives for such things.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see how DDR5 affects performance when Alder Lake comes out and when AMD's Zen 4 launches next year. It will also be interesting to see what other DDR5 kits hit retail shelves this year and whether any of them will be faster than 4,800 MT/sec.