How to Check Your RAM Speed

Press Alt+Ctrl+Delete to open the Task Manager. Then, click the Performance tab. Next, Click on Memory and look at the bottom-right corner of the window. Your RAM speed is shown on the “Speed” line in Megahertz (MHz).

It can be useful to check your RAM speed to see how fast your computer can access local memory. While this is not the most important factor for your computer’s performance, it’s still useful information.

How to Check Your RAM Speed on Windows 11

To check your RAM speed on a Windows 11 computer, start by opening the Task Manager. You can quickly launch the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc keys. You can also right-click an empty space on your taskbar and select “Task Manager.

Now, click the “Performance” tab on the left sidebar. It has a zig-zagging line in a box.

When you do, you’ll see a list that shows the performance of your CPU, Memory, Disk, Wi-Fi, and GPUs. Click Memory to see your RAM speed as well as other details.

Towards the bottom-right, you’ll see a line labeled “Speed”: this is your RAM Speed.

While you’re here, you might as well check some of your other memory-related stats. There’s a lot of useful information here, such as your in-use and available memory, how much memory you have committed, how much memory is cached, and more.

How to Check Your RAM Speed on Windows 10

On Windows 10, open the Task Manager to check your RAM speed. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch it, or right-click the taskbar and select “Task Manager.”

Click the “Performance” tab at the top of the Task Manager window. (If you don’t see it, click “More details” at the bottom of the window.)

On the left side, click “Memory” to show information relating to your computer’s memory stats. At the bottom-right corner of the window, you’ll see a line that reads “Speed”: this is your RAM speed.

Like on Windows 11, you’ll find additional bits of important information here, including the amount of RAM your PC has and how many RAM slots are full.

Why Does RAM Speed Matter?

The higher your RAM speed, the quicker your computer can access data stored in your computer’s local memory. However, there are other factors that are more important to your PC’s performance, such as RAM timings, RAM type, and RAM size.

All of these aspects work in conjunction with one another. With that said, a good rule of thumb for computer hardware is that the bigger the number, the better. In this case, the faster your RAM speed, the better your computer will perform.

Also, keep in mind that there are diminishing returns when it comes to RAM speed: doubling or tripling your RAM speed does not proportionally increase your computer’s performance. It certainly makes an improvement, but not at a one-to-one ratio.

Should You Increase Your RAM Speed to Increase Your Computer’s Performance?

If you need to increase the performance of your PC, it would be better to get more RAM, decrease how much RAM applications use, or straight-up upgrade or replace your RAM chips.

Personal computers are complex machines. In general, one component can often be the bottleneck—for gaming, for example, GPU speed will be much more important than RAM speed. While faster RAM is definitely better, you may not see a noticeable improvement from upgrading RAM speed in many workloads, and it may be better to invest in upgrading components like your CPU, GPU, or SSD.