On the one hand, given the global memory shortage and astronomical RAM prices, it's hard to get excited about any news from the memory industry. On the other hand, there's always the chance that developments could alleviate some of the supply strain, and today we have the latter: Chinese memory has broken the 9,000 MT/s barrier.

That's according to Colorful, which shared the accomplishment on Chinese social media site Weibo (via TechPowerUp).

The company says: "Following its impressive overclocking results of 8600 MT/s and 8800 MT/s, the Colorful iGame X870E VULCAN W OC motherboard has achieved another breakthrough, successfully reaching a high frequency of 9000 MT/s when paired with iGame Shadow II 24G×2 domestically produced memory chips, unlocking a new height in the overclocking field of domestically produced memory chips on the AM5 platform."

So, that's 48 GB of "domestically produced", ie, Chinese, DDR5 RAM hitting 9,000 MT/s. Admittedly, we're far beyond that with Western memory, having hit over 8,700 MT/s all the way back in 2021 and 10,000 MT/s the following year. Now, we're at over 13,000 MT/s.

Still, 9,000 is an achievement for Chinese memory and shows how fast the country is progressing in its DRAM development. In fact, Asus ROG also recently shared that Chinese memory now works at 6,000 MT/s with low CAS latency timings of C28 and C30. Notably, this is exactly the kind of fast DDR5 RAM we like to buy for gaming PCs in the West: DDR5-6000 memory with low latency.

The main Chinese memory maker is CXMT, and we've recently seen the company's shares surge as it continues to collect more of the global memory market. This is possible because there's just so much demand for memory these days, thanks to the AI boom, that demand far outstrips supply and will do for quite some time.

Importantly for us gamers, we've even started seeing Chinese RAM land in laptops from companies such as HP, Asus, and Acer, but only in the Chinese market. Even if Chinese RAM only ends up in the Chinese market, however, CXMT's expansion still makes for more memory supply globally, and any dent in demand can't be a bad thing for prices.

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But there's me putting my hopeful face on again. The fact that demand will outstrip supply is said to be accounting for CXMT's growth, too, so let's not get carried away. We're still in it for the long haul.

Jacob got his hands on a gaming PC for the first time when he was about 12 years old. He swiftly realised the local PC repair store had ripped him off with his build and vowed never to let another soul build his rig again. With this vow, Jacob the hardware junkie was born. Since then, Jacob's led a double-life as part-hardware geek, part-philosophy nerd, first working as a Hardware Writer for PCGamesN in 2020, then working towards a PhD in Philosophy for a few years while freelancing on the side for sites such as TechRadar, Pocket-lint, and yours truly, PC Gamer. Eventually, he gave up the ruthless mercenary life to join the world's #1 PC Gaming site full-time. It's definitely not an ego thing, he assures us.