Maingear Takes On Rising DDR5 Prices With BYO RAM PC Builds

Maingear, a well-respected boutique PC builder, has taken note of the ongoing RAM crisis and is attempting to offer a potential solution, beyond simply raising prices. Its solution is a new "BYO RAM", or "Bring Your Own RAM" program, which accepts a user's shipment of DDR5 RAM with an order of a custom PC. Maingear will take the RAM, install it into the pre-configured system, and tune it, for no extra charge. The user will still have to pay for parts and labor on the rest of the prebuilt PC, of course, but that's a reasonable ask—and compared to the way other system integrators have been raising prices, there should be some savings for PC buyers with this approach.

With the RAM crisis having no end in sight, it's nice of Maingear to provide a unique solution like this for people who want their PCs built and tuned by experts without paying inflated RAM prices. Of course, using this program means that you'll have to shop for memory deals on your own and then ship the memory to Maingear, but it's a great way to save a few bucks, especially if you're unwilling or don't want to build the entire PC yourself.


Maingear's official promotional page, pictured above, allows buyers to start from a baseline of one of five pre-configured Maingear PC builds. Selecting BYO RAM shaves off an average of $300 from the price, since Maingear's PCs are outfitted with 32GB of DDR5 RAM as a baseline. As is the case with other boutique PC builders, you can still expect to pay a premium for select, pre-qualified hardware assembled and shipped from expert system builders, but any money that can be saved when buying boutique is a welcome development.