DDR5 is too expensive so ASUS makes a DDR5 to DDR4 adapter for Intel Alder Lake

The 600 series chipset motherboards for Intel's Alder Lake-S come in a couple of flavors offering both DDR5 and DDR4 motherboard options. We made a handy guide to try and make the choice easier for buyers. However, DDR5 desktop DRAM right now is nearly impossible to get as stocks are low and prices are exorbitant. On places like eBay, scalpers are demanding up to $5,000 for DDR5 kits.

So for those who have already bought a DDR5 motherboard, ASUS has devised a new adapter that can fit a DDR4 kit onto a DDR5 motherboard.

The product is certainly interesting, though it could prove impractical in the case of those users where the air cooler obstructs the installation of this device. That's because the adapter is quite tall as it has to accommodate a lot of the power delivery functions on the adapter PCB itself since DDR5 motherboards lack such functionality due to the power management integrated circuits (PMIC) being on the DDR5 modules themselves.

This adapter is necessary since the pinout and module keying of the two DRAM types is different even though both feature a 288 pin count.