Crucial is a brand of Micron, and Micron is well known for quality memory components. Today we have a Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory kit for the desktop PC for review. This is a great kit that has just the right specs and price for any modern gaming PC using DDR4.

Crucial created the Ballistix Elite to work flawlessly with both AMD Ryzen 3000 series and Intel Platforms, The memory uses XMP 2.0 profiles for easy setup and configuration. For those curious power users out there, Crucial created their “M.O.D. Utility”, which is software for real-time temperature monitoring.

DDR5 RAM from Crucial = next-level performance

We sometimes see fake screws implemented for design purposes, but the Crucial Ballistix Elite uses actual screws to mount the top bar. The top bar has a rectangular fin design and is held to the heat spreaders with two screws on each side. The side heat spreaders are composed of two pieces for each side.

While not exactly on the same level as Samsung B-die, the Ballistix memory kit was close enough. We tuned the primary timings down to 14-16-16-36 by applying a 1.45V DRAM voltage. Bottom Line Print your file. You will want to use translucent PLA or ABS for your printing. Colored printing material will obviously not allow light through, so stay away from colors. If you’re printing translucent for the first time, make sure to do some test prints and create a profile with the appropriate temperature and printer settings to get the best results. Prepare and slice the file in your printing program. For printing settings, we recommend you put the infill percentage to 0. This will help with allowing the LED lights to shine through the object better. You should also use a perimeter wall of 1-3, any more than that will restrict the ability of the light to shine through. Make sure to also repair your object to ensure it is manifold if your printing program recommends this. The Geekbench 4 results show a slight deviation from the expected result. Again, the relative performance differs by a fraction of a percent, but for half of the tests, Crucial Ballistix Elite wins. This could be attributed to the slightly different timing profile. However, when it’s this close, run-to-run variance and experimental error become real factors for consideration. Crucial was founded on the belief that everyday consumers can, and should, have the ability to improve their computers through do-it-yourself memory upgrades. Greeted enthusiastically, Crucial provided the first-ever opportunity for end users to buy memory direct from a major manufacturer – Crucial

Looks can be deceiving.

As we might expect, the Ballistix Elite faired fractionally worse than the Trident Z Neo. While they were remarkably close in performance, due to the fact that both are running 3600 MHz, G.SKill is running tighter primary timings which give them the edge here.

WinRAR is an old benchmark, but still quite useful in modern computing. It evaluates performance by simulating file management tasks such as compression and extraction. Here we see a noticeable trend of 3600 MHz, with tight timings being the overall winner. Install the modules with your custom light bars into your motherboard. Make sure your system is powered off and you’ve grounded yourself. As with the AIDA64 memory test results, interpreting the SISandra memory results are favoring different profiles depending on the test. The high-frequency profiles are clearly better for the Cache & latency test, while tighter timings are showed better scaling in the transactional throughput test. In ZenTimings you can see that the DRAM frequency is exactly 1967MHz and FCLK and UCLK are also 1967MHz. The timings remain at 16-18-18-18-38 CR 1T. In TestMem5 you can see that these settings completely passed the memory test with no errors. Next up is Geekbench 3, and it has proven itself to be an excellent tool for determining the real-world performance of the system being tested. This type of benchmark is a purely 2D calculation based, and there is no graphical processing element, so it’s a great analytical tool to evaluate memory performance.Below is the test system and resulting memory speeds that will be used to evaluate the memory and run the benchmarks. Test Setup When purchasing DDR4 memory, the main factors to consider, other than memory size or physical features, are the operating frequency and timings. The XMP is a memory profile stored inside the actual memory, which allows the user to easily apply the rated frequency and timings. Today, we will be evaluating the 3600 MHz CL16-18-18 memory kit. In the table below, we examine the particular details of our test memory.​ Crucial Ballistix Elite DDR4 3600 Import the light bar into the 3D editing software of your choice. Blender ®, Netfabb ®, FreeCAD, Autodesk ® Fusion 360 ™, SketchUp ® are some software options that are free or have trial versions. Note: Different programs will have different ways to import 3D printing files.

As the Thaiphoon Burner screenshot shows, this specific kit of memory is composed of Micron E-Die ICs.

If you are searching for the best Micron IC, you can find it in Ballistix memory kits. As the manufacturer says, Ballistix optimizes performance at the die level instead of only binning as all other brands do. This is, in fact, true. If we take any other RAM based on Micron IC, it’s somehow worse and usually sold at a lower frequency or more relaxed timings than the Ballistix series. Clean your print of any burrs or hair to make it look as good as possible. Using a small X-ACTO ® knife is best for this, and of course, be very careful when doing this. Remove the existing light bar by pushing out the mounting pegs, then install the one you just created. Our memory kit has one XMP profile, programmed to run at DDR4-3600 CL16-18-18 and 1.35V. This is already pretty good as most new series are more often rated at DDR4-3600 CL18-22-22 and cost about as much.