Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608 Review

"Ask any PC enthusiast and they'll tell you that system heat is a constant concern", said Crucial Ballistix senior product manager, Jeremy Mortenson. The new Crucial Ballistix kit comes with a pair of innovations in memory cooling. The first one is an improved heat spreader design compared to the old models. This isn't such a big innovation in the memory market but the second will be an interesting one for sure. Crucial added thermal sensors for temperature monitoring via software. Since we're PC enthusiasts at Benchmark Reviews, the BL2KIT25664FN160 kit from Crucial couldn't miss our benchmark's suite and tests.

Crucial designed this kit for Intel P55 platforms, but practically every Intel platform can take advantage of the new Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608. While they mention Intel XMP support is recommended it's not really necessary at all, and it shouldn't hinder the functionality. Crucial is considered one of the best brands in the memory market, mainly because they have many choices available which are manufactured by Micron Technology with a big reputation behind them including the high quality and overclocking results. Crucial has kept a very simple design for their RAM heat-spreaders but today the BL2KIT25664FN1608 is taking the step to the big heat sinks which by the way, have been already used in many other brands from a pair of years before to these days.

Crucial knows the market and how to make good products, so I'm expecting very good results this time, but at the other hand, since "Thermal Sensors" via software are new to the RAM technology, it might not be what I'm expecting for. Hopefully, the review will reveal all the secrets of this kit by the time it comes to an end. While I remember Crucial packages were plain brown boxes with the brand's logo on the top, this time they're shipping a more appealing blister. Check it out:

The blister contains a pair of 2GB DIMMs with their heat-spreader already installed. There's a seal at the bottom remarking their limited lifetime warranty and they catalogue this kit as "Premium Memory". There's no CD or software to measure temperatures included, but you can go to their homepage and download it for free (it supports both 32 & 64 bit OSs). Benchmark Reviews will test this kit paired with a P55 high-end platform which will be explained later.

About Crucial Technology

A wholly owned subsidiary of Micron Technology, Inc., Lexar Media, Inc. boasts one of the most comprehensive offerings of memory product lines in the industry. We deliver high-quality, award-winning products in every memory category: USB flash drives, all popular form factors of memory cards and card readers, DRAM computer memory for PCs and Mac systems, and solid state drives (SSD). We back our products with outstanding customer support and industry-leading warranties, and we strive to expand our offerings to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers - customers just like you.

The Lexar brand has long been synonymous with reliable, high-performance products, which is reflected in the award-winning memory products and USB flash drives sold under the Lexar name.

Our Crucial brand reflects our status as the only consumer memory upgrade supplier that's part of a major DRAM manufacturer. We sell high-quality memory that has been qualified and approved by most major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The Crucial.com website features innovative online tools and an intuitive design that makes it easy to find compatible memory and recommended upgrades. And because we carry over 250,000 upgrades for more than 40,000 systems, we've got options for nearly every system out there.

Lexar Media has more than 10 years experience in the memory industry. Our strong retail brands, along with our direct online and OEM presence, make Lexar Media a global player in every major customer channel, including value-added resellers, system builders, and e-commerce. And we've built a name synonymous with quality, innovation, and customer service.

About Micron Technology

Micron is one of the world's leading providers of advanced semiconductor solutions. Micron's DRAM and Flash components are used in today's most advanced computing, networking, and communications products, including computers, workstations, servers, cell phones, wireless devices, digital cameras, and gaming systems.

Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608 Specifications

The next list shows the specifications of the Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608 kit. While most of them are very simple and almost obvious, you might find interesting Crucial didn't decided to use low voltage ICs. By the specifications, they are sending us a very simple kit with a nominal voltage of 1.65v and a default frequency of 1600MHz. The timings aren't very tight either, so while the kit looks very simple, I hope we can get some interesting results for our readers.

• Mainboard: Intel
• System: Desktop
• System Type: DDR3
• M/B Chipset: Intel P55/H55/H57
• CAS Latency: 8-8-8-24-2N
• Capacity: 4GB (2GBx2)
• Speed: DDR3-1600 (PC3 12800)
• Test Voltage: 1.65 Volts
• Registered/Unbuffered: Unbuffered
• Error Checking: Non-ECC
• Type: 240-pin DIMM
• Part Number: BL25664FN1608
• Memory Clock/Data Bit Rate: 1.25ns/1600MT/s

Closer Look: Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608

Leaving aside the simple blisters included in (almost) all memory kits, the Crucial Ballistix kit offers great aesthetics. They kept their original yellow/black colors but mixed them up with a killer looking heatsink. Talking about heat sinks, I fear this kind of high-profile spreaders might hinder the installation of a high-end Heatsink on the CPU. Many people prefer low-profile heat sinks for that reason, and many kits have proved they don't need big heat sinks to run cool and overclock like beasts.

At the front of the DIMMs, each one has a yellow strip with the Ballistix Logo printed at the center of it. The PCB color is black, which is very common from Crucial and overall, they look great. One hard thing you might encounter here is: how will you combine these colors with your motherboard and PC case to make them look in context with your PC?

The backside of the heat spreader is black-colored and has a little sticker on it. I'd have preferred to have both sides mixed with yellow and black, but that might be just me. The position of the DIMM sockets in your motherboard will make the black side point to your CPU, so you probably won't notice it.

Having a closer look, the heatsink comes with the specifications printed in one border. Barely just above the gold pins, there is the SPD Integrated circuit which has the thermal sensor. That means that we are going to be measuring the overall PCB temperature and not exactly the memory's chip temperature. This is kind of obvious since memories do NOT include the thermal sensor from factory, and it would be very difficult for Crucial to add it to the overall memory IC design.

Here's one last shoot of the new heat spreaders. They look very cool, and hopefully will work cool too. Overall, Crucial did a good job on the aesthetics of this kit. Will the performance and overclocking capabilities be as good as the aesthetics? Let's find it out.

Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608 SPD

The Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608 kit comes with 3 programmed JEDECs and one XMP profile. Those JEDECs have very low frequencies and relaxed timings to ensure motherboard's support at 1.5 volts. The XMP works at a rated 1600MHz frequency and 8-8-8-24-2T timings. Benchmark Reviews will test if this kit works at 1T command rate and how low does voltage can go without losing stability. Have a look at the CPU-Z SPD section.

Additionally, I always like to add a picture of CPU Tweaker since it reports a more complete list of timings and it confirms the readings obtained with CPU-Z.

Our first test is to check the memory will work at default settings to detect if any DIMM comes broken or damaged. I set Memtest 4 to cover all unused RAM and test it for 2-3 hours until it passes 100% just to check for any errors. I first thought one DIMM was damaged since I couldn't boot easily even with stock settings. Every time I tried to boot, I had to turn the machine off and turn it on again until it POSTed. Anyway, when I managed to get to the OS the memory showed 0 signs of instability, and I tried any benchmarks just to confirm it was stable.

I did a BIOS update to the most recent1706 version for the ASUS Maximus III Formula but it didn't solve the problem. Finally, I thought it was a cold boot problem. Yes...if you have suffered cold boot problems with any kind of hardware, it seems this kit had it also. That would be a very BAD step for Crucial with their first thermal-sensor-equipped kit, and it was getting to obvious. Any time I started the PC I had to wait until the memory get passed a certain temperature to boot up, which didn't take more than 30 seconds, but the bug was still there.

When I was almost ready to write this against the product it suddenly stopped. I have been using this kit for several days now without having any problems when booting and I didn't changed anything at the BIOS. Maybe this was a coincidence or a BETA kit, but again, the kit is working 100% stable without problems and there are little chances to experience something similar to what happened to me.

Memtest 4.1 has been running for 3 hours testing all unused RAM. At 116% coverage it doesn´t shows any errors yet.

Ballistix Memory Overview Display Utility

You probably have been thinking how Crucial shows the temperatures of your RAM, right? Well, since they added a thermal sensor to the PCB this will be the first time you'll be able to monitor your DIMMs from your screen. Crucial recently launched the MOD Utility which is a very simple application with 32 & 64 bit Windows OSs support which shows the SPD Data and temperatures of your memory installed.

The second tab shows the temperatures per DIMM. It shows a little graph per slot (where a DIMM is installed) and you can even log the temperature every interval of time to a file.

Finally, the settings tab is where you can select your temperature's unit (Celsius and Fahrenheit), and the update intervals of the chart and file's log. The "About" Tab shows the info of the creators and current version of the utility installed. That's pretty much what Crucial is offering as an extra value for this kit, and they say they aren't charging extra money for it.

Testing Methodology: DDR3 RAM

At Benchmark Reviews we need to test memory without adding any other factors to the results. While testing stock speeds is usually easy, it only gets more difficult when we want to add overclocked results. We need to make some changes to the BIOS values and test each configuration to ensure maximum stability. First, I set the values on the BIOS and run Memtest to check if the kit is stable or not. After that, I test with OCCT Perestroika to check if the CPU is stable along with the whole system.

Finally, Benchmark Reviews decides which frequencies are going to be shown in the graphics in order to leave the CPU factor outside of the equation. This way you'll probably see small differences between memory frequencies, latencies and voltage reflected on our charts without the CPU interfering in the results. Benchmark Reviews will use the following tests suites and applications:

• Lavalys Everest Ultimate Edition v5.3
• Passmark Memory Test v7.0 x64
• SiSoft Sandra Lite 2010
• GTA IV Benchmark
• WinRAR 3.9 x64 Benchmark
• Retouch Artists Adobe Photoshop CS5 Script

Test System

• Motherboard: ASUS Maximus III Formula P55
• System Memory: 2x2GB Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608
• Processor: Intel Core i7 860 with Prolimatech Megashadow heatsink
• Video: ATI HD 5850 @ stock speeds
  
• Disk Drive 1: Intel X-25M G2 80GB
• Disk Drive 2: Seagate Barracuda 500GB
• Enclosure: Sunbeam Ultra Tech Station
• PSU: Antec Signature 850 watts
• Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

With the ASUS P55 based motherboard we're able to choose very low vDIMM voltages, but unfortunately this kit wasn't done for Overclocking it seems. At 1.55v, the memory kit was very stable, but at 1.5v it showed some issues and resulted in BSODs. I always like to try using a Command Rate of 1T, but this kit refuses to work at 1T at any settings. Adding voltage or lowering the frequency didn't worked either, so, all the results shown will reflect the configurations said with a command rate of 2T. After testing and overclocking a little I find the kit was able to do the next configurations which Benchmark Reviews will use for the review:

• 1333MHz 6-6-6-18 2T 1.65v
• 1333MHz 7-7-7-20 2T 1.55v
• 1600MHz 8-8-8-24 2T 1.60v
• 1800MHz 8-8-8-24 2T 1.65v

Benchmark Tests Results

Benchmark Reviews runs each tests at least 3 times to avoid special situations where scores are over/under exposed. Passmark Performance Memory Test does some bench to the memory and reports a test score. I´ve chose Memory Mark along with uncached read and write speed since they´re the most important benchmarks for memory testing on this suite.

There's close to none advantage by increasing the frequency or tightening timings in this benchmark. The best results were achieved with 1800MHz but clearly it's nothing a 1333MHz could miss. In fact, since 1600MHz 8-8-8-24 required 100 milli-volts less, I think that would be the best configuration for this kit.

EVEREST Ultimate Edition offers three simple memory bandwidth tests that focus on the basics; Read, Write, and Copy. In order to avoid concurrent threads competing over system memory bandwidth, the Memory benchmarks utilize only one processor core and one thread.

In Everest we got mixed results. Basically, memory frequency defines the best result, but if you take the same frequency and tight the timings you can gain a little boost. The best configuration also shined at 1800MHz for this test.

Sandra is based on STREAM, a popular memory bandwidth benchmark that has been used on personal computers to super computers. It measures sustained memory bandwidth not burst or peak. Therefore, the results may be lower than those of other benchmarks. STREAM 2.0 uses static data (about 12M) - Sandra uses dynamic data (around 40-60% of physical system RAM). This means that on computers with fast memory Sandra may yield lower results than STREAM. It's not feasible to make Sandra use static RAM - since Sandra is much more than a benchmark, thus it would needlessly use memory.

A major difference is that Sandra's algorithm is multi-threaded on SMP/SMT systems. This works by splitting the arrays and letting each thread work on its own bit. Sandra creates a thread for each CPU in the system and assigns each thread to an individual CPU. Another difference is the aggressive use of scheduling/overlapping of instructions in order to maximize memory throughput even on "slower" processors. The loops should always be memory bound rather than CPU bound on all modern processors.

Sandra showed up to 28% extra performance when overclocking to 1800MHz and around 15% extra performance at 1600MHz compared to 1333MHz frequencies. While we tried to tight those timings a little bit more at 1600MHz, the difference was barely noticeable.

Application Performance Results

While we normally choose Far Cry 2 or Crysis benchmark but this time I opted for Grand Theft Auto IV. This game can take a pretty good load from your GPU if you configure all the settings to the max. While Crysis didn't normally show a difference bigger than 1FPS with different timings and frequencies, we expected GTA IV could substantiate this. Let's check it out:

Again, overclocking your RAM won´t give any noticeable differences on final performance (not even 1 FPS). In this case, going from 1333MHz to 1600MHz barely gave 1 extra FPS. Of course, if you really want to improve your gaming experience, you´ll need to change your GPU, and leave your CPU and RAM alone as long as they are up to the task and not a bottleneck for the rest of your PC.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 is our new contender for the memory suite. This program can benefit from both CPU and memory, and additionally, it supports Nvidia CUDA and ATI Stream. Retouch Artists Test does a list of basic processes into an image similar to what someone would do to edit their vacation photos. There are some image resizing, duplicated layers, colors levels and image adjustments involved on the test. While this isn't a strict Benchmark (because you need to take the time with an external clock), the results difference in this Photoshop's version is pretty noticeable. Notice the more MHz, the faster performance.

From the worst to the best result there are 32 seconds doing the difference, which means overclocking your RAM might help doing tasks on this kind of software. Now imagine those numbers reflect hours instead of seconds and you will definitively see a change. The problem for an average user would be that those differences are too small to be noticed because we normally don't use a list of actions for every photo. Instead, each photo gets personalized with different patterns and configurations done in different times.

WinRAR is a very simple, yet useful application. How many times do you compress or decompress random files in a day? Well, WinRAR has its own integrated benchmark which measures an average of KB/s compression. This application supports multi-threading, 64 bits OS, and it´s very CPU dependant. There is a 5% performance improvement using 1600MHz compared to the worst result. Not really a mayor change, but it´s still there.

Summarizing the application performance results, we can see that overclocking RAM isn´t a big deal nowadays. CPUs with bigger caches definitively ignore RAM frequency and timings and that trend doesn't seem to end yet. In fact, for application tests the best configuration is 1600MHz 8-8-8 with 1.55v.

Overclocking Results

Unluckily this isn't the monster-type overclocking kit I was expecting from Crucial. The Ballistix series have won a very good reputation because of the good price and Overclocking ratio, but this kit seems to be very normal tough... First, the Crucial Ballistix seemed to have a cold boot problem which got magically solved. Then, those sticks refused to work at 1T command rate whatever I tried to achieve it. Also, they need at least 1.55v to run stable at 1600MHz with lazy timings, so, definitively this isn't a kit for overclockers. Anyway, Crucial said they will be adding thermal-sensors in their next products and hopefully they will release a perfect kit for overclockers. Otherwise, why would you like to know your RAM temperature if it can't really Overclock that much other than to be curious?

To test RAM Overclocking against voltage, I set 3 points at 1.55v, 1.60v and 1.65v (not to exceed Intel safe specs.). Then I used different timings and tried overclocking lowering the CPU multiplier and this is what I got:

At CAS 6 and CAS 7 there isn't really much space for overclocking. The memory could boot at 666MHz in both cases and CL 7 made 1400MHz possible. Still, that's a little bit poor compared to other kits on the market. Since 1600MHz were possible with 1.55v, we still had 100 milli-volts to add for overclocking which resulted into 200MHz more to a final result of 1800MHz. 1810MHz were possible but more than that wasn't stable.

Of course, I tried mixing different latencies but the best I could achieve at 1600MHz were 8-8-7-24 timings, which overall don't give any extra noticeable performance (if any). From what I've heard, Crucial is shipping D9KPT ICs in this kit, so they aren't really good for Overclocking and this was proved with our tests. Finally, have a look at the best configurations achieved when testing different frequencies.

Using 1.65v, 6-6-6 timings were barely achieved at 1333MHz. Anything below 1.6v wouldn't let us have a stable memory on this motherboard.

With 1.65v and 8-8-8 timings 1800MHz were possible with little efforts. This could be the best configuration for this kit if you're looking for high frequency results.

Temperatures Results

Yes, perhaps this test is a little weird for our readers, but since thermal sensor is the real bonus of this kit, we couldn't pass them off. The MOD utility measures individual temperatures for each DIMM, similar to each core of a processor unit nowadays. Idle readings were taken after 10 minutes of being on the desktop without doing any process. Load temperatures were taken after 10 minutes while stressing the memory with Prime95. We touched the heat sinks just to make sure the readings accorded with the temperatures reported.

Crucial Ballistix DDR3 Final Thoughts

Crucial is taking an interesting step for enthusiasts with their BL2KIT25664FN1608 kit. After this kit, upcoming products could all have the thermal sensor and that makes you feel satisfied since you'll have the possibility to monitor your RAM temperatures in a window on your screen, practically the same way you do with the rest of the HW sensors. Then, the real question is: Do you really need to monitor your RAM temperatures? Why is it that necessary?

In order to answer that question I think first we should think about system stability. If RAM overheating caused system instability there wouldn't be other way than lowering voltage or adding a fan over the RAM. Lowering voltage could also cause instability and that would become to an endless cycle. I can imagine that kind of situations in small cases with reduced airflow, like the mITX based ones, but in mid-tower or bigger cases it would be really difficult to suffer RAM overheating. Most probably you will have heat problems in your CPU or GPU than in your RAM. That's why RAM thermal monitoring isn't as important at the moment.

The second profile I could imagine to love this new extra would be Overclockers. While overclocking, voltage and temperature are key values to achieve the maximum frequency. Since we can manipulate and monitor voltage within the BIOS, the only factor remaining would be temperature. Anyway, it's most likely you won't over-voltage your memory without a good CPU-Heatsink, and nowadays many heat sinks cool the whole socket area and not only the CPU. More important, overclockers won't add voltage if the integrated circuits in the memory manufacturing don't support it and less if the kit won't overclock well even with higher voltages and lower temperatures.

This kit proved not to be interesting for overclocking, so thermal sensor isn't really necessary, but before I close my final thoughts with this sentence please remember this is their first thermal-sensor equipped kit. That means this product will work more like a pilot than a released product, and the MOD Utility is still in BETA phase. In some months, we could see some interesting and very overclockable Crucial kits with integrated thermal sensors and there is where the fun will be.

Let´s summarize all the results and head to the conclusions of this article.

BL2KIT25664FN1608 Conclusion

Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608 performance is just average. The kit isn't able to work at 1T command rate and it needs more than 1.5v to work stable with very loose timings and common frequencies. They also suffered from a cold boot bug or something similar at the beginning but stopped showing that problem after a few days. The overclock scaling capabilities are also simple based on a low-binned IC and there's really not much chance to tight the latencies either. Somehow, this isn't the RAM we are used to receive within a Ballistix kit. Hopefully, they will launch better kits on the future with thermal-sensor technology equipped.

The appearance is good, but it has its downsides. While some people will love the color combination, some others won't have the same patience trying to combine them with the rest of their PC. The new high-profile heat spreaders look good, but they aren't really necessary. I still haven't heard of many memory kits suffering over heating problems, and even less considering there's not much room for overclock. Also, the heat spreaders could hinder your CPU heatsink installation or jam your mITX case installation. Finally, Crucial changed their old brown boxes for a more appealing blister this time.

Construction on the other side is very solid. There's really not much to say about the construction of a memory. If they have heat spreaders, they are normally easier to install and there are less chances of damaging them with an ESD. But other than that, this kit just works as it should and the functionality of owning 4GBs of RAM is still there.

Not everything is that bad. The value of this kit is good as it retails for $119.99 USD at NewEgg, and you also receive a free T-Shirt with this special special promotion. There are better kits at the same price, but none of them offer thermal-sensor ICs, which is why the new Crucial Ballistix kit shines. Crucial says they aren't charging any extra values for this technology, so let's imagine a similar Crucial's kit without the thermal-sensor will cost about the same.

My recommendation is: If you want to have full control of your PC and you really care about thermal monitoring, then get the Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608. If you care about anything else, then get another kit. There are kits from G.Skill, Patriot or OCZ which will offer more OC room or lower timings with lower voltages at the moment at the same price point. Therefore, I recommend waiting until Crucial launches better kits equipped with thermal-sensor IC so you can really enjoy the experience of monitoring your RAM while topping out your overclock at the same time.

Pros:

Cons:

Ratings:

• Performance: 8.00
• Appearance: 9.00
• Construction: 8.50
• Functionality: 8.00
• Value: 9.00

Final Score: 8.5 out of 10.

Recommended: Benchmark Reviews Seal of Approval.

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