Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB DDR4-2400 Quad Channel Kit


( A brand of Micron Technology)





  • Made in USA
  • Competitively priced (among the lowest in the market)
  • Factory matched quad channel kit (4 x 4 GB sticks)
  • Low profile heatspreaders (no clearance issues)
  • Easy to match attractive colours - silver gray/chrome aluminium plates on matte black PCB
  • Limited lifetime warranty worldwide (except Germany and France - 10 years from DOP)
  • Good RAM and good overclocking?

As for the last bullet point, let's find out...




Packaging

Tamper proof clear plastic blister pack as shown. Meanwhile note the Singapore office address on the back of the paper insert for locally sourced stock.










Unboxed

Proudly Made in America product as proclaimed on the product label, woah!







Test Setup


★ Asus X99-A | i7-5820K | Crucial DDR4-2400 16GB Kit | Intel 730 480GB SSD | NiCu HK 3.0-GTX360 | AMD HD7850 | Corsair RM850 PSU ★

The factory stock voltage is 1.20V while most enthusiast DDR4 kits are rated at 1.35V. 

Sticking to an arguably safe middling voltage of just 1.30V memory, I started pushing the clocks from the stock DDR4-2400 16-16-16 2T and soon, easily achieved DDR4-2666 14-14-14 1T as seen below

DDR4-2400 16-16-16 2T vs DDR4-2666 14-14-14 1T ie. higher frequency with yet tighter timings .

The more adventurous can shoot for even higher speeds or tighter timings at higher voltages as this kit has been reported to scale well in that aspect.



Now the test rig looks nicely colour matched for a Gotham Gothic theme party - Crucial Ballistix Sport kit with the black Asus X99-A mobo and sleeved Corsair RM850 cables, the turqoise HIS Radeon is kinda out of place though.




* With more time, effort and voltages invested, one can expect to do better as results close to DDR4-3000 have been reported in some batches eg.
2935MHz - pcgameware.co.uk (actual voltage, stress testing levels used not mentioned)

As usual, overclocking is a delicate balance of everything including luck so YMMV.




UEFI Identification


SPD Information




XMP Default Setting





CPU-Z






AIDA64






HyperPi 32M




Mem TweakIt





HCI MemTest Windows

About as good as it gets... if RAM tests have the equivalent of Super Grinder (relentless punishing level well known to Defence Grid fans), this is probably it. It's really time intensive, bogs down the whole test rig to a crawl but nonetheless, a nice stress workout in ensuring overclock stability. Go for a few full rounds (over a few hours) if you have the patience for it.

Pity too few RAM reviews showcase this tough stress test though.





Real Life Stability Testing



xvid4PSP






Ripbot264






Defense Grid 2

What followed was several hours of gaming - yup, went back  to honing my alien destroying skills in Defense Grid 2 - Super Grinder mode with its prolonged intense 100 waves of marauding hordes to a new peak and everything ran rock stable.

These 2 are probably among the toughest prolonged levels at Super Grinder.






Stability In The Longer Run

After 3 weeks running non-stop overclocked, this is the Event Viewer error report - a clean slate, no WHEA errors!




PS: Seasoned Asus mobo users would know that the usual Kernel PnP ID219 warning is a well known harmless side effect of Windows & the Asus Probe II AMDA00 Interface driver from time immemorial. Detailed explanation here... click!




Market Price Compare@Newegg 

A search shows that the Crucial Sport is among the most affordable kits around though occasional spot offers drop the street prices even lower.


Link





Other Web Reviews

Mouse click on the links to read the actual articles






















Initial Impressions

Having spent some time with this pretty Crucial kit, I am thrilled to find the all round glowing reviews now on the web are indeed accurate in saying that this is a most cost effective stable product which is also easily overclockable.

This kit may be rated at only DDR4-2400 speeds which coincidentally is Crucial current fastest rated DDR4 memory. It does seem though that Crucial has been conscientiously modest and has come up with RAM which is actually quite capable of easily running above its factory specs as shown by this sample.

Best part - we only get to pay the possibly market lowest DDR4-2400 prices for it.

Good stuff, definitely recommended.




Recommended Reading

By at 2 comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)