| Crucial Ballistix BL2KIT25664FN1608 Memory Kit |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Memory | |
| Written by Servando Silva | |
| Tuesday, 29 June 2010 | |
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BL2KIT25664FN1608 ConclusionCrucial 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:
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