Crucial Ballistix Tactical 3000 MHz DDR4 16GB Kit Review: Fairly Priced and Reliable
Introduction
Crucial was founded in 1996 and since then, they have taken the silent enthusiasts' hearts by storm.
They are well known in the enthusiast market for making premium performance memory and SSDs and almost everyone who has build their own computer has heard of them.
Crucial has a long history of releasing enthusiast-grade memory and has earned a reputation for quality, reliability, and performance.
Crucial's memory line are comprised of the Ballistix Elite, Ballistix Sport, Ballistix Tactical, and the regular Crucial memory.
Crucial's memory line consists of memory ranging in capacity from 32MB, all the way up to 256GB and with speeds of up to 3000 MHz.
Today we are going to look at the Crucial Ballistix Tactical 3000 MHz DDR4 16GB (4x4GB) memory kit that retails for $129.99 and comes with a limited lifetime warranty.
Crucial provides these kits in densities from a single 4GB stick and up to 32GB kits and either 2600 MHz or 3000 MHz.
The Crucial Ballistix Tactical 3000 MHz memory has a stock rated timings of 15-16-16-35-2T and a voltage of 1.35V.
The Ballistix Tactical 3000 MHz memory is engineered to last and deliver a high level of performance
and has been rigorously tested to some of the most demanding standards.
To keep the memory running cool at all times, the Ballistix Tactical memory is equipped with pure aluminum heat spreaders that can help dissipate heat effectively while providing an aggressive appearance for your gaming rig.
The Ballistix Tactical memory is also certified for Intel XMP 2.0 for easy setup and configuration. Once you turn the Intel XMP 2.0 profile on in the BIOS, it will automatically adjust to the fastest safe speed and you'll get great, reliable performance while maintaining full data integrity. At the time of writing this review, you can find the Ballistix Tactical 3000 MHz (4x4GB) 16GB DDR4 memory kit for $129.99 on Newegg and Amazon. Compared to other (4x4GB) 16GB memory kits from G.SKILL Ripjaws V, Kingston HyperX Predator/Savage and Corsair Dominator, the Ballistix Tactical 3000 MHz is anywhere from $5 to $20 cheaper.
Specifications
| Technical Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Brand: | Crucial |
| Series: | Ballistix Tactical |
| Model: | BLT4K4G4D30AETA |
| Capacity: | 16GB (4 x 4GB) |
| Type: | 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM |
| Speed/Timings: | DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) - 15-16-16-35-2T |
| Cas Latency: | 16 |
| Voltage: | 1.35V |
| ECC: | No |
| Buffered/Registered: | Unbuffered |
| Color: | Black |
| PCB Type: | 10-Layer Design |
| Heat Spreader: | Yes |
| Form Factor: | UDIMM |
| Fan Included: | No |
| Height: | 37 mm |
| Warranty: | Limited Lifetime |
| Multi-Channel: | Quad-Channel Kit |
| Features: | Intel XMP 2.0 (Extreme Memory Profile) Ready |
Packaging
The memory comes in a simple sturdy plastic box. On the back, you will see a description of each memory series from Crucial in different languages. The Crucial Ballistix Tactical memory features a nice clean, black paint job that's really attractive and it stands 37 mm tall and uses a 10 layer PCB design.
Here is a close view of the aluminum heat spreader that is approximately 5mm above the PCB. The heat-spreaders are thin and allow for a lot of airflow. You can see that the heat spreaders don't touch each other and this is important because you want each heat spreader to cool the ICs separately and not combine the heat load. Since the heat spreader aren't very tall, you won't have any compatibility issues if you will be using a big air CPU cooler such as the Noctua NH-D15.
Test Methodology
| Test Setup | |
|---|---|
| Processor: | Intel i7-6900K Stock |
| Motherboard: | ASUS X99 Deluxe II |
| RAM: | Crucial Ballistix Tactical 16GB (4x4GB) 3000 MHz Kingston HyperX Savage 16GB (4x4GB) 3000 MHz G.Skill RipJaws V Series 16GB (4x4GB) 3000 MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4x4GB) 3000 MHz |
| Graphics Card: | Sapphire R9 390X |
| Storage: | Samsung 840 Pro 256GB |
| Power Supply: | SilverStone ST80F-TI |
| Heatsink: | Noctua NH-U14S |
| OS: | Windows 10 Home 64-Bit |
| Thermal Compound: | Noctua NT-H1 |
| Case: | SilverStone PM01 |
The testing was done on a fresh install of Windows 10 64-bit. We made sure there were as few processes running as possible during the testing.
We'll be using an Intel Ivy Bridge i7-6900K CPU that will run on stock settings. We're using the ASUS X99 Deluxe II motherboard with the latest BIOS version 1401 from ASUS.
Installing and using memory is pretty straight forward, simply enable the XMP profile and you should be good.
Each memory kit will be tested at default speed and timings. As far as benchmarking software goes, we'll be using AIDA64 (Read, Write, Copy, Latency), SuperPi v1.55 32M, wPrime v1.55 32M and we'll finish it off with PCMark 8 Conventional.
Results
Looking at the AIDA64 memory benchmark, we can see that Crucial's Ballistix Tactical memory pulled ahead and performed much better than the rest of the memories.
In the AIDA64 latency benchmark, we see the Crucial Ballistix Tactical memory once again pull ahead by quite a bit while the Kingston HyperX Savage fell behind with 66.5 ns.
Looking at the SuperPi 32M benchmark, the Crucial Ballistix Tactical memory beat all the other memories with little effort.
The Crucial Ballistix Tactical memory came on top with the lowest time while the Kingston HyperX Savage came in last with 3.453 seconds.
In the PCMark 8 Conventional benchmark, they all performed similarly the same but the Crucial Ballistix Tactical memory came on top with the highest score.
Conclusion
When it comes to enthusiast memory, Crucial has been dominating the memory market for a long time now.
Crucial has more experience than any other memory company in the industry and the Crucial Ballistix Tactical 3000 MHz 16GB kit is an impressive memory kit that performed better than all the other 3000 MHz kits in our tests.
The aluminum heat spreaders make the RAM look very sleek and sturdy and will definitely come in handy if you decide to overclock the RAM above 3000 MHz.
Not only that, but it will also help with the temperatures.
The aluminum heat spreaders only extend about 5mm above the PCB so you don't have to worry about interfering it with large air CPU coolers.
Pros:
+ Headroom For Overclocking
+ Good Heatsink Design
+ Fairly Priced
+ 10-Layer PCB
+ Aesthetic
Cons:
- Packaging Could Be Better
Crucial has a good product in their hands with the Ballistix Tactical 3000 MHz 16GB memory kit.
With a retail price of $129.99, the Crucial Ballistix Tactical 3000 MHz 16GB (4x4GB) kit is cheaper compared to other (4x4GB) 3000 MHz DDR4 kits that are on the market.
These are some of the most well designed DDR4 sticks on the market and they utilize a simple design that's not flashy or odd-looking like some other memory kits that are out there.
There's headroom for overclocking with these kit and I managed to lower the timings to 14-14-14-35 1T and it worked just fine.
Overall, I believe the Crucial Ballistix Tactical 3000 MHz 16GB DDR4 memory kit deserves our elite award.
Final Score 9.8
