Crucial Ballistix 1600mhz & MOD Review

Introduction

RAM has always been one of those curious things that makes a huge difference to the performance of your system, and yet isn't considered by most people as a worthy upgrade.

Sure we all know that size matters. The main reason that most people consider PCs to be poor performers are because the standard PCs brought "off the shelf" from your local PC World or similar always, but always, come with far too little RAM. Thankfully RAM prices are such now that everyone should be running 4GB at minimum. It's a far cry from when I paid £75 for 512KB of RAM back in the day.

Crucial were one of the first companies to bring us memory that didn't just look like chips on a board, with the gold Ballistix series. Other RAM brands have come and gone, or been renamed to sound fresh, but Ballistix has stayed with us for many a year now.

So what have we got on the bench today?

Technical Specifications

Probably a surprise to anyone who hears the name "Ballistix" and automatically assumes this must be some high-end low-CAS beast, this is 1600MHz CAS8. It's a 4GB kit designed for the P55 platform which has really started to show it's worth as a slightly cheaper alternative to the full-fat X58.

Although kit codes are normally fairly easy to understand and not a lot of interest to anyone, this one actually hides the secret of todays review. The FN is specific to this module as it designates that this contains the on-board temperature sensor. More of which in a bit.