Crucial Ballistix Elite 32GB (4x8GB) Quad Channel DDR4 Memory Kit Review

Rikki Wright / 9 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing (accurate at the time of writing)

The Crucial Ballistix Elite 32GB memory kit isn’t currently available from our recommended retailers. It can, however, be purchased through AmazonUK for £224.71 and AmazonUS for $279.99. These prices are lower than they were a few months ago due to the release of Intel Skylake. This has brought DDR4 to the mainstream and increased demand for DDR4 memory kits.

Summary

The Crucial Ballistix Elite kit is a bit of an odd one to explain my thoughts about. On the one hand, it’s a great kit and reliability is key with Crucial, on the other, it’s a bit too reliable with performance bang on where you expect 2666MHz memory kits to perform, but with very little overclocking headroom compared to other memory kits available. It doesn’t really win any awards in the looks department, the overall design is safe and sturdy, but it’s too safe. Other models in the Crucial range employ camo designs, so why not a little more army theme onto this?

Performance offers a nice boost compared to the 16GB set, which is great news as you are getting a higher quantity and more performance. That being said, in some tests it lacks behind the Kingston Fury memory kit, however, the Crucial Elite kit takes the lead once overclocked in some tests.

The overclock was a struggle to achieve thanks to the absolutely painful X99 overclocking methods. Changing the BLCK ratio to 100:133 or even just changing the strap to 125MHz proved unstable at every turn and I had to resort to just the standard frequency increase with timing changes and voltage increase. Despite such a small overclock, the results were promising and in some tests a good yeild was attained.

While most games and applications do not use more than 8GB of RAM, some are starting to push the boundaries of 16GB. This means that 32GB is almost completely pointless for the general or even moderate user, or so it would seem. With most motherboards and even as a purchase online, you can buy RAM Caching software; this allows you to use the unused RAM to speed up your current storage drives massively.

Pros

Low profile design
Great performance
Lifetime warranty
MOD Utility offers a unique and innovative look into memory details

Cons

Poor availability from enthusiast retailers

“The Crucial Ballistix Elite 32GB memory kit is a great option for those looking at entering the DDR4 memory market with a great price and unique monitoring utility.”