Crucial is a renowned company who provide PC tech, most notably, memory and storage. From its system scanning software that can show exactly what upgrades are available for hardware to super reliable SSDs, it has it all. Today, Cubed3 is looking at its latest and speediest Ballistix Max RAM – that’s Random Access Memory for those who don’t know.
RAM is a key component in a computing device that allows the computer to move around large volumes of data allowing for things like HD texture streaming in games. When reviewing RAM it’s sometimes hard to draw an initial impression without further testing but not so with Crucial Ballistix Max! After a very simple installation and initialisation the initial PC boot time has dropped from 30 seconds to 5 seconds (when paired with an M2 SSD) -it’s bonkers!
When it comes to receiving the product, here’s what to expect. Crucial’s products are packaged neatly and minimally to reduce waste, so this RAM comes in a very thin cardboard package with a slim plastic insert to protect it. It’s super slick and opens like a book with appealing branding. The RAM itself is fairly low profile with slim black coolers attached to them that feature a very limited bit of Crucial branding and information. This 32GB package supplies two 16GB ram sticks this will be perfect for most people as it allows for a 2 channel setup. As a side note, for anyone who is looking for four sticks of 8GB RAM, Crucial sells these, too. Pricewise, this RAM is extremely competitive with other brands.
Once slotted into the right slots the bios immediately recognised them and maxed out their bandwidth to the available 4400. The effect of this upgrade was immediate with the aforementioned boot time boost. This RAM’s speed and size helps alleviate a lot of issues in games that support it fully. Faster and more consistent high-resolution texture while streaming can be observed. Additionally, the RAM helps to alleviate some issues previously experienced when streaming games due to the system load of running multiple heavy programs.
The real kicker is, when running programmes such as video or photo editors, these have historically been very heavy, running many PCs into the ground. Now a 4K video edit loads smoothly, the program’s functions all work as intended and the preview window runs effortlessly in full resolution. The speed of this RAM also dramatically decreases the export time as the PC can shift a lot more data while running other tasks. This also extends to recording from screen capture devices which used to have a micro stutter. With this speed upgrade that microstutter is now completely eliminated, allowing for very smooth screen recording.
The performance of this product is incredibly consistent, rarely did anything during normal work increase RAM usage over 15%, gaming would push it a little harder depending on the game, and video editing in 4k rarely pushed usage over 80%. These stats are obviously variable dependent on the other computer hardware but this shouldn’t vary too much as much of this reviewer’s hardware is a little older.
