Crucial Ballistix Elite 16GB DDR4 3000MHz Memory Kit Review

John Williamson / 8 years ago

Final Thoughts

Price

Currently, the Crucial Ballistix Elite 16GB (2x8GB) 3000MHz memory kit is available from eBuyer.com for £93.46 including delivery. This is a decent price when you consider the modules run at a 3000MHz frequency and utilise 15-16-16-35 timings. On the other hand, if you’re not overly concerned by the timings and want to save some money, the Corsair Vengeance LPX offers compelling value and costs £74.99. Corsair’s creation employs 15-17-17-35 timings and the same voltage rating. Of course, that’s not to say the Crucial Ballistix Elite isn’t great value because you are receiving higher quality ICs capable of 3000MHz without relying on looser timings.

Overview

It’s commonplace in today’s hardware market to encounter a variety of aesthetic designs which target different demographics. Clearly, the current trend is RGB illumination and providing the end-user with customisable lighting effects. While this is a rather spectacular development, some users feel a little bit overawed by the bold colours and want a more understated design. Of course, aesthetic beauty depends on perspective and a person’s subjective taste. This is why it’s advantageous for consumers to be able to choose from contrasting approaches when it comes to heatspreader designs.

Crucial’s Ballistix Elite might not have the most eye-catching appearance and lacks strobing LEDs, but the simplistic finish is really elegant and a superb choice for any build. In particular, the matte black styling and attractive cut-outs combine to form a distinctive appearance which easily slots into a number of system builds. On another note, the heatspreaders’ colour provides a superb synergy with the black PCB and Crucial’s lettering doesn’t detract from the main colour combination.

Throughout the benchmarking process, the memory kit performed admirably and benefited from the 3000MHz frequency. The stock memory bandwidth was consistently higher than the Patriot Viper 4 and remained within close proximity to the G.Skill TridentZ. While the latency figures could have been lower, they didn’t pose any problems and could only be observed in specialised applications. Overall, I was happy with the memory’s performance and confident enough to recommend the product.

The overclocking experience wasn’t ideal because the modules exhibited some unusual behaviour when applying overclocked frequencies. As a result, I had to scale back my expectations and conduct additional testing to find the maximum stable frequency. Usually, it doesn’t take much time to realise when an overclock is unstable but on this occasion, the obvious signs such as freezing or boot failure didn’t happen. Nevertheless, I managed to adjust my approach and obtain a good overclock of 3339MHz using 16-16-16-36 timings. As you can see, this is a pretty good result considering the timings were only altered by a small amount. Once overclocked, the memory kit excelled and reported the best bandwidth figures from a dual-channel product thus far in SiSoft Sandra. As expected, the latency reduced slightly and performance was strong during the AIDA64 memory bandwidth tests.

Pros

Black PCB
Excellent timings
Good overclocking headroom
Great build quality
Lifetime warranty
Respectable voltage
Sleek visual design
Superb stock performance

Cons

Corsair Vengeance LPX is significantly cheaper if you can accept looser timings

“The Crucial Ballistix Elite 16GB (2x8GB) 3000MHz memory kit offers stupendous performance and sports a stylish heatspreader design. Furthermore, there’s additional headroom to go well beyond the stock XMP profile which doesn’t require loose timings to remain stable. “