Crucial Ballistix Tactical LP DDR3 1600MHz 16GB Memory Kit Review

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times through the review, I don’t want to sound like I’m repeating myself too much considering there are only a few differences between the two kits, the obvious being capacity, speed and most importantly the physical size of the modules.

Kits that offer up 16GB in two modules are not as common as 8GB kits and typically we find 16GB kits comprising of four modules, but with smaller systems become more and more popular, kits such as what we’ve got here today are going to have a higher level of appeal. To sweeten up the deal even more, the Tactical LP has a lot to give in terms of overclocking potential and without touching the voltage on this kit and going over the 1.5V the its rated at, we easily saw a stable speed of 2133MHz, a whopping 30% gain in speed. The speed gain was paired with a good gain in bandwidth, which as we know is going to be a great winner with any Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge chip.

The Ballistix range of memory has always offered great performance at a great price and this is no different, with prices around the £80/$130USD mark. Whilst this is not drastically cheaper than other similarly sized and rated kits, we do have to take into account that is does offer up a low profile build and 16GB of capacity, which in this configuration is hard to find, again adding desirability over other kits.

Bottom line, Crucial once again have put together a kit that offers up a great level of performance for a well set price but have upped the anti one step more by packing everything into a low profile PCB. For the money, there is nothing out there that I could see that can better this at the current moment in time and with a 30% overclock, this surely has to get our Extreme Performance award.