Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 Quad-Channel Memory Review

When it comes to RAM, Crucial is one of the few companies that manufacturer engineers their own chips, mount them on a DIMM, package them, and sell them straight to the consumer. Through their vertically integrated process Crucial can be at the bleeding edge of technology and deliver phenomenal performance at a at exceedingly low price point, a win-win for consumers and enthusiasts. DDR4 was recently introduced to the market with the advent of the X99 platform for the enthusiast grade Haswell-E chips, it is no surprise that Crucial was one of the first companies to have DDR4 on the market with other big names following and many actually using rebranded Micron, Crucial’s in house manufacturer.

Today we are taking a look at the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 16GB kit. The Crucial Ballistix Sport is designed for performance enthusiasts and anyone who simply wants to get more out of their system. With Micron’s 35 years of experience in the DDR memory market there is no doubt in my mind that the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 can deliver a high level of reliability and performance at a current price of $230. It is important to note that DDR4 is still rather new and manufacturing is just ramping up across all areas of the world, once we more adoption of DDR4 technology with processor technology and their respective chipset we should begin to see a massive decrease in DDR4 price across all brands, for now the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 remains one of the cheapest. With the brand new DDR4 architecture speed-hungry early adopters of the X99 chipset we see RAM manufacturers needing to meet high expectations in pricing and performance. We will be looking to see if the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 quad channel kit can overclock and perform and how it stands against last year’s top enthusiast build’s performance.

Pros                                                                                                                                                                   

• Insane Overclocking Capabilities
• Low Price When Compared to Other Kits
• Crucial Reliability and Performance

Cons

• Low Profile Heat-Sink may Deter Some Users

Features, Specifications, and a Closer Look

• Speeds start at 2400MTps and faster speeds are expected to be available as DDR4 technology matures
• Faster speeds and responsiveness than standard Crucial DDR4 memory
• Four channel memory architecture maximizes data rates
• Integrated heat spreader and black PCB
• Easy plug-and-play installation
• Intel® XMP 2.0 profiles for easy configuration
• Optimized for the latest Intel X99 platforms
• Limited lifetime warranty

The Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 Quad-Channel kit’s packaging is nothing out of the ordinary,  4 RAM sticks separated by a thin piece of plastic.

The first thing you notice about the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 is the low profile heat sink, its nothing flashy nor does it have crazy LEDs. Secondly is DDR4’s signature 288pins, it is still the same size as DDR3 but the pins are closer together. At first glance the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 does not look like much and made me uneasy since I would be putting this RAM with an overclocked 5960X but the cliche saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” couldn’t be more true. Its difficult to realize that this somewhat plain looking memory runs at 2400Mhz with an X.M.P profile, a feat that only the best and most expensive DDR3 could achieve.

Here we show both sides of the RAM, you will not have any problem fitting Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 along with any CPU cooler. The contrasting black and silver really resonate with this RAM but unfortunately it is hard to color match this to other computer components. I would have loved a heat sink that covered the top of the RAM, looking at the top of the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 through a windowed case only shows the black colored PCB surrounded by a thin silver plate which leaves much to be desired for an enthusiast platform.

Overclocking and Temperatures 

DDR4 memory has a JEDEC standard of 2133Mhz, that means that the lowest speed a stick of RAM can be is 2133Mhz. Almost all modern RAM sports an X.M.P profile which is programmed into the RAM itself and when activated overclocks the RAM past the JEDEC standards, for the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 the X.M.P profile, as the name implies, is set at 2400Mhz. Now, setting an X.M.P profile is extremely easy but going past the X.M.P profile gets a little tricky, to really see what the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 RAM is really made out of I decided to push it beyond its X.M.P profile settings and overclock it manually. After much trial and error I managed to get an overclock of 2933Mhz at 1.35V with timings at 16-16-16-39, this is very impressive for a quad channel RAM kit that is marketed at 2400Mhz, its a 22% increase!

Temperature at 100% load and 2933Mhz. Right side

Temperature at 100% load and 2933Mhz.   Left Side

I was pleasantly surprised with the stable overclock of 2933Mhz I was able to achieve with the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400, my next concern was the temperature. Typically, high RAM temperature is never an issue and heat spreaders are mainly used for aesthetic purposes, nevertheless I wanted to see what temperatures the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 kit reached when overclocked to 2933Mhz at 1.35V. As you can see, even with the low profile heat-sink the temperatures during a memory stability test were were no greater than the motherboard’s regular operating temperature.

Here we see the aforementioned JEDEC standards within the bios, this is also where all the magic happens when it comes to manual overclocking. The absolute limit for the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 Quad-Channel was 2933Mhz, bumping it up to just 3000Mhz caused my system to not boot and spit out error codes, no matter how much I tried playing with the timings and the voltage I simply could not get any higher. 2933Mhz is an amazing overclock considering one would be paying for 2400Mhz, in this next section we will be talking about the performance of this RAM at stock speeds and with an overclock and we will be comparing it with last year’s prime enthusiast rig, the 4960X with a quad channel DDR3 RAM.

Benchmarks

Test Setup

• Intel i7-5960X at 4.5Ghz
• Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 Quad Channel Kit Memory
• Asus X99-A Motherboard
• XFX R9 290X Video Card
• Corsair RM850 Power Supply
• Custom Watercooling Setup

Not only does the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400  quad channel kit utilize 1.2 V but it was also able to outperform DDR3 clocked 400Mhz higher. When overclocked to 2933Mhz we get an outstanding increase in copy and read performance which offers a very significant boost in performance. Oddly enough write performance remained the same even with a overclock, I ran each test multiple times at multiple configurations and little to no change was observed.  Last year’s top of the line system was left in the dust in terms of memory performance, another nail in the coffin for DDR3’s reign in the mainstream market.

As generations of DDR arrive there is always a signficant performance boost when compared to a previous generation, one aspect where performance actually dwindles is Column Access Strobe Latency or CAS Latency. In short, CAS Latency is the time it take a memory controller to interact with memory module and this latency increased in DDR4 due to jump in bandwidth. So how badly affected is the CAS Latency for the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 ? Take a look for yourself, at stock speeds only using the X.M.P profile we see a pretty significant CAS Latency of 67.1 ns which is significantly high when compared to DDR3 as expected. Looking at the overclocked Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 we see a significant improvement in CAS latency that even beats the DDR3 CAS delay.

Lastly, we will go to the SiSoftware Sandra benchmark which is another all-in-one tool capable of testing virtually every part of the machine. We are going to focus on two tests in particular though, memory bandwidth and latency. With SiSandra’s different testing methods we see a combined score of 56.38 GB/s on the overclocked Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400, a noticable boost over stock speeds and significantly ahead of its DDR3 counterpart.

Again, similar to Aids 64 we see the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 struggle a bit against DDR3 in the latency benchmark. Luckily any drawbacks are overcomed by overclocking.

Closing Thoughts

DDR4 s still in its infancy, its had a long way to go in terms of performance. Crucial refuses to let the relatively new technology slow its progress because with the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 Crucial released a performance monster at a very competitive price that is capable of a 20% overclock while still remaining under 1.5 volts. Compared to other kits the $200-$230 price tag is steep but so is any other DDR4 kit in the market right now. As DDR4 is adopted into mainstream computers for enthusiasts and professionals I know Crucial will be a top choice for many users. Where I see the Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 falling behind is for the enthusiast market that s in it for looks and love to showcase their rigs, for those types a of users I see Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 not being very attractive with its low profile heat-sink. Nevertheless, I have shown that even with a low profile heat sink temperatures are great and the performance is even better. The only platform currently supporting DDR4 is the X-99 chipset for Haswell-E processors, when new platform are launched and you are in the market for DDR4 I  recommend you pick up a Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4-2400 quad channel kit, the performance is there and price compared to other kits cannot get any better.

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