Crucial Pro Overclocking Memory Review – Solid Ryzen Option Without RGB

A Zero Fuss, Zero RGB Kit

In a world where PC gaming means RGB everything for most manufacturers, it has become almost novel to see a product launch without any lighting – particularly when it has “overclocking” in the name. That’s just what Crucial has done with their new DDR5 Pro Overclocking memory, which offer stealthy low-profile heatspreaders (also available in white) and solid speeds from the XMP and EXPO profiles.

The 32GB kit we received for this review offers a choice between 6400 MT/s or 6000 MT/s speeds via EXPO/XMP, and the introductory price of $89.99 USD makes this one of the lower-priced 32GB DDR5-6400 options out there. The latency numbers are not as aggressive as many of its competitors in the gaming segment, however, with CL38 the default here (but any performance difference from CAS latency alone is often negligible).

Let’s take a close look at the DIMMs and see what’s under the hood.

Examining the DIMMs

While we already expect Micron memory from any Crucial kit, we still ran Thaiphoon Burner to see exactly what is happening under that origami-inspired heat spreader:

We are looking at 16Gb Micron D-die chips, and the default timings with the provided XMP/EXPO profiles are not going to set any records. Still, it is welcome to see a 6400 MT/s kit for Ryzen CPUs that defaults to 1.35V at that speed, rather than the 1.40V we see from some kits with more aggressive timings. In the past, I have had to drop kits down from 6400 MT/s to 6000 MT/s for easy stability at 1.35V, but that is not the case here.

Now that we have verified that this kit is, indeed, what it claims to be, let us look at some quick benchmark results using the new AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor on a Gigabyte X870E AORUS ELITE WIFI7 test platform (which also features an RTX 4090 FE). I just ran the tests at the three settings for this RAM, JEDEC default, EXPO 1, and EXPO 2, to get a feel for what, if any, difference there might be in a couple of scenarios:

The slightly lower latency 6000 MT/s EXPO profile provided a bit better compression performance from 7-Zip, but 1% lows were about 1 frame better at 6400 MT/s. And, as you may have noticed, I did not bother making any fancy charts for the sort of data one generally gets from memory scaling tests. It’s not exciting, but at least I validated … something. (Also, for the record the Cyberpunk results were averaged from three separate runs, because I am dedicated to my craft.)

Conclusion

Crucial has created a very appealing kit of non-RGB memory for those of us who do not need to the bright colors of most OC RAM, and if you are willing to sacrifice a little latency (however negligible the real-world impact) it is an attractive value at $89.99 USD right now (list price is $118.99). The EXPO profiles worked perfectly with our Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, and it’s nice to be able to switch between 6000 MT/s and 6400 MT/s without exceeding 1.35V.

Bottom line, this is a solid, no-frills kit that does what it’s supposed to do while offering good value.