Closer Look

In what has already become the norm, memory from Crucial is shipped to end customers in a transparent plastic package of original design.



Even though memory modules are quite small and don’t get a lot of visual attention, it doesn’t stop manufacturers from experimenting with their appearance to attract potential buyers. One way of doing so is fiddling with custom heatspreader shape or color, the other, trademarked by the Tracer series, is making a lightshow of the memory area.
Unlike differently colored LEDs of the past, with the new Tracers all lights are switched to bright green. The positioning is also new with one row of LEDs being placed across the bottom part of the modules and the second row – at the top. The lower row is permanently on while the top one is working in a sort of a wave effect, speed of which increases when memory is subjected to a heavier load. Extra bling is surely fascinating to watch, but if you have any direct eye contact with the modules like we do on our open benchtable, running the computer without sunglasses or any other sort of light shield quickly becomes a pain.





SPD on Crucial sticks is business as usual. Combined with information about the maker, part and serial numbers, it also features three JEDEC profiles that go up to DDR3-1333 with an additional XMP that will automatically set the memory to its rated speed on Intel platforms.



Despite the heatspreaders holding on only via glue on memory ICs, they are not easy to separate from the sticks. So, if you feel the need to do this at home, we recommend heating the modules in advance and being cautious not to apply too much pull force.




Absence of heatspreaders reveals that our Tracers are based on the same custom labeled Micron D9PFJ memory ICs we have seen on all Ballistix 1866 1.5V rated memory we tested so far.
At this point, overclock testing is more of a formality as we have a clear idea on how such Microns perform based on results from similar kits. But in case our potential reader doesn’t want to go through our review history in search of our previous findings, we will gladly repeat the testing.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 4 - Testing Method & Test Setup
Page 2 - Closer Look	Page 5 - Results
Page 3 - Photo Gallery	Page 6 - Conclusion

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