Photos and Aesthetic

The packaging for the new Ballistix kit was a little surprising. I know they are focusing on the Crucial brand, but I expected the gaming-focused Ballistix kit to have packaging that matched that a little more. This looks like a Crucial kit with the exception of the mention of Ballistix which is smaller than the Crucial logo. Other than that the front does have a partial window that lets you get a small look at the new heatspreaders. Above that, they have a sticker that tells us the actual capacity and speed which for our kit is 64GB total capacity in a 2x32GB configuration at 3600 MHz. Around on the back there isn’t much going on, Crucial social media links are all there, a small icon at the top that mentioned the limited lifetime warranty. Beyond that, the dog tag is where they put the barcode does have the official model number. I’m surprised though that the timings of the kit aren’t included anywhere.

Inside of the box, Crucial stuck with their normal clear plastic clamshell tray that locks the two sticks in place securely. Being clear helps allow the window in the outside packaging, but this is the same tray that gets used when they just use a sticker for branding as well.

So here is the new Ballistix heatspreader design. The old kits, except the Elite kit all, used a more dated styling with heatspreaders that were only on the sides and nothing on top. Which if you think about it, is hardly visible once installed because normally all you can see is the top of the memory. The new Ballistix design addresses that with a new design. The sides have almost a car grill look to the embossed areas with the Ballistix branding in the middle in white on both sides. To go with that the memory itself is on full black PCBs as well. The black for our kit isn’t the only option, they do also offer it in red and white as well. Then for the top edge you can pick between RGB and non-RGB. Our kit is all blacked out with no lighting, but it is cool that you can get all three colors with the RGB option. Corsair which has a similar looking kit just has the black and the white, while those are the traditional good looking colors. I love the red simply for being something completely different.

The side profile gives us a better look at the heatspreader design as well. You can see how they are able to offer all of the kits with or without RGB lighting. At the top, they have filled the space with a black bar, but for RGB they just have to remove that and add the translucent white diffuser. They have to add the lighting to the PCB as well of course. But the modular design has to help keep costs down by being able to use the same side heatspreaders.

Below the Ballistix branding on one side they have the Crucial by Micron logo but on the other, they do put on the normal sticker. This has the actual model number as well as full details on the memory like the sticks capacity, clock speed, and XMP profile information like timings and voltage. Our kit isn’t an ultra-high clock speed at 3600 MHz, but the timings aren’t bad especially for the high capacity.