Overall and Final Verdict
Both of the new Crucial kits as well as the original 4800 MT/s kit that I compared them with are unique in the ram market compared to a lot of the kits you would see. All three are clocked at speeds that fall in the range of AMD and Intel’s memory clock speeds for their current CPUs. In other words, where most kits you might run into are considered overclocked kits, these are stock clock speeds. That also means that going in you don’t have to worry about their reliability which can get dicey once you start getting into higher clock speeds, dual rank memory, and when you start filling all four memory slots. The XMP and Expo profiles on both kits give you an easier to use clock speed for those situations where you need to use all four slots and then the higher clock speed for the main dual channel slots. In short, these aren’t fancy or overclocked, they are your bread and butter DDR5 kits but the new speed options help expand past the initial 4800 MT/s from the initial launch of DDR5. Keeping things simple also applies to the styling with these not having heatspreaders at all. But to be honest the all blacked out PCB looks good to me. This isn’t an old green PCB which would then not match anything. Even in a PC with a side panel, unless you want fancy RGB memory these kits would still fit the bill just fine.
For pricing the kits that I tested were all dual 16 GB for 32 GB in total which is currently the sweet spot for memory. The 5600 MT/s and 5200 MT/s kits both have the same MSRP of $114.99 right now which is interesting. Single sticks are $57.99 as well but right for the dual channel kits on Newegg they are priced even above MSRP, most likely by a secondary reseller. They are hard to come by on Amazon as well with just the single sticks being what you can find most of the time. More importantly, with memory prices always changing some of the competition has come down in pricing. Where on Newegg the single sticks are the cheapest at their respective clock speeds. The dual-channel kits have dropped down into the low $90s for the 5200 MT/s kits making the MSRP price of these kits high right now. 5600 MT/s is similar as well with kits down even below $90 and those kits having heatspreaders and being from other well-known brands. So Crucial is going to have to make a few adjustments on their pricing which was good but is now looking a little high.
Live Pricing: HERE
