Very recently we took a long look at Crucial’s DDR5-5200 CL42 kit and walked away very impressed. Impressed enough that we stated that there was no longer any need to look at DDR5-4800 kits. However, while excellent value kits the latest CPUs ‘stock’ supported speed are higher than what that kit could do. Even when overclocked buyers of both AMD and Intel could potentially be leaving performance on the (budget) cutting room floor. This is where today’s review of the Crucial DDR5-5600 2x16GB (model CT2K16G56C46U5) enters the equation.
With out of the box frequencies that exceed AMD’s ‘stock’ DDR5 specifications, and matches Intel’s 13th generation Core-I series, this is a kit that offers buyers zero worries over getting what they paid for from their latest and greatest system build. For average users the same is true of 32GB of Random Access Memory. For average buyers 32 Gigabytes of RAM was a pipe dream in the DDR4 days as it required either four sticks of reasonably priced RAM or two of budget busters and yet here we are a mere year later with it being in the realm of reasonable. Furthermore, with an asking price that is exactly the same as the 2x16GB DDR5-5200 kit, this specific kit on first blush is not only reasonably priced but is entering no-brainer terrority.
After all, why pay the same for lower speeds? That however is where things get a bit murky for novices buyers… as this is not a CL40 kit (like the ‘4800). It is not a CL42 kit (like the ‘5200). Crucial has further slowed things down with CAS Latency of 46 and secondary/tertiary timings of 45. To be blunt 46-45-45 is slow by today’s DDR5-5600 marketplace standards. It is slow enough that is neatly explains why this kit is also spec’ed at 1.1 volts.
This potential issue is sure to cause confusion when novices look at this kit and the DDR5-5200 kit. As such in this review we, just as we did for 5200 vs 4800, will not only go over the pros and cons of using a faster kit with lax timings versus a ‘slower’ kit at tighter timings, we will also show what impact this has in the real-world. Then we will offer our opinion on whether or not it makes sense to opt for the incredible value 5200 kit or instead go for this DDR5-5600 Crucial kit.
