Let us face facts. The launch of DDR5 was rough and the ensuing years have only started to fix the dog’s breakfast that JEDEC, AMD, and Intel dropped in to our laps. We say ‘started’, as while each generation from both Intel and AMD are getting better, the Integrated Memory Controllers are simply not powerful enough to handle the frequencies we were all promised. This goes double for “Dual Ranked” (aka 32GB and larger DIMMS) that apparently do everything in their power to make life as difficult as possible for builders… or at least they did. We can say that because this is where Crucial’s $195 (USD) 2x32GB Pro DDR5-6000, and the $210 2x32GB Pro DDR5-6400 “64GB” kit’s enter the chat.
Up until now everyone, including ourselves have been blaming the CPU’s Integrated Memory Controller as the main cause of the DDR5 stability problem. However… what if it’s not just the IMC that is the problem? What if memory manufactures have also been dropping the ball and making things more difficult than they have to? Better still, can the DDR5 IC manufactures not only stop hindering but actually start to help system builders just trying to get all the performance they were promised and paid for?
What would professionals (and by extension both pro-sumers and enthusiasts) be willing to pay to get decently high frequencies with 64GB (and 96) DDR5 kits ‘right out of the box’. No hand holding. No fuss. No muss. Just (nearly) plug and play ease of use? Now imagine all that wrapped up in a package that also offers actually good aesthetics… in both all black and all white kit options. These appear to be the main questions, and priorities, Crucial’s DDR5 Pro design team set out to answer and how the new DDR5-6000 and DDRR5-6400 options came about.
Make no mistake. Promising to have solved all of those issues and done so without budget breaking asking prices is a big ask from experienced, arguably overly cynical, professionals. Especially when these new editions to the Pro series also promise to “Just Work” on both AMD and Intel based systems. Just Work when 64GB kits are notorious for not only favoring one CPU maker over another but also being prima-donnas to get dialed in at frequencies above 5K?! Now that is a big ask.
Big ask or not, Crucial’s Professional series has proven itself in the past. Few can gainsay the T705 and T500 NVMe SSDs models as they are as potent as they are reasonably priced. The same is true of the previous DDR5 Pro models. Sure they are not the fastest nor the cheapest… but the Crucial Pro DDR5-5600 kits have found their way into many a system build because they are stable and reliable. Hell they are downright “boring” in the lack of drama and hand holding they demand. Which is exactly what professional boutique / custom system builders want from their RAM kits.
Sterling proven track record or not… it still is a big ask. If however these new additions can actually deliver on offering not only a hassle free “plug and play” build experience, in the ‘sweet spot’ frequencies we may add, but also aid in enhancing the overall aesthetics of a build the overall value of these kits will be extremely hard to match. So hard that the DDR5 Pro team will finally be at parity with the Pro storage team. So let’s see if Crucial has once again stepped up their game and given professional’s (and enthusiasts) what we have been craving since DDR5 was launched.
