As expected, the Crucial Pro DDR5-5600 128GB kit comes in the exact same cardboard + clamshell shipping container. This is a good, a bad, and a bit of a disappointing thing. It is good as it will not take up much room on retail shelves, and yet stand out, while at the same time providing you the buyer a second chance to ensure that you have indeed picked up the right kit of RAM. It is disappointing because… well… this is not a cheap kit of RAM. Maybe we expect more from a kit that costs more than many a CPU option. Maybe it should feel more premium. Maybe we are just expecting too much as it might be the “big boi” option it still is part of Crucial’s Pro lineup and thus does not get any special treatment.
The downsides? They are the exact same as the Crucial Pro DDR5 kits we recently looked at. First and foremost, all that is protecting the RAM from the typical bumps and bruises while in transit is a thin layer of plastic and maybe a thin layer of cardboard. RAM by its very nature is robust so that is not exactly a deal-breaker issue. Still a wee bit disappointing to see Crucial has done nothing in the interim to ‘fix’ this known complaint… especially on a kit marketed for “professionals”.
Plastic is also, by its very nature, prone to static build-up. So, when you combine ESD (“static shock”) with sensitive electrical components… well… bad things can happen just by opening up their shipping ‘container’. Thankfully, these kits do come clad by metal heatsinks so ESD damage is highly unlikely. Still higher than it ‘should’ be, but not overly worrisome.
Lastly… and the actual main gripe we have with these shipping containers… it is extremely difficult to tell them apart. It is even going to be easy to choose the wrong capacity version if a bunch of these are on retail shelves next to one another. The only, and we mean only way, is to pay careful attention to the black lettering on a gray background in the upper left’ish corner. Doing anything else and you may ‘accidentally’ bring the wrong version to the checkout. Worse still, if you purchase it online at say Fast AliExpress (aka ‘Amazon’) the chances of the (over-worked and woefully underpaid) warehouse agent picking the wrong one are higher than we would like… and good luck arguing that they sent you the wrong kit. That is a headache that is never fun. So, if possible buy in person or at least from an actually reputable e-tailer.
On the positive side, at least Crucial has made the clamshell internal ‘box’ reusable. Something the original Pro models could not boast of having. As such they do listen to user feedback and at some point in the future will probably fix these nit-picks.
Also on the positive side, Crucial makes it abundantly clear that this kit is CPU manufacture agnostic and has both Intel XMP and AMD EXPO baked right onto the SPDs. Of course, they also make it abundantly clear that if you think it is going to be a plug-and-play kit for older-generation CPUs… well you are probably in for a bad day. These kits pretty much demand the latest and greatest consumer Integrated Memory Controllers and hitting DDR5-5600 may not sound all that impressive, it is by 128GB kit standards. In fact it pretty much edged into the insane category and would have been well into the land of marketing spin even a single CPU generation ago. Put bluntly this kit is going to stress your CPU’s IMC and if it is not up to snuff do not expect DDR5-5600 to be fully stable.
Thankfully Crucial is all about that user-friendliness so one can expect to find not only AMD and Intel pre-configured timings for DDR5-5600 frequencies… one can expect multiple ‘gears’ below DDR5-5600. Thus, all but ensuring that even on the most hooptie of the motherboard using the least impressive Core Ultra / Ryzen 9000 CPU your new build will POST first time. Every time. Without ever needing to prep / prime the BIOS for this kit’s timings. This is something we have come to love about the new and improved “Pro” line by Crucial and really does separate the best of the best from the ‘also rans’ of the marketplace.
We say this as up until now DDR5 has been anything but ‘user-friendly’ and in comparison makes the early days of DDR4 seem like a golden age of performance and practicality. Unfortunately, in modern DDR5 times, most kits can be downright finicky and/or Prima Donnas. So much so that during many a build (especially when dealing with above JDEC standards) we have longed for the days of the past. A simpler time where we did not have to spend as much time on getting RAM voltages and timings dialed in as we did the frickin’ CPU.
In this regard, and just like the Pro OC 64GB kits reviewed recently, this big boi kit will offer you little to no drama. Instead, what they promise is what they go out of their way to deliver, and if they cannot do what they say they can they try to get you as close as possible to their promised frequencies. So, if you are the ‘the journey is the reward’ and not “the destination is the reward” type builder then these low-stress kits are not right for you and your… “special” needs.
To be fair. Yes. This kit did make the BIOS ‘hunt’ for a proper memory config. It did so on both AMD (MSI X870E Carbon) and Intel (MSI Z890 Tomahawk) based systems. That is to be expected. All above original JEDEC standard(s) DDR5 kits do this. All mega-capacity DDR5 kits do this. When you combine both into one package that is typically a recipe for pain one where you the builder never expects to get all the speed that is promised and rather you hope to hit 5200 frequencies… but will settle for 4800 being fully stable. So of course the BIOS team also knows this and approaches POST’ing at “high” speeds with a rather jaundiced eye.
Also to be fair, to the competition, this kit does come with some god-awfully loose timings and that does help things a lot when it comes to ensuring the RAM kit will be fully stable on every possible combination of modern motherboard and CPU. To be blunt. CL46 is slow. It however is CL46 @ 5600 frequencies which basically has the same latency as CL40 at DDR5-4800… which by 128GB kit standards is ‘decent’. Still not great… but decent. Thankfully, you can overclock this kit a bit. Not on the frequency side of the equation… as both AMD and Intel IMCs really do not like to work hard (and 64×2 kits are the epitome of ‘working hard’). Instead, you can tighten up the timings nicely. With very little effort we got full 48 hour+ stable at CL40 on both AMD and Intel… and if we were willing to push the voltages higher probably could have gotten even tighter timings on our Intel testbed. For the sake of keeping your expectations in the realm of reasonable, we did not. Either way, turning ~16.5ns latency sticks into a ~14.3ns is probably worth a couple of moments of your time. Not much more than that… but certainly a couple of moments. Either way, we think that is highly impressive by 64GBx2 DDR5-5600 standards!
Moving on. Also expected, but still, a pleasant surprise, is the fact that these new Crucial DDR5 Pro kits bring new meaning to the word “low profile”… as these pretty, and still practical, heat sinks add way… way less than one millimeter to the overall height. In fact, its less than 3/4 of a millimeter. Thus, from an installation point of view, these new Big Boi 128GB kits are as user-friendly as even the most entry-level of Nekkid kits available.
Of course, the counterpoint to there being rounding errors worth a chance of the Crucial DDR5-5600 64GBx2 kit causing installation problems is the fact that you are not going to get any LEDs, or even heatsinks with ‘cool’ or ‘edgy’ wings/fingers… or similar look at meeeeee features. Instead, these are old-school low-profile kits of DDR5 that just so happen to be 64GB per DIMM beasts. So, if you want your DIMMS to light up like the Las Vegas strip during Mardi Gras (or any day that ends in ‘y’ for that matter) this is probably not the kit for you.
To be fair, Crucial does offer them in both an all-white and all-black color options. This means that this series will work with the vast majority of the build’s overall aesthetics. They just will never be the ‘star’ of the show. Which is perfectly fine as they are built by and for professionals. Not 13-year-olds. Not boomers. Not even midlife crisis having Gen X’ers. Professionals who have certain… aesthetic standards that must be met before any new options are added to their roster. Standards which include words and phrases like Understated. Elegant… Professional. Which, these days, is just the way we like our RAM to be. You may differ and have different priorities, so please take that into account before including any RAM kit in your latest build.
