Crucial Pro OC DDR5-6400 32GB Review

We fully and freely admit that the first generation Pro OC series impressed us like few have been able to. So much so that is was only one of three lines we actually pre-stocked for our future builds. But as we mentioned in the introduction, it was not perfect for all scenarios. Arguably most… but not all, and while we loved what the first gen could do… ‘luv does not pay the bills’. Crucial lost many a sale to the competition due to lowered frequencies and “slow” (arguably even “sloppy”) latency timings. Thus, the necessity of having to stock some of the ‘other guys’ options to optimally fulfill the needs of specific builds.

Based on what we see here, it is painfully… blatantly obvious that Crucial took those lost sales personally. Thankfully, this is not the start of a Proper Villain arc; instead, Crucial redirected that anger into improving their lineup, and the end result of all this hard work is impressive. Having to overclock factory overclocked kits to get the most out of your CPU? Gone. Having to underclock the frequencies so as to tighten up the latency? A thing of the past. Having “It Just Works” reliability without needing to stick in a “temp” kit of RAM to manually set the timings before installing the ‘real’ kit? Still there, and they are still as easy as ever to get up and running. That is a lot to love and rather an impressive list of accomplishments to stack up in a single generation.

Now, with that said, the new generation 2 variants are not perfect. The first is the annoying ‘Crucial Pro’ that sticks out like a sore thumb on the snakeskin… err… “black camo” models. Crucial must rethink this borderline gaudy “accent” and either nuke it from orbit or, at the very least, swap over to a dark… dark gray font. Which is rather disappointing, considering that what they did with the white option is perfectly acceptable for professionals. In the grand scheme of things, this ‘improvement’ over the first-gen Pro OC black is not a deal breaker and rather is merely an annoyance. Which brings us to number two and number three nitpicks.
Yes. The Gen 2 Pro OC 6400 may not be as fast as some.

Yes. There are tighter latency timing kits available… especially on the secondary and tertiary timings.

Neither matters all that much, as few offer both, and fewer offer both at such a reasonable asking price. That is the secret to Crucial Pro’s ongoing success. Offer everything most need/want and even desire, and do so at a price that few can match. Put bluntly, this is Classic Crucial in action, as Crucial has once again leveraged its special, arguably unique, position to offer professionals (almost) exactly what they want at a price they desire.

Make no mistake. All those special ‘pro’ features easily translate over into the consumer arena. So don’t be afraid of the Pro moniker or Professional orientation. Instead, these are kits that we would wholeheartedly recommend to a first-time builder. They are just that helpful, that forgiving, and that easy to work with. Needless to say, Crucial has doubled down on what worked with the first gen, fixed (most of) what didn’t (always) work, and did so without working over your budget in the process. We know that we personally will be consolidating our previous 3 lines down to 2 because of these marked improvements. As such, we can easily say that if you are looking for reasonably sized kits of reasonably fast DDR,5 both the Black and White editions of the Crucial Pro OC v2 don’t just deserve but rather demand to be on your short list for further consideration.