As you can see, Crucial really does not like making radical changes to their existing models’ aesthetics. Yes. They have given these second-gen kits a new, vastly improved paint job. Yes, there are subtle differences in the heatsinks (which we will get to in a moment)… but overall they obviously share a lot of parts commonality with first-gen Pro OC models.
This, to us, is a Good Thing. The first generation was low-profile, low-hassle kits of RAM that simply worked with a wide variety of builds. Including builds where mega ‘dual tower’ air cooling solutions were being incorporated into said builds. Equally important, they did all that while still having a personality and did not look like the inexpensive kit(s) of RAM they were! The Gen 2s do all that but have even more personality baked in. To wit, “camo” patterning has been added. Still highly professional that will fit in a vast swath of builds, but with more “rizz” as the zoomers would say. Put another way, these are like your favorite pair of Oxfords, just now with a bit of high-quality broguing done to them. So sure, they may raise an eyebrow or three with the ultra-conservative crowd (who will consider them a bit Avent guard), but still highly acceptable in a business environment… while still having enough personality that even Gen-Z builders will be drawn to them.
With all that said, there are now noticeably different pros and cons when choosing between the “white” and the “black”. Of the two, the white’s is the more conservative as the ‘camouflage’ pattern is extremely subtle. So subtle that unless you are really… really close and the light is juuuust right…. You may not even see it when it’s in a finished build.
The black. Well, the black is the epitome of “Oxford Brogue”… as you will notice the cameo pattern. So much s,o you probably will consider it more of a ‘snake skin’ patterning than true camouflage per se. Either way, both the dual-tone black option will work with even more motherboards than the basic monochromatic color they replace. To be blunt it is easily our favorite of the two colors, and we would use it in a ton of builds.
Just not all.
We say not all, as unlike the white, which got this new feature right, the black team didn’t stop at just adding a dash of style to the sides of the heatsinks. Sadly, they then added in an off-white font to the top instead of using the grayish colored font that the white models get. So while this ‘Crucial Pro’ branding on the white Just Works (and fits in with the Professional philosophy)… it doesn’t on the ‘Black’. Instead, it sticks out and draws the eye towards the RAM and away from the usual centerpieces of a custom build. Which is the exact opposite of what most professional builders want in 99 percent of their builds. This stark contrast really is the Achilles’ heel of the ‘black’ kits. So if you are a conservative by nature professional, the “properly enthusiastic” white options will be a better fit than the overly enthusiastic black.
Make no mistake, there are many, many worse offenders in the market today than the Pro OC black editions. But you kinda-sorta have to venture out of the professional market and into the “PC Enthusiast” end of the marketplace to find noticeably worse offenders. Put simply, the Blacks undermine a lot of what the Pro OC’s are supposed to be and come off as more suited for PC Gaming Enthusiasts and younger builders in general. Not professionals. Which is a shame as we like the personality and ‘rizz’ of the blacks more than the white editions.
On the plus side, it is pretty easy to cover up this misstep, and any pro builder worth their salt has a paint touch-up kit that will take seconds to fix this… over enthusiasm. It is just something that should not be necessary on a professional product.
That however, is about the grand sum of the issues one will find with either the White or Black options. For example, just as with its predecessors, these kits come pre-programmed not only for both AMD (AMP) and Intel (XMP) but also come with JDECC speeds pre-configured. Meaning that you don’t have to worry about these kits needing 1.35V to even POST. Instead, even the most trash-tier modern motherboard will read the SPD programming and run at a JDECC speed (and timings) that will let your system POST. First time. Every time. This, in turn, allows you to enter the BIOS and either enable the baked-in XMP/AMP profiles or manually set them yourself.
All without needing a ‘sacrifice’ kit of RAM to first be used just to get your shiny new kit of uber-performance RAM to work. Put bluntly this is something that Crucial has built a firm reputation on providing, and we would have been highly pis… err… displeased if the second generation PRO OC series delivered anything less than perfect user-friendliness.
To be fair. Yes. Just as with the first-gen Pro OC kits. These new gen kits did make the BIOS ‘hunt’ for a proper memory config that would POST. 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 on 99.9 percent of motherboards. That is because even expensive motherboards expect there to be at least one buyer who buys the cheapest DDR5 kit they can find. As such, they all start out with 1.2v at turtle speeds, and when that works… they slowly ramp up the frequency.
This “lowered expectations” is a pet peeve of ours. Not at the motherboard BIOS team, but at the XMP and Intel certification team. The fact of the matter is that not every XMP and/or AMP profile will “Just Work” on every motherboard, so the BIOS team cannot trust the certification board. Which is turn defeats the original reason for having these custom SPD settings in the first place. Until the halcyon days of fully trustworthy AMP/XMP certifications arrive and BIOS makers start using them as the default option, Crucial’s approach of including as many configurations as they can fit on the SPD is about as steadfast and true a workaround as one will find.
Moving on. When one does enable the guaranteed factory overclocked timings, one should be extremely impressed by the single generational improvements Crucial has baked in. As we went over in previous Pro OC reviews, the (now) first-generation models can with some rather sloppy timings. Even the ‘fastest’ model’s CL36 timings were slow. Now? Think CL32 with CL30 easily reachable via manual overclocking. On both AMD and Intel rigs, we might add.
Now that… that is how you eliminate the largest complaint people had with the first-gen product! To be fair, these are not “true” nor “flat” CL32 kits (aka 32-32-32) as it is only CAS Latency that gets a 32… and the secondary and tertiary are still CL40. Which, once again, is easily fixable via manual overclocking. In fact, we got a flat 32 (aka 32-32-32) with only a smidgen more voltage necessary. In fact, with our self-imposed voltage limits, we were able to hit 30-30-30 at DDR5-6400. Even then, we believe there may still be some gas left in both these kits’ “tank” and it was our IMCs in our AMD and Intel processors that were the limiting factor. We say this as rarely do we hit the exact same wall on timings and frequencies with both Team Red and Team Blue testbeds. Usually, one will do slightly better than the other. Thus, our sneaking suspicion that it’s the IMCs that don’t want to go above ‘6400 at CL32 and be stable. Not the RAM. Which is highly impressive all on its own but doubly impressive when one research’s the cost of CL30 RAM kits.
Needles to say the new refreshed Crucial OC Pro has multiple, blatant, improvements baked into it… while at the same time staying true its roots. Put another way, when you combine ease of installation and ease of use with high performance and then dollop in a heaping dose of mass market appeal (from both overall aesthetics and cost perspectives) the end result is one heck of an upgrade to an already excellent series. Such an upgrade that it is almost guaranteed to wow everyone from novice to (most) professionals. Now if they had only not… disfigured the top of the Black options and we would call this a universally appealing lineup.
