Introduce a memory-controlled lightshow into your PC with these Crucial sticks!
Crucial is a very well known manufacturer of memory in the enthusiast scene, and is renowned for pretty affordable, but still very overclockable, memory. This kit is definitely up to its usual standards - and even comes with a few surprises under its spreaders.
These are technically your standard DDR3 memory sticks, with 240 pins, keyed specifically to stop you from using them in a DDR2 slot, and the usual arrangement of memory chips covered with a thermal pad attached to a heatspreader. Here's where it starts to get cool - the heatspreaders are black, and framed with roughly brushed aluminium. These are attached to an all-black PCB, affording the sticks a pretty imposing view from pretty much any angle.
Not to be outdone by a simple colour-coordination, these sticks have two rows of eight LEDs along the top edge - one red and one green - that flash in time with the memory accesses. We had a ball watching them being accessed, especially during the benchmarks where the lights began dancing along the modules, creating a very exciting visual element to any system - especially one with a window. Coupled with the lights along the top, there are even LEDs near the pins of the sticks, that light up blue and give a very cool under-body glow (similar to street cars no less!) illuminating the motherboard and surrounding components.
Overclocking performance was quite strong, and these sticks can perform very well if you're prepared to give them a little tweaking. Keep in mind that you can't use them with Nehalem, as the 1.8V needed would fry the integrated memory controller pretty quickly unless you've got a lot of LN2. For now you're going to have to order these babies from Crucial directly at its website, or source them elsewhere - but they're definitely worth it for sheer awesomeness value.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012