Model: Crucial 32GB DDR5-5600 Pro Desktop Memory
Manufacturer: Crucial
Provided By: Crucial
Crucial is a global brand of Micron Technology, Inc., one of the largest memory and flash storage manufacturers in the world. The company's product lineup includes award-winning solid state drives (SSDs) and computer memory upgrades (DRAM) for more than 50,000 systems. These products have been qualified and approved by major original equipment manufacturers and every single module has been rigorously tested at the component and module level. Each SSD also undergoes over a thousand hours of prerelease validation testing and hundreds of qualification tests to ensure optimal reliability and performance.
Earlier this year, Crucial introduced its second-gen DDR5 memory for desktop and laptop computers. Optimized for Intel's 13th Gen and AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors, this memory offered good mix of performance and stability at a reasonable price. Building on this success, Crucial recently upped the ante with its DDR5 Pro memory. Equipped with an integrated low-profile heat spreader, this DDR5-5600 memory enables up to 1.75 times the data rates and two times the bandwidth of DDR4 memory. Crucial's DDR5 Pro memory also supports Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO and features voltage regulation on the module through a power management integrated circuit (PMIC) for better power regulation and increased efficiency.
For this review, Crucial sent us 32GB (16GB x 2) DDR5-5600 Pro memory kit. The specs are below:
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Instead of a box or plastic clamshell, Crucial's DDR5 Pro memory comes packaged in a cardboard blister pack. The front of the packaging advertises many of its key features including the capacity, speed rating and lifetime warranty.
Physical Features:
The main difference between Crucial's classic DDR5 memory and their new DDR5 Pro memory is the addition of a low profile, heat spreader. Offering a sleek, modern look, this heat spreader is machined out of high quality aluminum and features a matte black finish. There's also a Crucial and DDR5 Pro logos on the front and the back as well as a sticker showing the model number, capacity, rated speed, voltage and timing.
I you were to remove the heat spreader, you'd find the same Micron D8DDZ (MT60B2G8HB-56B:G) memory chips that Crucial used on its classic DDR5-5600 desktop memory. These are 16Gb chips in a 2Gig x 8 configuration with a speed grade of 5600MT/s at a latency of CL46.
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Crucial's DDR5-5600 memory offers a couple of XMP profiles for Intel processors as well as a couple of EXPO profiles for AMD processors. As you can see above, the XMP and EXPO profiles are fairly similar with only a few differences in the timings table.
The test system used in this review is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 9 7900x CPU, Gigabyte B650E AORUS master motherboard, 32GB (16GB x 2) of Corsair Vengeance 5200MT/s DDR5 memory, Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD and a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G graphics card. For the operating system, I used the latest version of Windows 11.
To test the performance of Crucial's DDR5-5600 Pro memory, I ran a series of benchmarks using AIDA64 Extreme and PCMark 10. For comparison, I've also included test results from Crucial's "classic" DDR-5200 and 5600 desktop memory as well as Corsair's VENGEANCE 32GB DDR5-5200 C40 memory kit.
AIDA64 Extreme 6.85.6300:
First, I ran a few quick tests using AIDA64. Among other things, this benchmark measures the read, write and copy speeds of your system's memory as well as the latency.
Crucial's DDR5 Pro memory performed as expected here. It narrowly beat out the company's "classic" DDR-5600 memory with the fastest read and write speeds as well as the best latency.
PCMark 10 Extended Benchmark:
The PCMark 10 Extended benchmark is a longer benchmark that covers a wider range of activities. It contains tests that cover the wide variety of work encountered in a modern office from everyday essentials and productivity applications to demanding work with digital media content. The benchmark also includes a gaming test that focuses on real-time graphics and physics.
Despite having a heat spreader, Crucial's DDR5 Pro memory is not intended to be overclocked. In fact, your warranty will be voided if you overclock it beyond their rated speeds and timings. Not one to be deterred by such things, I wanted to see how much performance I could gain without increasing the operating voltage (1.1V).
To begin, I first increased the data rate by 200 MT/s. In both cases, the DDR5 Pro memory was rock solid. I was able to run various benchmarks without any problems. After that, I started tweaking the timings (CAS Latency, tRCD, tRP, and tRAS). Starting with the EXPO profile, I reduced the timings by a couple of clock cycles.
While not a huge overclock by any means, I was pleasantly surprised by these results. I saw a 2-3% improvement in read and write speeds by simply increasing the data rate. Tweaking the timings didn't get me much more in regards to speed but, as you can see, the memory's latency dropped by nearly four milliseconds.
Final Thoughts:
Crucial's DDR5 Pro memory is a great choice for the gamer, content creator or professional looking for a solution capable of delivering the speed and bandwidth required by the latest Intel and AMD CPUs. With its support for both Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO, users can take this memory, pop it in their computer and know that it will perform well without sacrificing stability. To top it all off, Crucial's DDR5 Pro memory comes equipped with an integrated, low profile heat spreader that is capable of providing heat dissipation in even the smallest form factor PCs.
Despite all this, Crucial's DDR5 Pro memory does have its shortcomings. To achieve the best possible compatibility and stability, the company has had to make some concessions in regards to performance. Due to its fairly conservative timings, the DDR5 Pro memory isn't the fastest on the market today. Of course, you can squeeze out a bit more out of it through overclocking but, by doing so, you will void Crucial's otherwise generous lifetime warranty.
Crucial's 32GB DDR5-5600 Pro memory kit is available now and can be purchased directly from Crucial.com or through retailers like Amazon for about $80.
