We received in testing an interesting RAM kit from Crucial. It’s called Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB (BL2K16G36C16U4B), and it’s made by one of the best RAM chip manufacturers in the world, namely Micron. It promises to deliver fast speeds, excellent timings, and premium build quality. Does it manage to do all that? After using and benchmarking the Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3600, we’re now ready to share our opinion about these RAM sticks in this review:

Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB: Who is it good for?

This RAM kit is a great choice for:

• Gamers and content creators who need fast DDR4 RAM
• People who want excellent performance from their PC
• Users who don’t like RGB lighting and prefer their components without flashy lights

Pros and cons

There are many good things to say about Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB:

See price on:

Buy now

• High-end performance, with excellent speed and latency
• The black aluminum heat sinks are bold, yet discreet
• Its build quality appears to be excellent
• The RAM’s price is balanced

There aren’t any important downsides about this memory kit.

Verdict

The Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB is an excellent match for any modern computer. It offers excellent speeds, timings, and plenty of capacity for any gamer, as well as for most content creators. Also, considering that these Crucial RAM sticks have a premium build quality, we believe their price is balanced, and we recommend them to all our readers, especially to the ones who are also into gaming.

Unboxing the Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB memory modules

The Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3600 32GB modules come in a relatively small box. It has a dark blue background and a fairly large transparent cutout on the front side, through which you get to see what the memory modules look like. On the bottom edge of the box, there’s also a sticker that tells you the capacity, speed, and voltage of the RAM.

The box of the Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB

On the box’s back, Crucial invites you to visit their website to find information and support about the memory modules you just got.

Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB: Back of the box

Inside the box, you only find the memory modules sitting inside a protective plastic case.

What's inside the box

Unboxing the Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB memory modules is a fast and simple experience.

Design and hardware specifications

The Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB comes as a kit of two 16GB modules with a low profile form factor. Both DIMMs are covered by anodized heat spreaders made of aluminum. As you can see in the picture below, the RAM that we tested was colored in black. However, you can get it in white or red too.

The Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB RAM modules

As their name tells us, the RAM sticks are DDR4 and have a speed of 3600MHz. They’re rated as PC4-28800, which means that their peak data transfer rate can reach 28800MB/s. You might also be interested to know that it runs on a voltage of 1.35V, has a CAS latency of 16, and its extended timings are 16-18-18-38 (CL-tRCD-tRP-tRAS).

Details shown by CPU-Z

The RAM kit is optimized for both AMD and Intel, and supports XMP 2.0, making it very easy to configure. As you can see in the screenshot below, there’s only one XMP profile available in the RAM, which sets it to the advertised speeds.

XMP profile for Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB

For more technical information and also for shopping, head to the official webpage: Crucial Ballistix 32GB Kit (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3600 Desktop Gaming Memory (Black).

NOTE: In case you didn’t know, Crucial and Ballistix are two brands that belong to Micron, an American company from Boise, Idaho with a long history, founded all the way back in 1978. If you want to read more about them, check this Wikipedia article: Micron Technology.

Using the Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB memory modules

We used and tested the Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3600 memory modules in a desktop computer with the following configuration:

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi)
• Graphics Card: AMD Radeon RX 5700
• Storage: ADATA XPG Gammix S11 Pro SSD (PCIe 3)
• Monitor: ASUS ROG Strix XG32VQ Curved Gaming Monitor
• Power Supply Unit: ASUS ROG Thor 850W Platinum
• CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML360R RGB
• Operating System: Windows 10 Pro x64 with October 2020 Update

You can see more details about our hardware, including the Crucial Ballistix RAM, in the next screenshot.

Hardware details about the PC we used for testing the Crucial RAM

On my daily activities, the memory modules performed just like you would expect: flawlessly. I didn’t encounter any crashes related to the memory. Out of the 32GB of RAM, Windows 10 and all my usual apps never required more than 12GB. Gaming required more, depending on the title I played, but 32GB is more than enough for any.

Memory usage details shown in Task Manager

My opinion is that the Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB is one of the best RAM kits you can get, especially if you’re into gaming.

Performance in benchmarks

To see whether my subjective impressions and the top-notch official specifications meet expectations, we ran a few benchmarks. The first test we used for the Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB RAM was the Cache & Memory Benchmark from AIDA64. In the next screenshot, you can see that the RAM reached some impressive top speeds. We got a read speed of 53971 MB/s, a write speed of 52690 MB/s, and a copy speed of 47590 MB/s. AIDA64 also measured a latency of 65.1 nanoseconds - an excellent result considering that the RAM modules are running at 3600 MHz.

AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark

Next, we ran the Memory Mark tests offered by the PassMark PerformanceTest benchmarking tool. Using the Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3600 RAM, we got a score of 3541 points. It tells us that this memory kit is right at the top, better than 92% of all the world’s RAM.

PassMark Memory Mark tests

Similarly, in UserBenchmark, these Crucial memory modules managed a score of 126%, telling us that their performance is Outstanding and much better than most of the RAM ever tested by this benchmark’s users.

Results in UserBenchmark

Finally, we also ran PCMark 10 to measure the general performance of our test computer using the Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3600 RAM. We obtained a great score of 7679 points! According to PCMark 10, that means that our PC is better than 98% of all the personal computers in the world.

Results in PCMark 10

The Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB RAM are excellent RAM modules. They’re not just generous in terms of capacity, they’re also very fast, and all the benchmarks we run attest to that. This RAM kit is a great choice for any gamer and for anyone who wants to build a very powerful computer.

Do you intend to buy the Crucial Ballistix Gaming Memory DDR4-3600 32GB RAM kit?

Now you know our opinion about the Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3600 RAM modules. You also know how they perform, both in real life and in benchmarks. Have you already bought these memory modules? Do you plan to buy a kit in the near future? How do you like it? Let us know in the comments section below.