Crucial PC3200 DDR RAM

Company: Crucial
Product: 256MB PC3200
Street Price: ~$45
Date Reviewed: June 2, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

Examining the Memory:

The memory arrives to the end user in a cardboard box. Inside the box is a tray that holds the memory. The memory is packed inside electrostatic sleeves to protect them from the outside environment. The model number is marked on sleeves as well as on the modules.

These modules do not come with heat spreaders. As we said before, Crucial does not support overclocking and it will void the warranty. Heat spreaders have not shown that great of an improvement for us to be concerned. We feel that heat spreaders are more for cosmetics rather than functionality. If you did want to add heat spreaders to this memory, it would void the warranty.

The modules are single sided. This means that the modules are not as dense, which makes for less noise. In addition, the modules may overclock a little higher. Some overclockers prefer single sided memory because it supposedly will allow for high overclocks but this is not a proven fact and does not always hold true. We have quite a few double sided sticks of RAM that we have used, but have no problem obtaining great overclocks with them.

The chips that Crucial uses on these models are rated at 5ns. One interesting thing to note, is that this memory is rated at CAS 3. This is a very conservative setting. Most of the modules we have reviewed are all rated at CAS 2 or 2.5. Crucial more than likely uses CAS 3 to ensure stability. Most people that purchase from Crucial are not hardcore overclockers or enthusiasts. Therefore, aggressive memory timings are not needed. Honestly, most people never notice the difference between CAS settings. The reason being is that the performance differences are small unless comparing numbers from benchmarks. How many people can say that they visually see the difference between CAS 2 and 2.5?