Installation
Wondering what setup we tossed the Crucial Ballistix DDR3 memory into? Well what we have in our test system is a Intel I5-750, Thermaltake Frio CPU cooler, ASUS P7P55D Deluxe, 1 TB SATA 3 hard drive, Antec 750w PSU and of course an optical drive all tossed into a Thermaltake Armor A90 computer case.
Installing the Crucial Ballistix memory is like most ram. If using a stock cooler you won’t have a problem but if using a tower cooler you might because most tower coolers have extra fans that will block one of the dimm slots. I installed the Ballistix in my 1 and 3 Dimm slots to make sure I get dual channel settings. You can also see that with my tower cooler it does block one of the Dimm slots. After all is said and done here is what the ram looks like installed.
We also installed the Crucial Ballistix MOD software which shows the timings, XMP profile, and also the temps of the Ballistix.
Overclocking
Now we start with the fun stuff, Overclocking. Once in the bios you can see all of the settings are defaulted to 1333 Mhz with my ASUS motherboard. After going into the AI settings on my motherboard I enabled the XMP profile which would bring the ram to 1600 Mhz along with making the CPU clock to 2.89 GHZ with the multiplier at 17x. Trying to get the CPU clock to default 2.67 Ghz was tricky but I did get it close to stock so it wasn’t a problem. After running test I got back into the bios to try to pump it up some more and to try and see how far I can go with just ram overlclocks. I tried many different settings. The highest I could get the ram by just raising the BCLK and trying to keep the CPU close to stock speeds was 180. With the XMP profile enabled, the default timings of 8-8-8-24 along with the BLCK at 180, the Ballistix ram was at 1800 Mhz.
I decided to try and reach my max overclock on my current system along with the max overclock for the Ballistix. The max I hit with the processor was 4.3 Ghz and with the Ballistix at 1720 Mhz. That’s with the BLCK being pushed to 215 and the system being stable. I also had to make the ram timings a little looser.
Here are some shots of my Bios while I was playing with settings and trying to see how far I can go.
