Introduction

It might seems hard to believe, but it has been several months since consumer DDR4 products first appeared on the market. Yet for me, those products have been around for a fair bit longer than they have been in stores. The company to first have samples widely available for testing was none other than Micron. Crucial is Micron's consumer-focused division we all know and love, memories of Micron "D9" memory IC's and the ever-so-fast-yet-affordable Crucial M4 still floating around enthusiast forums the world over. In fact, I've been using Crucial M4 drives in my test systems for many years now, so they have definitely impressed themselves upon me. But today, we've got some DDR4 to look at, not an SSD.

With so many mixed opinions about DDR4 being bantered around, seeing things clearly has sometimes been hard. The introduction of DDR4 brought us a base speed of 2133 MHz to play with, but by and far DDR4 is mostly about power reductions and increased density, not a performance increase over the much older DDR3 technology. So it only makes sense that I make my first thorough look at DDR4 with DIMMs specified to run at 2133 MHz, and with sticks made by Crucial, the first company to widely offer samples for testing. However, there is that density side of things to look at as well, so I have a huge 32 GB kit on my desk to torture, and tortured it was. Let's take a look.

Specifications

Packaging

My first DDR4 kit arrived in quite familiar clothing, with the colors of Crucial's mainstream DDR4 products that permeate through most of Crucial's product offerings on the market today. Both front and rear are rather simple yet elegant, with just a few aesthetic hints to make you feel comfortable. Each box I received from Crucial (and I have received a few more since this one arrived) was sealed, the casing's plastic ends adjoined, molten together. Holding Crucial's sealed kit, you just know that no other hands than yours will have touched the glorious DDR4 sticks inside.


Once I managed to pop that end open, the full length of the DDR4 sticks inside were revealed, though I could only see two at first because a layer of paper separated the two identical trays the memory is gently placed into. I say gently for a reason since the sticks fell out of those trays quite easily, so you might want to take some care when opening the packaging or your fancy new memory may end up in a scary pile on the floor at your feet.