While I’ve been building my gaming systems for a few years now, I’ve only recently started dabbling in the overclocking side of things, and even then, it’s mostly been with tools such as MSI Afterburner. I’ve also played around with allocating some of my SSD as virtual RAM, but not once did I consider overclocking the RAM itself.

Crucial has sent us one of their Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB kits, comprised of two 16GB DDR5-6000 UDIMM Sticks in black, and while they might not come with the bright and shiny RGB accents you all know I adore; they make up for it in many other ways.

The first thing I want to bring up, however, could be seen as a slight negative, but it is something that needs to be known before you walk into a shop and ask for it, particularly if you’d be slotting it into an older system. To use the Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 UDIMM RAM, you’ll need a system that’s running a 12thto 14th Gen Intel, an AMD Ryzen series 7000 processor, or higher, should you be reading this in a few years when we might finally have flying cars.

Just like the packaging, the sticks are quite minimalist in their appearance, and it’s not until you look a little closer that you notice the simple and elegant origami-inspired edges that run along the black aluminium heat spreader. Not only is this an elegant look, but it also serves the purpose of aiding in heat dissipation, which is particularly useful for those of us who want to squeeze some extra performance out of our hardware.

Supporting next-gen multi-core CPUs, the Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 UDIMM RAM, by default, can reach frequencies up to 6000MHz, but to do so, you’ll need to ensure that you have Intel XMP 3.0 or AMD EXPO enabled in your EUFI/BIOS settings. While I am a bit of an Intel fanboy, it is nice to see support for both AMD and Intel, as the Crucial DDR5-4800 desktop modules would only support Intel XMP 3.0.

The main selling point for the Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 UDIMM RAM is “Game at higher frame rates.” This is achieved by the 12ns memory latency while running the default clock (6000MT/s CL36), which is 25% faster than Crucial’s plug-and-play equivalent (16ns at 6000MT/s CL48). Of course, with overclocking, this can be improved, but as with anything you can overclock, this is done at your own risk.

After installing the Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 UDIMM RAM and making sure everything was up to date, I decided to run the most demanding game I have, and that, dear reader, is Star Citizen. If you’ve read any of my past hardware reviews, or if you’re someone who has spent real-world money on digital life in space, you’ll know that it can be incredibly taxing on a system. I normally experience decent, albeit unstable framerates, unless I’m in an area heavily populated by abandoned ships and player trash. I’ll usually bounce between 40 to 60 FPS while walking around a planet, and 60 to 80 FPS while cruising the black.

I don’t know that this qualifies as an increase, but my framerate was more stable when using the Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 UDIMM RAM with Intel XMP3.0 enabled. On the planet side, the average changed from 45 to 55 FPS, and in space, I was typically rolling with 65 to 75 FPS.

I’ve also recently started playing Once Human, and again, depending on where I am and how many player houses are in the area, I can normally reach up to 80 FPS while on very high settings, though it can drop down to 60 or so, however, with the Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 UDIMM RAM installed, I was achieving up to 90 FPS, and again, I found it to be more stable, usually sitting closer to 80, and only occasionally dropping to 70.

I also noticed the overall performance of my system had improved slightly, particularly if I had a video running while I had a game open. I’ve recently played around with some settings in NVIDIA control panel to squeeze more out of my GPU while gaming, and these changes have affected my secondary screen. Gaming on my main monitor causes videos to lose frames, which, while annoying, isn’t necessarily something that would affect others – I don’t think many people would be watching videos while playing games, but with the RAM installed, videos were marginally smoother.

Although overclocking is in the name, the Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 UDIMM RAM delivers on the promise to improve your frames. It might not look as flashy as some other brands, but this is a case of function over form, and even then, the simple elegance of the origami-inspired heat spreader offers a very classy look. You need to ensure that your system is properly compatible with it, and I’d advise against playing around with the timings unless you know what you’re doing.

Written by: Mathew Lindner