Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer Custom LED Memory

When it comes to system memory people are usually separated into two camps when it comes to visuals, first there are those who use their RAM as the highlight of their PC builds and those who do nothing more than have a simple colour match. This is why premium illuminated memory like Corsair's Dominator Platinum Memory and Avexir's Core Series of memory exist and remain so popular alongside more traditional offerings. 

Today we are looking at Crucial's Ballistix Tactical Tracer memory, which is an LED illuminated memory which offers something which is fairly unique right now, the ability to customize the colour, brightness, patterns or even turn off the memory's LEDs.

The only downside of this memory, at least on paper, is that each DIMM only has two colour options, with modules being available with Red/Green LED's or with Blue/Orange LEDs. It would be great to see more colour options in the future, but for now the ability to even change the LED's colour is a pretty unique feature.   

The other main feature of this memory comes when you use it in conjunction with Crucial's M.O.D software, which not just allows the memory's LED's to be customized but allows the user to monitor the memory's temperature on the fly, which is very useful when stress testing your system. 

Inside this software you will also be able to look at your specification's, be it the capacity, speed, part number or even the memory JEDEC timings. 

One very important thing to note about this memory's custom LED profiles is that they save to the memory itself, meaning that your LED options will be loaded when you boot and even without the software running. This means that you could even potentially set your desired LED profiles and simple delete Crucial's M.O.D software afterwards. 

Below is a list of all the LED pattern options which can be chosen. These will be shown in the video further down the article, so place watch it to see the memory for yourself. One thing to note is that each DIMM can either have it's own unique profile or they can all operate in the same way, which is a nice option to have. 

- Stereo

- Inside Out

- Lava

- Streamer

A lot of these modes will change in speed or frequency depending on CPU load, not memory load, though this is actually a good thing as most of the time your memory will not be under a great deal of stress, so basing this on CPU load will offer you with a greater amount of variation. 

One issue that we have found with this memory's customization options is that we would love to see the brightness options be a bit more clear cut. Only the two highest brightness levels make any difference to the the overall brightness of the LED's, which is the difference from Blindingly bright to subtle illumination. A few levels between these brightness levels would be great to see in a future iteration. 

Conclusion

If you are the type of person who wants affordable LED illuminated memory Crucial have you covered with their Ballistix Tactical Tracer memory. For the price of £59.99 it is a little more expensive than other memory of this capacity and speed but it offers users a lot of customization options which are unique to this memory right now. 

If you just want an LED underglow you can turn off the top mounted LED's, if you want it to use a different pattern you can do so and you can even give each DIMM it's own custom colour and pattern if you are particularly mad. 

One key feature of this memory is the fact that the memory saves it's profiles to the memory itself, meaning that once you choose your profiles they no longer need the M.O.D software to use that pattern, meaning that as soon as you boot your system your LEDs will work just as you intended.

The only problem with these DIMMs is the fact that each set has a limited set of colours, either being blue and orange or green and red, though this will not be an issue given the fact that you will purchase the colours that you want. Hopefully future iterations of this memory will have a few more colour options, or even full on RGB LEDs, but for now this selection of colours can match almost any system. 

All in all this memory kit does exactly what it says on the box, it offers an unparalleled amount of customization and is currently the cheapest set of LED illuminated memory on the market, so we will be giving this memory the OC3D Innovation Award.  

You can join the discussion on Crucial's Ballistix Tactical Tracer customizable LED memory on the OC3D Forums.