Crucial Ballistix: Micron abandons gaming brand for RAM

Micron, the world’s third-largest DRAM manufacturer, is discontinuing part of its retail division. The Crucial Ballistix memory modules from Micron’s subsidiary Crucial, which are especially popular with gamers, will be completely discontinued. In the future, the company plans to focus on fast DDR5 memory in the server and consumer segments.

Crucial Ballistix discontinued

RAM modules of the Crucial Ballistix series have enjoyed enormous popularity among gamers for years. Most recently, the brand released overclocked DDR4 modules with aluminum covers, which are also among the cheapest models on the market.

But that’s over now, because after the massive price reduction of the Ballistix just recently, we now have certainty. Micron is completely discontinuing Crucial Ballistix as a product line. One of the reasons is probably the lower profitability, because the market in the gaming segment for DDR4 RAM is highly competitive.

Prices have been dropping for quite some time, which is probably why the brand should not yield too much profit anymore. The overclocked Crucial Ballistix DIMM kit with 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM is currently available for around 50 Euros, for example. DDR5 memory, on the other hand, has never been released under the Ballistix brand.

Crucial brand will continue

While the Ballistix gaming series will be discontinued, the Crucial brand will continue to exist. Henceforth, however, the company plans to focus on non-overclocked DDR5 RAM that meets JEDEC specifications in the consumer segment. In addition, RAM components for servers will continue to be offered.

Crucial’s current top-of-the-line model relies on DDR5-4800 clock frequencies and CL40-39-39 timings, but successors are expected during 2022. In the gaming segment, meanwhile, DDR5-6000 RAM marks the spearhead, which in the meantime – as in the case of G.Skill – bring it to timings of CL36-36-76.

So far, they are exclusively compatible with the new Intel Alder Lake processor generation around the Core i-12000 series, but should also run with AMD’s AM5 platform around Ryzen 7000 in the future.

At the same time, the Crucial brand is to remain active in the storage sector with internal and external SSD solutions and also launch new models there. The Crucial P5 (our review) was a hot item that also went down very well with our readers.