Verdict: Great overclocking potential and great value

Crucial makes a range of high-performance modules known as Ballistix but, to be honest, we've often been more impressed by its range of standard RAM. This is because standard Crucial RAM is ridiculously cheap, yet still overclocks well.

The cryptically named CT2KIT12864AA53E continues this tradition. It's guaranteed to run at up to 533MHz, the slowest frequency of all the RAM in this Labs test. Its latency timings are more respectable at 4 - 4 - 4 - 12.

While we were hard-pressed to measure any significant performance difference between most of the kits in this Labs test, the CT2KIT12864AA53E lagged behind the pack in both our Core 2 and Athlon 64 test rigs. Interestingly, the performance gap between it and the next fastest kit was greatest in our Core 2 system, indicating that although Core 2 systems don't need lots of memory bandwidth, they benefit from having more than the 4.2GB/sec (per channel) that this kit provides.

Despite being rated to run at just 533MHz, with the voltage upped to 2V, we overclocked it to 850MHz. Even better, with the timings dropped to 6 - 6 - 6 - 18, we could overclock it to 1,066MHz, which is the equivalent of PC2-8500 RAM! Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that every kit will overclock to this frequency but, at £143.34, it's worth taking a chance.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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• Raptor Gaming M3 Platinum - Peripherals
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 - Processors
• ATI Radeon HD 4670 - Graphics cards
• DFI Lanparty JR P45-T2RS - Motherboards
• BFG GeForce GTX 260 OCX MaxCore - Graphics cards