Crucial has always had the best package of any memory manufacturer as far as I am concerned. The brown box they ship their memory in has always shown up in just a UPS bag with no double boxing necessary to keep the memory safe. This kit of memory showed up in the same type of box...just a bit different.



It looks like the same box as previous generations of Crucial Ballistix memory has shipped in but quite a bit deeper. I thought for a minute that there might be more than one kit inside which had me get a little more excited than I already was. I am not sure if retail kits will be shipping in packages like this but from the retail packages of their new DDR3 memory, I believe these large boxes are limited to promotional samples such as my kit for this review.



This is about the size of the normal retail Crucial package that we have all become use to so the much longer box that this DDR3 kit of Ballistix showed up in was a bit of a surprise to me. Time to find out exactly what the layout inside this large box is. I am anticipating the same cardboard accordion like insert keeping the memory safe and secure.



As I suspected, the interior of the package is the exact same as the smaller packages we have seen here on O2 and elsewhere but with room for a total of eight modules. Naturally my package only has the two modules inside wrapped in their anti-static bags. I have said it before and will likely not stop saying it. I really like this packaging method because the modules are all but locked into place during transport and I have never heard of a Crucial module showing up in anything but perfect shape.



The complete package contents consist of the two modules contained within their individual anti-static bags and a small paper insert with handling and installation instructions. I don't know why the large package was used but it seems to have done just as good a job as the smaller one so no complaints from this reviewer.



Having removed a single module from the anti-static packaging, we can see that the Crucial Ballistix PC3-12800 8-8-8 have a very similar heatspreader to previous generations of Ballistix memory but with a few subtle changes.



The first of the changes is the exclusion of interlocking heatspreaders with clips at the top. Instead, these Ballistix come with two piece heatspreaders that do not converge at the top then clip together. Recent DDR2 Ballistix started showing up in users hands with heatspreaders that seemed to be too tight at the top and not fully contact ICs all the way down the modules. This is a possible reason for a split heatspreader design on these new DDR3 modules.



Another change in heatspreader design is the inclusion of a small DDR3 added to the logo to signify that these modules are not the DDR2 counterpart. I might have been expecting significantly different heatspreader design for the release of DDR3 but if it isn't broken, don't fix it. The subtle changes that were made to the heatspreader will be welcome from users I am sure.



In this photo we get a better idea of how the heatspreaders are mounted to the ICs. Crucial still uses the thicker grey thermal adhesive as they always have but when I removed the heatspreader, it seemed a lot stickier than in the past with DDR2 modules and there was no immediate indication of the woven material being present either. The other item to note from this image is that there are ICs on only one side of these modules. This means that these new DDR3 ICs are 128MB each and potentially opens the door to some very interesting 2GB modules down the road.