Crucial Ballistix Active Cooling Fan
Feb 18th, 2011 | By JaredCrucial states the Ballistix Active Memory Cooler is easy to install and they are dead on with that statement as no tools other than your fingers are required. Installation begins by affixing the brackets to the side at the right height using the included thumbscrews. The bottoms of the brackets have a curved portion that is padded. This is the mounting point for the unit as it grips onto the RAM slot clips.
The main concern with installation is going to be with CPU heatsinks since the Ballistix Active Cooling Fan is slightly wider than four memory banks. In order to install on the MSI P55-GD65 using the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ I had to move the fan to the other side also eliminating the ability to use two fans.
Memory heatspreader height isn’t an issue since the unit is adjustable enough to cover even taller heatspreaders. You can also see here how the unit holds onto the RAM retention clips. I’ll admit I was a little skeptical at first about how secure this method would be but in practice it holds quite well though I would be careful if this were a machine that I carried around to LAN party. While I had a nearby fan header to plug the unit into, should you not the included 3-pin to 4-pin power adapter would come in handy.
Installation was a breeze, but exactly how does the Ballistix Active Cooling Fan perform? Detailed below is the system that was used for testing.
- Control
- CPU: Intel i5 760
- MB: MSI P55-GD65
- Memory: Crucial BL2KIT25664FN1869 9-9-9-24 @ 1000 MHz
- GPU: HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo 1GB
- HD: WD 250GB SATA
- Case: Cooler Master HAF932
- PSU: Ultra X3 1000W
- OS: Microsoft Windows 7
To achieve load temperatures I ran four instances of Prime95 using testing lots of RAM as well as running PCMark Vantage and recording the highest temperature reached using the Ballistix MOD Utility to read the temperatures.
As you can clearly see the Ballistix Active Cooling Fan does its job well dropping temperatures from 3 to 5 degrees. Temperatures under load while using the kit are about the same as idle temperatures without the active cooling.
The Ballistix Active Cooling Fan is also near silent so there is no additional noise added while using it which is always a nice bonus.