Crucial Pro DDR5-5600 32GB (2x16GB) Kit Review

How is it different, and how well does it compete? These are the first things we think of when a company associated with consumer and professional products releases a new line designed to attract gamers and performance computing enthusiasts. And the former is a perfect description of Crucial as a brand, with its constant focus on the boring things—compatibility, stability and longevity—going back dozens of years. We welcome its new “Pro” line.

Inside the sealed package are two aluminum-clad modules that are a mere 0.8mm taller than the CT2K16G56C46U5 kit we tested last year.

Similarities don’t end with module height, as our motherboard’s BIOS shows that  these also have identical timings to the previous kit. That means we can expect nothing more than a possible boost in overclocking support due to its more-mature production ICs and/or a touch of cooling from its heat spreaders.

Here’s a look from CPU-Z, which shows the real difference: On module’s part number begins with CT (Crucial Technology) and the other with CP (Crucial Pro). The same part number change also applies after adding the letters ‘2K’ to the two-DIMM kit.

And here’s the hardware that will be used to test today’s kit:

Test Hardware
CPU	Intel Core i9-13900K: 24C/32T, 3.0-5.8 GHz, 36 MB L3 Cache, LGA 1700
CPU Cooler	Alphacool Eisblock XPX CPU, VPP655 with Eisbecher D5 150mm, NexXxoS UT60 X-Flow
Motherboard	ASRock Z690 Taichi LGA 1700, BIOS 13.05
Graphics	Powercolor Red Devil Radeon 6750 XT: 2324-2623MHz GPU, 12GB GDDR6
Power	be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 850W: ATX12V v2.3, EPS12V, 80 PLUS Platinum
Hard Drive	Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD

Overclocking & Latency Tuning

We were hoping for a bit of extra overclocking from the newer production ICs and addition of heat spreaders, but our CP2K16G56C46U5 kit reached exactly the same DDR5-6400 as its unshorn CT2K16G56C46U5 sibling.

We were also able to shave a bit off its timings (less latency means more performance), but only at low data rates. At DDR5-5600 and DDR5-6400 it matched the older parts upon which it’s based. A little math revealed that our optimized DDR5-6400 timings also provided the lowest latency time for this kit, so we decided to use its performance for both the max overclock and minimum latency results of our charts.

Lowest Stable Timings
	DDR5-6400	DDR5-5600	DDR5-4800
Crucial Pro CP2K16G56C46U5	42-45-45-90 (2T)	36-40-40-80 (2T)	32-34-34-68 (2T)
ToughRAM XG RGB D5 RG33D516GX2-5600C36	36-38-38-76 (2T)	31-33-33-66 (2T)	26-28-28-56 (2T)
Crucial by Micron CT2K16G56C46U5	42-45-45-90 (2T)	36-40-40-80 (2T)	32-35-35-70 (2T)
Adata XPG Lancer AX5U5200C3816	X	X	36-36-36-72 (2T)

Performance Results

The Crucial Pro 5600 edged out its baseline kit as if by luck in Sandra Bandwidth, falling behind its sibling in Memory Latency in a reversal of luck. These should perform identically, and differences in both Sandra and Aida64 are small enough to treat these as coincidental.

Crucial’s Pro beats its non-Pro in F1 2021 after losing to it in 3DMark, and the best answer we can come up with is that 3DMark is getting slower and F1 2021 faster after being given a bit of time for updates (the earlier kit was tested earlier).

On the other hand, our 7-Zip benchmark never gets updates, and it shows the non-Pro kit consistently outperformance Crucial’s DDR5 Pro. Furthermore, the same thing happens in Handbrake and even Corona Benchmark.

What this leads us to is that our benchmark system is getting long in the tooth: We probably need to save a new copy of the clean benchmark image with all updates installed just to return us to the less-than-1% variance that we seek when comparing parts. Fortunately, we have a new drive that’s fast enough to make our updates seem worthwhile!

Is Crucial’s well-priced Pro kit is a good enough value to win a value award? While we wouldn’t mind seeing it share such an award with its non-covered sibling, checking around the web for competitor pricing puts it on par with similarly-rated parts from G.Skill, and slightly behind a few from TeamGroup. As both of Crucial’s competitors are similarly reputable, we’ll leave it to readers to decide which of these most deserves the award.

Crucial Pro CP2K16G56C46U5 DDR5 Memory Kit
Pros	Cons
Well priced Supports both XMP and EXPO Great-looking aluminum heat spreaders	Relatively high XMP CAS Pro kit costs $5 more than standard kit
The Verdict
You’ll pay $5 more to get the aluminum covers, but Crucial’s DDR5 Pro kit still offers solid value compared to its performance-themed competitors.

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