Test System

Initial Setup

You really gotta like the way a board looks when all the slots are filled, and when it's a TUF board filled with these sticks in particular, there's a definite completeness to the entire look that is pretty hard to match with anything else. The yellow and silver of the memory heatsinks neatly matches the board's colors both on its PCB surface and the heatsinks of the board, patterning and all. Ballistix really went all in on the TUF Gaming Alliance theme for sure.


The Ballistix Sport AT sticks just end up blending into the board itself and almost disappearing. RGB LEDs are one thing for a memory stick's appearance, but this closely matching a board's design is yet another for sure.



As I mentioned much earlier, these sticks have a 3000 MHz XMP profile, which on many systems just doesn't truly exist as a native divider. Yet have no fear because getting there requires just a modest boost to your CPU's base clock, well within the limits of what most systems are capable of without much fanfare or the need for additional cooling. I'm using a locked Intel i5-8400 CPU for a lot of my memory testing, and with that CPU, as you see above, there were no issues at all with running this modest clock increase, and when you look at the benchmarks, you'll see the clear performance benefit this can have. Most benchmarks have this kit up on top of even the 4000 MHz kits I've tested, and that's not exactly due to the memory itself directly, but more on how that XMP profile works. This is an interesting aspect to consider for sure as an easy way for users with locked CPUs to add in a bit more performance provided their board has the right chipset.