Crucial Ballistix Memory Goes End-of-Life, Micron Realigns its DRAM Strategy
by Gavin Bonshor on February 17, 2022 10:00 AM EST
Underscoring the fast-paced nature of the computer hardware market, Micron this week has decided to discontinue all of its current Crucial Ballistix memory products. The move to end-of-life (EOL) these products covers the entire Ballistix lineup, such as the vanilla Ballistix, Ballistix MAX, and Ballistix MAX RGB series. Word of this change comes from a press announcement from Micron, Crucial's parent company, and marks the impending end of the line for its popular consumer-focused line-up.
Over the years, I have personally used many of Crucial's Ballistix series memory for different builds, even back as far as the days of its DDR2-800 kits with bold and stylish gold heatsinks. The latest Ballistix series for DDR4 mixed things up with a whole host of different color schemes such as white, black, and even those adopting integrated RGB heat spreaders designed to offer users varying levels of customizability. It seems those days are now set to come to an end, as Micron has decided to call time on the popular series designed for enthusiasts and gamers.
Despite there being no officially stated reason from Micron for the decision to cut its popular and premier consumer-focused Ballistix series from its arsenal, the press release does state, "The company will intensify its focus on the development of Micron's DDR5 client and server product roadmap, along with the expansion of the Crucial memory and storage product portfolio".
It should be noted that Micron or Crucial never advertised or mentioned the Ballistix brand during the market's transition from DDR4 to DDR5 memory. It seems that the decision wasn't a spur-of-the-moment one and that Micron, which is one of the three main DRAM manufacturers globally along with SK Hynix and Samsung, is looking to turn its attention to satisfying the growing demand for its server hardware and client-based customers.
Finally, it should be noted that the memory discontinuation doesn't affect Crucial's consumer storage products, such as the Crucial P5 and P2 NMVe M.2 storage drives, or Crucial's X8 and X6 portable SSDs. It looks as Crucial will still keep its toes in the consumer sector for storage, at least for now. Still, the glory days of its Ballistix series will be no more, and users can expect to see the brand die out entirely as DDR4 memory is phased out of the desktop platforms in the coming years to come.
Micron To End-of-Life (EOL) Crucial Ballistix Product Lines
BOISE, Idaho; Feb. 16, 2022 – Micron released the following information about a change to its business strategy for Crucial memory.
- The company will end-of-life (EOL) its Crucial Ballistix, Crucial Ballistix MAX and Crucial Ballistix MAX RGB product lines.
- The company will intensify its focus on the development of Micron’s DDR5 client and server product roadmap, along with the expansion of the Crucial memory and storage product portfolio.
- The company will continue to support the performance compute and gaming communities with its award-winning SSD products, such as the Crucial P5 Plus Gen4 PCIe NVMe SSD, Crucial P2 Gen 3 NVMe SSD, and the popular Crucial X6 and Crucial X8 portable SSDs.
- Teresa Kelley, Vice President and General Manager, Micron Commercial Products Group: “We remain focused on growing our NVMe and Portable SSD product categories, which both offer storage solutions for PC and console gamers. Additionally, Crucial JEDEC standard DDR5 memory provides mainstream gamers with DDR5-enabled computers with better high-speed performance, data transfers and bandwidth than previously available with Crucial Ballistix memory.”
Source: PCPer
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funkatronic - Thursday, February 17, 2022 - link
Explains all the sales recently. Ballistix was was my goto memory modules for my last few buildscyrusfox - Thursday, February 17, 2022 - link
Don't understand at all why they would cancel/EOL a well regarded DRAM brand, seems ill-advised and a waste as they will need to market the next consumer brand(unless they are planning on getting rid of Crucial as a brand altogether and move it all to Micron, similar to what happened to Lexar).I found it weird Micron would have a Micron branded SSD and a Crucial SSD that were identical, one consumer facing the other datacenter. I never had an issue with a ballistix dram, I also had some old DDR2 modules. I think Crucial has better market recognition than Micron, perhaps that bugs someone there and they want
DanNeely - Thursday, February 17, 2022 - link
The pointyhairs running the show all know Crucial means Micron, and will know that Micron Whatever is the replacement for the Crucial Ballistics brand; therefor they assume so does everyone else and that they can change the branding name with zero impact on sales. 🤦♂️Ej24 - Thursday, February 17, 2022 - link
Wow very strange news. My Crucial Ballistix Tactical DDR3 is some of the best DDR3 I ever owned. 2133mhz @ 1.35v for years and years in my 4790K system, still going too.Wereweeb - Thursday, February 17, 2022 - link
I don't get it, is the DRAM market this shit, or are they just dumb?StevoLincolnite - Thursday, February 17, 2022 - link
Server/Enterprise is where you can make more cash when you have manufacturing shortages.regsEx - Friday, February 18, 2022 - link
Crucial modules were one of best on the market. There was no reason to killed of, unless CEO wanted some huge chunk of personal bonus for creating a vision of improved efficiency.Cuurent CEO was also behind killing SanDisk and selling it to WD. Micron owners needs to rethink the situation and kick him as fast as possible, like Intel did with Krzanich, until he managed to destroy and sell company leftovers for that personal benefits.
Samus - Monday, March 7, 2022 - link
Crucial will still be around. The ballistix category is what’s being axed, not the entire crucial division.namcost - Sunday, February 20, 2022 - link
I think people are missing something. This news gave us two things. "Ballistics" ram naming is gone. But will continue to sell DDR5 ram....Lets be honest here. We have not been required to use heat spreaders on ram. If you make the ram correctly. Even Geil has their dragon line of ram which does NOT have a heat spreader. I remember having Geil black dragon ram and it was the same clocks/speeds as other high end ram, and no heat spreader. And running them flat out stress test, barely warm to the touch. Meanwhile other brands with heat spreaders were so hot you couldnt touch them after a stress test. I believe Geil spoke about a new composite material used back then (clay composite? Going off memory here....) And even now they sell ddr4 dragon ram with 10-layer pcb and no heat spreader. Its simply NOT required.
So with that in mind, no heat spreader means cheaper price to consumer. Hell even our nvmes come "bare assed" and run without issue. This idea that we NEED cooling comes from poorly made or rushed products.... You can argue otherwise, but the proof is there.
Finally "gaming" ram is generally no different than mainstream ram. Sure it might have xmp profiles that run the ram faster than JEDEC standards.... But overall its literally the same ram as other JEDEC chips. The only difference is the xmp profile and "gaming" aka marketing.
As far as stock goes. This "chip shortage" fake news is getting old. You have no clue what your are saying. Micron is a US based company. There is no shortage. DDR5 is a NEW technology thus limited stock. I guarantee by the end of the year there will be so much ddr5 stick it will blow peoples minds. It was the same woth ddr4 and the same with ddr3 and the same with ddr2. The first runs are limited stock and eventually they have more to offer as time progresses. Dont bring up gpu stock as a means to say chip shortage because once again, you would be wrong. AMD is using 80% if their 7nm capacity for consoles leaving 20% for cpu/gpu, and like any business profits comes first so barely any gpu stock but plenty of cpu stock. This year AMD is going all out. Cpu and gpu will be in 5nm in terms of desktop. Laptop will be on tsmc's improved 7nm they are calling 6nm, and consoles will continue down the classic 7nm path. Thus stock for all should go up. "What about nvidia" easy they ignored gamers and sold special chips/cards directly to mining farms. Why sell to gamers for little profit when you can sell to miners. Clearly amd doesnt have stock due to what ive just said with consoles eating up 7nm capacity, so why wouldn't they take advantage of the situation and profit. Some fanboys literally go "why not outsell amd gou wise to gamers" because you arent high profit. Nvidia doesnt "love" you or tuck you in at night, mining sales were higher profit so that was the focus. When AMD has more stock so will nvidia to compete. Otherwise its "business as usual" aka profits over fanboys.
Railgun - Tuesday, March 1, 2022 - link
You haven’t tried to buy anything lately have you.