Crucial ships their memory products very professionally, as well as very well protected. No clear plastic packaging here. Crucial seals their individual memory modules in anti-static sleeves, and then puts them into cardboard slots inside a sealed cardboard box. If you've ever ordered a product from dell, then you know this is the same way. It just goes to show you what sets the biggest companies apart from the up and comers.

A Closer Look:  

Front	Back	LED Close Up
Close Up	Close Up	Logo

   After I broke the seal on the anti-static bags (by making a slice with a razor knife), the first thing I noticed about this kit was the heat spreaders. They're actually quite thin compared to some other memory I've reviewed in the past. This will have two effects, one good and one not so good. The good being you can position these two modules very close together on the motherboard. The bad being slightly less heat dissipation. Meaning there's less material there to help absorb, and therefore dissipate the heat generated. However the feel of the heat spreaders bond to the modules is very strong so I suspect there won't be an issue with overheating.

   Onto the integrated LED's at the top of the modules, well they're so small, you can barely tell what they are right now. I suspect that will change when powered up though :)

   The edges of the heat spreaders look like they've been ground down to expose the shiny aluminum underneath. You can even see the swirl marks. I think it gives them a nice look with the black contrast. However the edges of them are very crisp, on the verge of sharp.

   These Modules are rated for 800MHz at 4-4-4-12-2T timings at 2.2v. That's considered a high performance low latency kit for those of you unfamiliar with DDR2 ratings. DDR2 has a default voltage ratings of 1.8v, but most high performance DDR2 will require anywhere from 2.1v - 2.3v to achieve lower timings especially.

   Another special feature of this kit is it's EPP feature to allow easy overclocking and performance increases when paired with the NVIDIA 590 SLI, or 680i SLI chipset. Unfortunately my test bench for this particular review will be the Intel P965 chipset so I won't be able to show you exactly what EPP will do. However I will point you to a previous review of mine where I exposed the EPP feature. Honestly, I don't think much about EPP right now because I'm an experienced overclocker and have no need for the "easy" or "novice" features of it. I'd rather take the 2mins to set my own timings and settings. However for the inexperienced, it could be very useful, but you'll still have to be aware of what you're doing in the BIOS.