Comment by hakfoo

There is definitely some room for reputation in the enthusiast/direct-to-consumer market.

Crucial had one of the best marketing positions in the business:

- They had a captive supply chain. There was no risk they'd switch from Samsung to Hynix chips but keep the same SKU, so you could buy a second set later and expect it to have similar timings.

- They had a reputation for being conservative about their offerings. There's a lot of RAM out there that meets rated timings only with a voltage right on the edge of what the memory controllers will start to burn out at.

- They were on a lot of mainboard manufacturer's qualification lists, and yet were easily obtained (at least in the US). There are a fair number of brands and ranges that simply aren't widely distributed.

So they were in a place to say "we can charge 10% more for confidence", and considering enthusiasts willingly pay 30% more for RGB and fancy heatspreaders, that's not a bad message. I mean, I've had competent results with plenty of other brands (I have a Team set in my main rig, and it replaced a G.Skill one before the RAMpocalypse), but I always thought of Crucial as a brand you'd use if you were building a machine for work or a family member and didn't want to deal with surprises.