For today’s PC builders, there’s simply no reason to go for a nice XMP capable RAM kit as they do take performance to the next level, let alone the gimmicky things that manufacturers have been introducing to spice up your system. While we haven’t been actively reviewing PC components on our site, Patriot has kindly sent their popular Viper RGB DDR4 RAM for our review, the sticks that we receive are 16GB memory kits and supports XMP speeds of 3000MHz at an impressive 15-17-17-35 timing, it also happens to support the most motherboard RGB lighting system, with ASRock’s Polychrome Sync as the most recent addition.
The packaging of the Viper RGB RAM looks pretty attractive, as it shows a shiny Viper Gaming branding on the top left, you will also notice a sticker on the top right to assure you that it supports RGB lighting systems from major motherboard manufacturers.
System Configuration
- CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170X-Ultra Gaming
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition
- SSD: Kingston UV400 120GB
- HDD: Seagate FireCuda 2TB
- PSU: Aerocool KCAS-800W
- Case: Cooler Master Test Bench V1.0
Patriot Viper RGB Memory Software
Performance and Synthetic Benchmarks
In our tests, we use AIDA64 Extreme Edition to find out the transfer speeds and latency, and 7-Zip to find out how fast these sticks are when it comes to managing file compression tasks.
Without changing the XMP timings and Vcore, I was able to push the memory frequency up to 3200MHz effortlessly, we see close to 10% of performance improvements and manage to hit an incredibly low 46.0ns latency.
Things begin to get challenging when we tried to bump the RAM’s frequency up to 3466MHz, where it requires some tweaking to the timings and voltage, we also tried increasing the Vcore of our IMC for better stability. Finally, I ended up at 3466MHz at CL17-19-19-40 with a DRAM Vcore of 1.365V and an IMC Vcore of 1.32V, any further overclocking of the RAM results in system instability and slower performance.
Verdict
The Good
- Reasonably priced
- Short latency in XMP mode
- 5-zone RGB lighting system
The Not so Good
- No 32GB kit
- No 4133MHz for white heatshield model