Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
The Patriot Viper 4 Blackout DDR4-3600 2x8GB looks very similar to the last Viper 4 kit with only a shift in color, at least in terms of aesthetics. While the original showed off bright red and black parts, this more conservative color scheme draws into the background of your system with its muted black colors and markings. Utilizing a medium height profile, this toothed heatsink design improves air ventilation for faster heat dissipation, although it is probably more for appearances in this case. The heatsink adds approximately a centimeter on top of your typical bare module. This is useful as CPU heatsinks adjacent to the memory slots will help slightly cool the memory as well. As well, its shorter height means you should not have too many issues with fitting the memory underneath a well-designed cooler with sufficient clearance. Heatspreaders may be a marketing gimmick, but it is quite difficult to find high performance memory without any form of a heatspreader attached. They do serve a purpose in dispersing heat, but for most memory modules, this feature is not a requirement.
The heatspreader design of the Patriot Viper 4 Blackout modules is symmetrical when looked at straight on and between sides, which is logical, because memory can be installed in different directions depending on your motherboard manufacturer and design. Besides functional purposes, it also improves the look. A specifications label is found on the other side. It lists the model number (PVB416G360C7K), frequency, CAS latency, and voltage.
As you can see in the photo above, the Patriot Viper 4 Blackout DDR4-3600 2x8GB has a black PCB. The heatspreader is composed of three separate pieces. A metal top piece is placed on top and is mounted with a screw on the top and bottom. After this, the two sides are held on to the module itself by strips of thermally conductive adhesive and are not physically locked together. The adhesion force between the two heatspreaders and memory ICs is pretty strong, so I would recommend some sort of heat source if you do ever want to take them off.
You can also see how the heatspreaders are designed from the above photo. After removing the piece at the top, the heatspreaders are bent along the edge at the top and are mirror images of each other. Since the pieces are made from aluminum, it does not hold a lot of heat, therefore dissipating the heat energy relatively quickly into the surrounding environment. These side pieces are thin, but they still feel solid and should not easily bend. Either way, you will probably never remove the heatspreaders as most aftermarket CPU heatsinks should easily accommodate memory modules of this height profile. If you want, you can easily remove the extra teeth at the top with the removal of the two screws.
From here, we have a closer look of a single memory chip on the Patriot Viper 4 Blackout DDR4-3600 2x8GB dual channel memory kit. As you can see, these ICs are marked with a "DT8MS579WB" and Patriot branding. However, after some further digging, we can identify all of these as SK Hynix C-die chips, with a model number of H5AN8G8NCJR-TFC. There are eight of these 1GB chips on one side of the stick, making for a total of 8GB of memory on each DIMM. As mentioned on the previous page, these RAM modules run at a frequency of DDR4-3600 with 17-19-19-39 latencies. They operate at a stock voltage of 1.35V, which is right at the Intel maximum safe limit of 1.35V. Here are the listed features for the ICs, as obtained from SK Hynix's website:
• VDD=VDDQ=1.2V +/- 0.06V
• Fully differential clock inputs (CK, CK) operation
• Differential Data Strobe (DQS, DQS)
• On chip DLL align DQ, DQS and DQS transition with CK
transition
• DM masks write data-in at the both rising and falling edges of the data strobe
• All addresses and control inputs except data, data strobes and data masks latched on the rising edges of the clock
• Programmable CAS latency 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 supported
• Programmable additive latency 0, CL-1, and CL-2 supported (x4/x8 only)
• Programmable CAS Write latency (CWL) = 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18
• Programmable burst length 4/8 with both nibble sequential and interleave mode
• BL switch on the fly
• 16banks
• Average Refresh Cycle (Tcase of 0 oC~ 95 oC)
- 7.8 μs at 0oC ~ 85 oC
- 3.9 μs at 85oC ~ 95 oC
• JEDEC standard 78ball FBGA(x4/x8), 96ball FBGA(x16)
• Driver strength selected by MRS
• Dynamic On Die Termination supported
• Two Termination States such as RTT_PARK and RTT_NOM switchable by ODT pin
• Asynchronous RESET pin supported
• ZQ calibration supported
• TDQS (Termination Data Strobe) supported (x8 only)
• Write Levelization supported
• 8 bit pre-fetch
• This product in compliance with the RoHS directive.
• Internal Vref DQ level generation is available
• Write CRC is supported at all speed grades
• Maximum Power Saving Mode is supported
• TCAR(Temperature Controlled Auto Refresh) mode is supported
• LP ASR(Low Power Auto Self Refresh) mode is supported
• Fine Granularity Refresh is supported
• Per DRAM Addressability is supported
• Geardown Mode(1/2 rate, 1/4 rate) is supported
• Programable Preamble for read and write is supported
• Self Refresh Abort is supported
• CA parity (Command/Address Parity) mode is supported
• Bank Grouping is applied, and CAS to CAS latency (tCCD_L, tCCD_S) for the banks in the same or different bank group accesses are available
• DBI(Data Bus Inversion) is supported(x8)
Our test configuration as follows:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X @ Stock
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-U12A
Motherboard: ASUS Prime X470-Pro
Graphics: MSI GeForce GTX 1070Ti Titanium
Chassis: NZXT H510 Elite
Storage: Western Digital Blue SN500 NVMe SSD 500GB, OCZ ARC 100 240GB, Western Digital Blue 1TB
Power: Seasonic FOCUS Plus 850 Gold 850W
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Patriot Viper 4 Blackout DDR4-3600 2x8GB @ DDR4-3600 17-19-19-39
- Ballistix Elite DDR4-4000 2x8GB @ DDR4-3600 16-16-16-38
- Ballistix Elite DDR4-4000 2x8GB @ DDR4-4000 18-19-19-39
- Gigabyte AORUS RGB Memory DDR4-3200 2x8GB @ DDR4-3200 16-18-18-38
- Patriot Viper Elite PC4-24000 2x8GB @ DDR4-3000 16-16-16-36
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 CPU
4. Benchmark: AIDA64 FPU
5. Benchmark: AIDA64 Memory
6. Benchmark: PCMark 10
7. Benchmark: 3DMark
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0
9. Benchmark: SuperPI 1M, Cinebench R20
10. Overclocking and Conclusion
