By: Jonathan Kwan
December 5, 2025
When it comes to investing, there are two principles I generally stick to. The first principle goes along with the saying that "time in the market beats timing the market". The reason why this is true is because it is basically impossible to consistently and accurately predict when the best time is to buy and when is the best time to sell. The second principle, in many ways an offshoot of the first, is it is basically impossible to beat the market, unless, of course, you are Nancy Pelosi. According to SPIVA Scorecards, 90% of funds did not perform as well as the S&P 500 over the last decade. In fact, in 1973, Princeton University economics professor Burton Malkiel wrote in his book "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" that a "blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper's financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts". This was shown by Warren Buffett in 2007, where he bet $1M against Ted Seides that an S&P 500 stock index would outperform hedge funds over a 10-year period. Buffett won in 2017, and it was not even close -- Seides' fund only went up by $220,000, while Buffett's low-cost S&P 500 index fund gained a whopping $854,000. Now, of course, there are times where you can make reasonable guesses and get lucky. To prove my point, I bought NVIDIA at $115 during the DeepSeek scare earlier this year, and sold it at $170 a few months later, which provided a whopping return of 48%. I also bought Tesla during the spat between Trump and Musk at $300, which I promptly sold a week later for $330 -- a 10% gain over a short period. Afterwards, I just took my wins and went home, since I am not a gambler. Now, one spike not many people saw coming is the DDR5 RAM shortage. In the last month or so, prices have more than doubled, making more gains than even NVIDIA stocks in 2025. If you need RAM now, you are going to have to pay to play. But what choices do we have, and which ones are good? We took in the Patriot Viper Elite 5 Ultra DDR5-6000 2x48GB to find out.
Our review unit of the Patriot Viper Elite 5 Ultra DDR5-6000 2x48GB came in a small brown corrugated cardboard box from Fremont, California, USA alongside the Patriot Viper Elite 5 Ultra DDR5-6000 2x24GB, Patriot Viper Elite 5 Ultra DDR5-6400 2x24GB, and Patriot Viper Elite 5 Ultra RGB DDR5-6000 2x24GB. With the DDR5 RAM supply issues recently, the value of this package has just become astronomical. Using the UPS Standard service, everything arrived in excellent condition from Patriot's headquarters to us here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada for our review today.
I have always found Patriot's retail memory packaging to be interesting, and the latest Viper Venom is no exception. As you can see in our photo above, the Patriot Viper Venom's retail box design is quite large for a memory kit. I am a big fan of products that come in an actual retail box. The silver background is clean, while a photo of the dual channel kit occupies the majority of the real estate up front. The red Viper Gaming logo is located at the upper left-hand corner. Meanwhile, on the upper right corner of the box, you will find a label indicating its capacity, configuration, and speed. Our particular variant is the non-RGB version as its name suggests, but an RGB version is also available. The Elite 5 Ultra DDR5 Memory branding in reflective silver text is at the bottom. An Ultra Compatible badge is located near the bottom right corner. If you want to take a look at the RAM itself, two parallel windows show off the modules at the back.
Before we move on, let us take a look at the specifications of the Patriot Viper Elite 5 Ultra DDR5-6000 2x48GB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:
Series Name: Viper Elite 5 Ultra DDR5
Memory Type: DDR5
Form Factor: UDIMM
Module Configuration: Kit of 2
Color: Black
RGB Options: RGB / Non-RGB
Capacities: 128GB (2x64GB) / 96GB (2x48GB) / 64GB (2x32GB) / 48GB (2x24GB) / 32GB (2x16GB)
Base Speeds (MT/s): 6400 / 5600 / 4800
Base Timings: 40 / 46 / 52
Base Voltage: 1.1V
Tested Speeds (MT/s, Up to): 8000 / 6400 / 6000
Tested Timings (Up to): 28 / 32 / 36 / 44
Tested Voltages (Up to): 1.4V / 1.35V
Dimensions (L x W x H): 0.6 cm (L) x 13.5 cm (W) x 4.4 cm (H)
Weight: 46g
Warranty: Limited lifetime warranty
Out of the box, you will receive each memory module in the Patriot Viper Elite 5 Ultra kit packaged in its own compartment in the enclosed clear plastic tray. There is nothing else included, but I am not sure what else you can expect from a DDR5 kit either, haha.
A screenshot of the memory tab in CPU-Z with Patriot's Viper Elite 5 Ultra DDR5-6000 2x48GB installed. The SPD timings table in CPU-Z reads standard JEDEC specifications programmed into the memory as well as XMP data for running the memory at various speeds. Our ASUS ProArt Z890-Creator WiFi motherboard used for testing had no issues detecting and working with the Viper Elite 5 Ultra DDR5-6000 RAM right out of the box. The Patriot Viper Elite 5 Ultra DDR5-6000 2x48GB retails for approximately $450 at press time, but availability and price may vary significantly due to DDR5 supply issues.
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 11
9. Benchmark: SuperPI 1M, Cinebench 2024
10. Overclocking and Conclusion
