Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
The Patriot Viper Elite PC4-24000 2x8GB, being a part of the latest performance DDR4 line from the company, utilizes a set of medium profile heatspreaders. It is designed to draw attention with its red, silver, and black color scheme, and styled with a more contemporary appearance than the Viper 4 series. The Viper Elite's aluminum pieces are distinctively shaped and molded to give it a little more visual flare and complexity. Aluminum is lightweight, and serves as a decent heat conductor, while the ventilated heatsink design improves air ventilation for faster heat dissipation (Although it is probably more for style in this particular application). The Viper Elite is only about one centimeter taller than modules with no heatspreaders at all. This is useful for systems equipped with side mounted CPU heatsink fans adjacent to the memory slots, as it can piggy-back off the generated airflow. Since the heatspreader height is relatively moderate, it is still entirely possible for the Viper Elite to fit under a well-designed cooler with sufficient clearance room. Whether you like to call it marketing gimmick or whatnot, it is almost impossible nowadays to find performance memory without any form of a heatspreader attached, haha. They do undeniably serve a purpose in dissipating heat, but for most memory modules, unless run at a voltage significantly over designed voltages -- which you will not, special thanks to integrated memory controllers on Intel processors -- this feature is certainly not a requirement. But I will admit they look pretty cool in any windowed chassis.
The heatspreader design of the Patriot Viper Elite modules is asymmetrical when looked at straight on, but symmetrical between sides, which is fairly logical, because memory can be installed in different directions, depending on your motherboard manufacturer. Besides functional purposes, it also improves the look. The Viper branding is printed boldly onto the left side of each module, with the logo on a distinct red metal triangle on the right. Interestingly, Patriot's logo is not permanently etched anywhere at all, kind of like how Kingston works with their HyperX brand. A specification label is found on the other side. It lists the model number (PVE416G300C6KRD), bandwidth, CAS latency, and the kit's memory capacity. The Patriot Viper Elite PC4-24000 2x8GB's voltage and manufacturing location is not listed.
As you can see more clearly in our photo above, the Patriot Viper Elite PC4-24000 2x8GB has a very nice black PCB. Meanwhile, its heatspreader on top is composed of two separate pieces. The heatspreaders are held to the module itself by a strip of thermally conductive adhesive, and are not physically locked together. The adhesive force between the two heatspreaders and memory ICs is pretty strong as always from the company, so if you ever do take them off, keep your hair dryer around.
From our above photo, it should also be clearer on how the heatspreaders are designed. After removing the strip 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 thin aluminum -- but thick enough to resist easy bending, so it feels solid in the hand -- it does not hold a lot of heat, therefore dissipating the heat energy relatively quickly into the surrounding environment. In the end, if you are going to be pushing your system to the limits with high memory voltages, the heatspreaders may be beneficial to improve system stability and overclocking potential (But you probably will not, thanks to Intel as aforementioned). On the other hand, you may need to remove them if it does not clear your processor heatsink, the fact that the RAM will function just fine without the heatspreaders is something to keep in mind.
A closer look at the memory chips on the Patriot Viper Elite PC4-24000 2x8GB dual channel memory kit. The photo above is not quite clear, but it says "K4A8G085WB" on each IC. These are Samsung manufactured chips, with eight 1GB chips on one side only for a total of 8GB on each DIMM. They are similar to the ones found in the Patriot Viper 4 PC4-22400 2x8GB I reviewed last year. As mentioned on the previous page, these RAM modules run at a frequency of DDR4-3000 with 16-16-16-36 latencies. They operate at a stock voltage of 1.35V, which is right at the Core i3/i5/i7 maximum safe limit of 1.35V. Here is a table of specifications for the ICs, as obtained from Samsung's website:
Production Status: Mass Production
Density: 8Gb
Organization: 1Gx8
Voltage: 1.2V
Speed: PB, RC
Power: C, I
Bank & Interface: 16B/POD
Package: 78FBGA
Our test configuration as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.60GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15 (Single fan)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-UD5
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 970 4GB
Chassis: In Win 805
Storage: OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB; Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB; SanDisk Extreme PRO 480GB
Power: Seasonic Platinum 1000W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Patriot Viper Elite PC4-24000 2x8GB @ DDR4-3000 16-16-16-36
- G.Skill Ripjaws V F4-2400C15D-32GVR 2x16GB @ DDR4-2400 15-15-15-35
- Kingston HyperX Fury HX426C15FBK4/32 4x8GB @ DDR4-2666 15-17-17-35
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 8
7. Benchmark: 3DMark
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0
9. Benchmark: SuperPI 1M, Cinebench R15
10. Overclocking and Conclusion
