Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
Two years ago, we looked at another Viper RGB kit, except it was in white. Today's unit exists in the same family, and thus has many same design choices. This includes the silver Viper head logo in the middle and the Viper branding emblazoned in the middle of the light diffuser at the top. With a medium height profile, this memory kit definitely attracts attention with its lights and metallic styling, even in its black finish. The silver snake head definitely makes the RAM stand out from the rest. On top, we have a translucent plastic light diffuser to soften the lights on the top. Otherwise, the aluminum on the two sides are a lightweight and decent heat conductor. The heatsink and diffuser adds approximately 1.5cm on top of your typical bare module, though majority of this height comes from the plastic diffuser. This taller height means you may run into issues fitting the memory kit underneath a cooler, but it still is relatively low in height.
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 RGB DDR4-3600 modules is symmetrical when looked at straight on and between the sides, which is logical as memory can be installed in different directions depending on your motherboard manufacturer and design. Besides functional purposes, it also improves the look. The Viper brand is printed on the top side of the plastic with the Viper head logo on both sides. A specifications label is found on the other side of the module, with the model number PVR432G360C7K, frequency, CAS latency, and voltage. The Patriot Viper RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB's assembly location is in Taiwan.
From the photo above, you can see the Patriot Viper RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB has a black PCB. The heatspreader is composed of two pieces. A plastic top piece is connected to one side of the aluminum heatspreader, while the other side disconnects. These two sides are held onto 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 the heatspreader off.
You can also see how the aluminum pieces are designed. After removing the two sides, it is easy to see the heatspreaders 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 pieces are pretty 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.
From here, we have a closer look of a single memory chip on the Patriot Viper RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB dual channel memory kit. From the labeling, you can see this is a Samsung chip. These are marked as "K4A8G085WB-BCPB" and are commonly grouped into the family of Samsung B-die chips. There are eight of these 1GB chips on each side of the stick, making for a total of 16GB 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. Here are the listed features for the ICs, as obtained from Samsung's datasheets:
• JEDEC standard 1.2V (1.14V~1.26V)
• VDDQ = 1.2V (1.14V~1.26V)
• 800 MHz fCK for 1600Mb/sec/pin,933 MHz fCK for 1866Mb/sec/pin, 1067MHz fCK for 2133Mb/sec/pin, 1200MHz fCK for 2400Mb/sec/pin, 1333MHz fCK for 2666Mb/sec/pin
• 16 Banks (4 Bank Groups)
• Programmable CAS Latency (posted CAS): 10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20
• Programmable Additive Latency: 0, CL-2 or CL-1 clock
• Programmable CAS Write Latency (CWL) = 9,11 (DDR4-1600), 10,12 (DDR4-1866),11,14 (DDR4-2133),12,16 (DDR4-2400) and 14,18 (DDR4-2666)
• 8-bit pre-fetch
• Burst Length: 8, 4 with tCCD = 4 which does not allow seamless read or write [either On the fly using A12 or MRS]
• Bi-directional Differential Data-Strobe
• Internal (self) calibration: Internal self calibration through ZQ pin (RZQ: 240 ohm ± 1%)
• On Die Termination using ODT pin
• Average Refresh Period 7.8us at lower than TCASE 85°C, 3.9us at 85°C < TCASE < 95°C
• Support Industrial Temp (-40° - 95°C)
- tREFI 7.8us at -40 °C ≤ TCASE ≤ 85°C
- tREFI 3.9us at 85 °C < TCASE ≤ 95°C
• Connectivity Test Mode (TEN) is Supported
• Asynchronous Reset
• Package: 78 balls FBGA - x4/x8
• All of Lead-Free products are compliant for RoHS
• All of products are Halogen-free
• CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) for Read/Write data security
• Command address parity check
• DBI (Data Bus Inversion)
• Gear down mode
• POD (Pseudo Open Drain) interface for data input/output
• Internal VREF for data inputs
• External VPP for DRAM Activating Power
• PPR and sPPR is supported
While the Patriot Viper RGB DDR4-3600 is compatible with all RGB lighting control software from major motherboard manufacturers such as Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI, and ASRock, the company also provides their own software to control said lighting in the form of Viper RGB. The utility has a similar graphical user interface to other products from the company, and has not changed much from the last Viper RGB kit we reviewed. Overall, the system is simple but easy to use. The left side shows options to adjust the five lighting zones on the memory, while the right has a visual representation of what you can expect. With the drop-down menus, you can select different lighting effects, but you can also just pick colors for each zone. The sliders below allow for adjustment of lighting brightness and effect speeds. Five profiles can be saved in the software for quick recall. In addition, since Patriot offers both black and white variants of the Viper RGB memory, you can configure which heatsink color you have in the software. Bear in mind, this obviously does not actually change the color of the aluminum, haha.
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: be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 rev. 2
Storage: Western Digital Blue SN500 NVMe SSD 500GB, OCZ ARC 100 240GB, Patriot P200 512GB
Power: Seasonic FOCUS Plus 850 Gold 850W
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Patriot Viper RGB DDR4-3600 2x16GB @ DDR4-3600 17-19-19-39
- Ballistix Elite DDR4-4000 2x8GB @ DDR4-4000 18-19-19-39
- Ballistix Elite DDR4-4000 2x8GB @ DDR4-3600 16-16-16-38
- Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3600 2x32GB @ DDR4-3600 16-18-18-38
- 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
- Patriot Viper 4 Blackout DDR4-3600 2x8GB @ DDR4-3600 17-19-19-39
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 10
9. Benchmark: SuperPI 1M, Cinebench R20
10. Overclocking and Conclusion
