Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
The Patriot Viper RGB PC4-25600 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 while and silver color scheme, not to mention its flashy five zone RGB LEDs. You can also buy it with a black heatspreader, but in my opinion, white is much more unique. It is a lot more aggressive looking than the Viper LED series as well, given the Viper LEDs were quite conservative in my opinion. The Viper RGB's aluminum pieces are distinctively shaped and molded with sharp lines to give it quite a bit of visual flare and complexity. Aluminum is lightweight and serves as a decent heat conductor, but it is not ventilated to make room for the plastic diffuser. The Viper RGB is just over a 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 RGB to fit under a well-designed cooler with sufficient clearance room. Whether you like to call it marketing gimmick or whatnot, it is 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 RGB 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. The Viper logo in silver is embossed dead center with accentuating shapes next to it. 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 (PVR416G320C6KW), bandwidth, CAS latency, voltage, and the kit's memory capacity. The Patriot Viper RGB PC4-25600 2x8GB's manufacturing location is not listed.
As you can see more clearly in our photo above, the Patriot Viper RGB PC4-25600 2x8GB has a very nice black PCB. The LEDs are placed on the main PCB itself, and you can control them using Patriot's or your motherboard's included software; more on this in just a moment. 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. The plastic lighting diffuser clips in between. 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. Either way, you will probably never remove them, since the main selling point of Patriot's Viper RGB are the RGB LED lights. If it does not clear your processor heatsink, then you might as well not buy this kit, haha.
A closer look at the memory chips on the Patriot Viper RGB PC4-25600 2x8GB dual channel memory kit. The photo above should be quite clear -- it says "K4A8G08" on each IC. These are Samsung manufactured chips identified as K4A8G085WB-BCRC, with eight 1GB chips on one side only for a total of 8GB on each DIMM. As mentioned on the previous page, these RAM modules run at a frequency of DDR4-3200 with 16-18-18-36 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 are the listed features for the ICs, as obtained from Samsung's website:
Density: 8Gb
Org.: 1G x 8
Speed: 2400 Mbps
Voltage: 1.2 V
Temp.: 0 ~ 85 °C
Package: 78FBGA
Product Status: Mass Production
Although the Patriot Viper RGB is compatible with all RGB lighting control software from major motherboard manufacturers such as Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI, and ASRock, the company provides their own software for you to control the RAM as well. Our screenshot above shows Patriot's Viper RGB Memory Software. The Viper RGB Memory Software has a similar graphical user interface to other products from the company like the Patriot Viper V760 we reviewed a few years ago. Overall, the system is quite simple and intuitive. The left pane has the control options for the Patriot Viper RGB's five lighting zones, while the right side is a virtual representation of the memory modules. Here, you can select between lighting effects, pick your color, adjust the brightness, as well as controlling the effect speed. Up to five profiles can be saved as well. The heatshield color option is there for you to select the one corresponding to the kit you own, so the virtual representation on the right is correct. Your heatshield color, in case you are wondering, is not changeable in software, haha.
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: NZXT H700i
Storage: OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB; Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB; SanDisk Extreme PRO 480GB
Power: Seasonic PRIME Ultra Titanium 850W
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Patriot Viper RGB PC4-25600 2x8GB @ DDR4-3200 16-18-18-36
- Ballistix Tactical Tracer RGB PC4-24000 4x8GB @ DDR4-3000 16-18-18-38
- GeIL EVO X GEX416GB3200C16DC 2x8GB @ DDR4-3200 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
- Kingston HyperX Savage Black HX426C15SBK4/64 4x16GB @ DDR4-2666 15-15-15-35
- Patriot Viper Elite PC4-24000 2x8GB @ DDR4-3000 16-16-16-36
- Patriot Viper LED PC4-24000 2x8GB @ DDR4-3000 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 9.0
9. Benchmark: SuperPI 1M, Cinebench R15
10. Overclocking and Conclusion
