By: Jonathan Kwan and Aaron Lai
May 27, 2022
I was chatting with some of my coworkers in a group call when I decided to say something controversial. "Top load washers are better than front load washers," I said. Three of the four people in there agreed, but before long, this argument started spilling over to bigger contexts in the office. In our team meeting the following week, someone brought it up, which made it turn out to be a full-on debate. Eventually, one of the VPs who do not normally attend our team meeting caught wind of this and joined our meeting only to make a point that front load washers are better than top load washers because he "simply does not understand why anyone would want use a lake of water to wash a load of clothes". Now, the VP does have a point, because almost every review I have read says front load machines are better at cleaning while using less water. However, top load just feels better, and the design makes more sense in my opinion. In a similar vein, one can argue whether DDR5 is better than DDR4. DDR5 RAM has much better specifications, but the common case against it is costs a lot even though the performance difference is negligible compared to DDR4. But we have had this debate every time there is a RAM generational change; I even wrote about it in my ASUS P5K3-Deluxe review in 2007, during a time when we were moving from DDR2 to DDR3. Therefore, without restarting a classic debate, let us just accept the fact DDR5 is here to stay, and the performance gains will eventually be realized. So today, I am kicking off the first DDR5 RAM review on this website with the Patriot Viper Venom RGB DDR5-6200 2x16GB, with more kits from Kingston and XPG to be covered in the coming weeks. How good is the Viper Venom RGB DDR5? Let us take a look.
Our review unit of the Patriot Viper Venom RGB DDR5-6200 2x16GB came in a small brown corrugated cardboard box from Fremont, California, USA as always. 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. There is a lot of work to do considering we are comparing multiple brand-new kits on our new test platform, so we wasted no time and got straight to work.
I have always found Patriot's retail memory packaging to be interesting, and the latest Viper Venom RGB is no exception. As you can see in our photo above, the Patriot Viper Venom RGB'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 and not a blister pack. The black 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 RGB version as its name suggests, but a non-RGB version is also available. The Viper Venom DDR5 Performance Memory branding in silver text is at the bottom. 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 features and specifications of the Patriot Viper Venom RGB DDR5-6200 2x16GB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:
• On-Die ECC
• Thermal sensor
• Capacity: 32GB (2 x 16GB)
• Base Frequency: PC5-38400 (4800MHz)
• Base Timings: 40-40-40-77
• Base Voltage: 1.1V
• Tested Frequency Profile 1: PC5-49600 (6200MHz)
• Tested Timings: 40-40-40-76
• Tested Voltage for Profile 1: 1.35V
• RGB Sync with ASUS/ASRock/MSI/Gigabyte motherboard (please check with motherboard vendor for more info)
• Viper Venom Exclusive RGB app
Out of the box, you will receive each memory module in the Patriot Viper Venom RGB kit packaged in its own compartment in the clear plastic clamshell. Besides that, one Viper Gaming sticker is included for you to show off your brand pride. 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 Venom RGB DDR5-6200 2x16GB 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 Z690-Creator WiFi motherboard used for testing had no issues detecting and working with the Viper Venom RGB RAM right out of the box using the latest BIOS revision. The Patriot Viper Venom RGB DDR5-6200 2x16GB retails for approximately $360 at press time.
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 R23
10. Overclocking and Conclusion
