[section_title title=Introduction & Closer Look]
Introduction & Closer Look
Brand: Patriot
Model: Viper DDR4-2400 15-15-15-35 16GB (4x4GB)
UK Price: £TBA
US Price: $109.99 (At time of review)
When I hear the word “Patriot”, I instantly think of an American man sitting on his porch, drinking a cold can of Pabst baking in the Texan sun. Of course Patriotism comes from many different cultures, but the American culture is the one for me which thrust it into the globally public domain; the Mel Gibson film of the same name however was pretty pants. Anyway, Patriot or Patriot Memory is as American as the stars and stripes (maybe) as their headquarters is based in Fremont, California. Although not widely available in the UK and the EU as some brands such as Corsair, HyperX and Avexir, they have been around long enough to be a well and respected memory vendor; they were founded in 1985 as Patriot Designs.
So what’s occurring today? Well Patriot have their latest range of Viper memory kits on the market and today is all about the Viper 4; Patriots DDR3 range was the Viper 3, so it makes logical sense that the DDR4 range is Viper 4, right? Today’s sample has a fairly standard set of DDR4 specs (as far as DDR4 goes) with rated XMP 2.0 speeds of 2400MHz and CL15 latency timings. Couple this in with the fact that today’s kit is a 16GB quad channel variant, it is most suited to Intel’s X99 (Socket LGA 2011v3) platform, but it is most certainly compatible with Intel’s 14nm Skylake (Socket LGA 1151) architecture; albeit it in dual channel memory mode.
The Patriot Viper 4 2400MHz kit comes packaged inside a blister pack, which has a cardboard exterior shell; nothing special, but certainly within what I would have expected. One thing missing from the front of the packaging however is the latency timings, this should be visible.
With 4 sticks of DDR4 (4GB per module), this kit is a quad channel capable kit providing you are using it with Intel’s X99 platform, but dual channel is supported via other sockets. The Viper 4 sticks themselves have a relatively aggressive look and have a red and black theme throughout; similar to the Gskill Trident X range. The main difference is the heat sink fin array, the Viper 4 has a slight groove at either end of the heat sink which at the right angle, looks a bit like a Mohawk.
XMP 2.0 which is Intel’s latest memory profiling system is of course supported and allows for 1 click overclocking of the memory. This kit runs at a rated speed of 2400MHz with 15-15-15-35 latency timings which is pretty average for DDR4; there are however slower kits available on the market, so it’s not exactly disappointing, just average. This kit has a rated voltage of 1.2V unlike the DDR3 variants which would run at 1.65V for these speeds; thus drawing less power from your socket.
