Patriot Viper Elite 16GB DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory Kit Review

Good morning, day, afternoon, evening, or night fellow Overclockers. Today brings us another review sample from Patriot. This time in the form of one of their new DDR4 memory kits. Specifically we’ll be looking at the Viper Elite 2x8GB DDR4-3000 kit. Hold on to your DIMM’s, these things should be fast for sure!

Specifications and Features

The Viper Elite series from Patriot, along with all other series from this manufacturer, are made in Taiwan and covered by a lifetime warranty. In addition to the lifetime warranty, Patriot hand tests all modules for quality assurance. This set of memory has somewhat relaxed timings compared to other memory kits at DDR4-3000 while using a voltage of 1.35V. I’m hoping this means there will be a lot of headroom for overclocking.

The specifications and features below come directly from the Patriot website and the PDF they link to.

Below you can read more detailed specifications of the Patriot Viper Elite 16GB DDR4-3000 memory kit. These specifications are shown by the Thaiphoon Burner software, which is a great application for analyzing details about RAM. Additionally, memory profiles can be created or edited in this software.

Packaging

The packaging of the Viper Elite is simple and effective. It is a cardboard sleeve over a blister pack with a hole to hang the memory on a rack in a brick and mortar store. The front has a few high-level specifications about the kit along with a window to see the RAM. On the back is a statement from Patriot about the RAM, their warranty, a few social media links, and contact information of their offices.

The Patriot Viper Elite

These modules look absolutely amazing. The aluminum heat spreader has Viper text and logos in multiple places, with a very classy red and silver color scheme utilizing black and white accents. The PCB of the RAM is black like most high-end kits these days. In the third picture it can be seen that Patriot is using a single rank arrangement instead of dual rank. We’ll see later if this affects performance.

Below is a picture showing the label on the RAM. It shows the part number, speed, and CAS latency. I would prefer if we saw DDR4-3000 16-16-16-36 1.35V here for a quicker reference, but having XMP profiles makes this less of an issue.

Testing and Benchmarks

Listed below is the test system used for benchmarking.

Testing Stability at XMP Settings

Stability at XMP settings was tested using AIDA64 diagnostic software and also later during the benchmarks. The Viper Elite kit is perfectly stable at XMP settings.

Below is a screenshot from AIDA64 stability test after six hours of full load:

Since the memory is now proven stable let’s look at the performance testing and comparisons.

Synthetic Memory Benchmarks

The first synthetic benchmark is AIDA64, specifically the Cache and Memory Benchmark. We basically see a draw between the two 3000MHz kits here, with the 2800MHz kit trailing. It’s quite obvious that speed prevails over timings for read/write, but the lower timing kits pull ahead on copy.

Up next in the synthetic benchmark suite is MaxxMem2. Here we see that timings make more of an impact than in AIDA64. The Patriot Viper Elite held its ground though staying within two percent on read/write. Copy results slipped a little though, a maximum difference of 4.44%.

For the final synthetic benchmark we’ll look at HyperPi 32M. This benchmark prefers tight timings, which is why the Trident Z was the fastest here. With the loosest timings of the group the Viper Elite trailed our other two kits. The gains here were fairly significant with a maximum gap of 7.51%.

Rendering Memory Benchmarks

First up in our testing of rendering based benchmarks is Cinebench R15. Memory speed rules here as is apparent by the 2800MHz kit falling behind. I suspect either a minor inconsistency in the benchmark or sub-timings in the XMP profiles caused the 1.42% difference between the 3000MHz kits.

Moving to our second rendering based benchmark, 3DMark 2013, this is the closest representation of gaming performance we do for memory. This typically shows very little difference in performance; today we see a very typical result. Fire Strike, which is the 1080p benchmark, showed a maximum of 0.26% variance. Fire Strike Ultra, the 2160p benchmark, showed a maximum of 4.4% variance.

Our last rendering based benchmark, PCMark 8, resulted in similar performance results as 3DMark with all kits finishing almost uniformly. This small level of variance is nothing noticeable in daily work. There was one result at approximately a three percent differential, otherwise everything is around a one percent differential.

Overclocking

Overclocking is never guaranteed, so the presented results may vary from results on other memory kits. I am not recommending overclocking if you do not know what are you doing. High voltages may damage hardware and it will not be covered by warranty.

The Patriot Viper Elite memory kit tested today is based on Samsung IC’s. The specific die wasn’t shared, only the brand. Overclocking is tested with the AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark. If the system boots and passes the benchmark, the result is listed below.

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Below is a graph of comparing the results from our earlier XMP tests of the AIDA64 Cache and Memory Benchmark to some selected overclocked results. As before the Read, Write, and Copy results are “highest is best” and the Latency portion is “lowest is best”. There were great gains from overclocking this memory kit, to the tune of almost 15%!

Conclusion

A set of RAM that looks this good and comes in with specs like DDR4-3000 16-16-16-36 1.35V is nothing to shake a stick at. Patriot used a great color scheme on these which will go with almost any system. The performance at stock backs up these looks and is plenty high enough to keep these sticks from being a bottleneck no matter how far the rest of your system is overclocked.

After seeing the Viper Elite hold up within a couple percent of our comparison benchmarks solidifies that sentiment. Watching this kit overclock to an almost 15% performance gain though… impressive to say the least. It’s apparent that Patriot has been getting some good IC’s from Samsung.

Now comes the interesting part, the pricing. Normally I would just say “here’s a Newegg link”, but these sticks barely have an online presence. The only place I could find them is B&H, but even they say this Viper Elite kit is a “Special Order”. The price they list of $105 though, which is competitive with other brand’s top model of RAM. It is worth noting that other model numbers from this series are much more readily available.

All of this together gets a big ol’ Approved stamp!

Click the stamp for an explanation of what this means.

-Austin (ATMINSIDE)