Patriot Viper Elite DDR4 8GB / 16GB 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit Review

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From the oldest to the newest PC, they all have a few things in common, but the one I am focusing on today is RAM.  RAM has been used throughout the PC’s history, usually the more RAM you have or the faster the better your PC runs and the more work you can get done, even consoles have RAM.  Aside from the capacity of the RAM, another important aspect is the speed of the RAM,  and over the years they have improved dramatically as well.

A very sad yet good thing has occurred as PC’s evolved; we lose old memory and replace them with newer memories.  We forget what we had in the past since we have had to replace these memories in place of newer more happy memories.  Our childhood is erased as we enter into our adulthood,… wait, that’s a different type of memory…. Sorry.

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Being on the subject of updating memory, in the above picture, you can find SO-DIMM’s (Memory for laptops though smaller form factor desktops use them too), 30-PIN FP, 72-PIN EDO, DDR1, DDR2, DDR3 and finally DDR4.  These are not all the types of RAM there have been, but only the few I have collected over the years.  Yeah, I have been upgrading my RAM for many years and collecting all my memory in a box.  A box full of memories, sad…

Today we will be taking a look at the Patriot Viper Elite Series DDR4 8GB (2 x 4GB) 3000MHz Kit (Red), Model number PVE48G300C6KRD.  This is a 16Gig review, so I will be using 2 of these Dual Channel kits and get into a little more detail into this as well.  Before we get into the review, let’s check out the specifications of this memory.  There is actually no Quad Channel 16GB Solution in the Elite Line up, Quad Channel kits start at 64Gig (8 x 4) for the Elite Series.

Some of you may ask, why would you use Dual Channel memory?  Dual Channel is still very relevant for DDR4, for example for a small form factor system using MicroATX, ITX and Mini-ITX boards.  There are a few other values for Dual Channel; I will list them throughout the review.

  • Memory Type: DDR4 SDRAM 288-Pin
  • Capacity: 8Gig (2 x 4GB) (Tested in a 4 x 4GB Configuration as well)
  • Speed: 3000Mhz (PC4 2400)
  • XMP 2.0 Speed: XMP 2400MHz
  • CAS Latency: 16
  • Timings: 16(tCL), 16(tRCD), 16(tRP)
  • Voltage: 1.35v
  • ECC: No
  • Multi-channel Kit: Dual Channel Kit (Test in Quad Channel and Dual Channel in this review)
  • Buffered/Registered: Unbuffered
  • ECC: No
  • Viper Elite Red series heat shield
  • Lifetime Warranty

Now that we have those specs out of the way, let’s check out the unboxing, so you know what is in the box.

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Now that we have unboxed them, let’s take a closer look at what’s inside.

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The memory comes packaged in a branded box, though nothing incredibly flashy, aside from the chromed letters of course.  I prefer simple packaging, it usually means you save a few bucks, though being that this packaging is not a simple brown box you might think it’s expensive but we will get into that a little later.

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Getting a closer we can see the memory itself.  It comes in a nice and short red aluminum heat spreader for heat dissipation for optimized reliability of the overall system.

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This memory with the spreaders stands a little over 1 ½ inches, a little taller than the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) itself.  I mention the height so that this can be a consideration when choosing a CPU heatsink, be it air or liquid cooling to make sure you have enough clearance. Being that this is ever so slightly larger than the memory itself, you should have no issues.

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And even closer here we can see the description of the RAM.  This will play an important part in this review, so keep it in mind.

This kit comes in the 2400Mhz flavor at a CAS Latency of 16.  With the XMP setting though, it will go to 3000Mhz but stick around and we will see what this can handle, at least a little of it.

The 3000MHz speed for many boards and memory combinations can be a bit tricky, so you will want to utilize the XMP Profile, unless of course you are already experienced with DDR4, or RAM configuration in general.  They look nice and all, but do they work and are they fast?  Before we can see how fast they are, we need to install them.

[nextpage title=”Installation”]Installing RAM is one of the easiest processes when building a computer, but take that with a grain of salt.  As easy as it is to install, I personally know people that have installed RAM the wrong way, reversed and made it fit.  This means he had to force it down with all his might totally ignoring the fact that there is a piece of plastic right in the center of the DIMM slot and a matching notch on the memory, so of course he broke the piece of plastic.  Oddly enough the PC would not boot, I wonder why?

All joking aside, don’t feel bad if you don’t know how to install RAM, we all had no clue what we were doing until we learned.  Hopefully, I can show you with this video.

So in this video, you saw how you installed these sticks of DDR4 RAM.  I showed you how the RAM could have been installed incorrectly, but you can see how it really doesn’t work.  If this happens, be sure to flip the memory around (gold pins go into the slot) and try again.

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On this particular board the EVGA X99 Classified, they installed in slot 1, 3, 5 and 7.  Not all boards have 8 DIMM slots, some only have 4 and some have 16 or more.  To be 100% sure on what slots you need to install your RAM to either keep it in Quad Channel or Dual channel, please be sure to check in your motherboard manual or on the motherboard manufactures website.

Quad Channel memory allows the communication between the memory controllers on the CPU, in this case the Intel Core i7 5930K processor and the RAM.  4 Lanes or communication, allows more information to pass faster than 2 lanes or Dual Channel.  Not all programs will take advantage of Quad Channel versus Dual Channel so you may not see a performance improvement but as more programs are written to utilize this advancement the performance improvement will become more evident.

So how can we see how to configure it and benchmark it, but that’s going to the next page.

[nextpage title=”Configuring”]

So now that the memory is installed, we need to configure it and then benchmark it

To configure it, when we turn on the computer and enter the BIOS.  To enter the BIOS, you may need to find the key needed to enter the BIOS in your motherboard manual, though most board need for the delete key to be press, F2 or Escape when you see the BIOS Splash screen.

If you have the splash screen disabled, the message may appear something like this

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With the splash screen enabled, you will typically have your motherboard manufactures logo flash quickly, mine looks like this.

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Very classy looking if I do say so myself, and I do.

One thing to remember when setting up this memory is that it does have Intel’s XMP 2.0 Profile; this particular series only has one XMP Profile, but as long as it works one is all you need right?

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In this picture, I have XMP Profile 1 set.  This sets my memory frequency to 2400,… but wait its 3000Mhz memory.  You will notice right below though it reads “Target Memory Frequency” 3000Mhz, but how do you figure?  Well before I get into that, notice below that that under “Basic Timing Configuration” the tCL (CAS Latency) to 16, tRCD (Row Address to column Address Delay) to 16, tRP (Row Precharge Time) to 16 and tRAS (Row Active Time) to 39, this is all saved in the XMP Profile, along with the memory voltages.

Some of you may ask, what is an XMP Profile and if I get it, how long do I have to live or is it treatable?   Well, it’s not something that will shorten your life span or need to be treated, but it is something you want.

XMP stands for Extreme Memory Profile and it was developed by Intel. It was developed to enable tested predefined performance tuning of RAM beyond the JEDEC SPD standard specifications.  These profiles are stored in the SPD of the XMP DIMM and are extracted by the BIOS to tune the memory controller for optimal memory performance.  This was originally designed for DDR3, now in DDR4 it is XMP bumped up to version 2.0.

I know, I threw a few more acronyms at you, but let me explain.

  • tCL (CAS Latency): The top and most important of memory timings. CAS stands for Column Address Strobe and the amount of cycles, or time in cycles between sending and receives commands.  The lower the tCL or CAS the better performance.
  • tRCD (Row Address to Column Address Delay): The amount of cycles or time in cycles the RAM is issuing active command and read and write commands.
  • tRP (Row Precharge Time): Minimum time between active commands and reads and writes of the next bank  in the memory module.
  • tRAS (Row Active Time): Time between a row being activated by the precharge and then deactived.  Once the tRAS has completed, the row can be deactivated.  The lower the tRAS the better the performance.
  • JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council): JEDEC standards are designed to keep manufacturers and specs in sync.  Finding RAM for your system is a little hard today, without the JEDEC standards, it would be next to impossible and would lead to memory being more proprietary thus making prices skyrocket.
  • SPD (Serial Presence Detect): Information stored in an electrically programmable and erasable memory that is read only.
  • DDR (Double Data Rate): Double data rate synchronous random access memory.
  • DIMM (Dual in line memory module): A module containing one or several random access memory chips on a circuit board with pins to connect it to the motherboard.
  • BCLK (Base Clock): The base frequency of the CPU is running. It is derived by the multiplier of a CPU, in this case 35 times the base clock of 100Mhz for 3500Mhz.

So I last left you with the memory frequency, and why would the almighty XMP profile set the frequency so low?  That my friends have to do with the BCLK, more commonly referred to as the B Clock.  On this Haswell series of processors as well as some previous processors, the base clocks 100Mhz frequency is tied to memory, CPU Core, PCI-E slots and more so when you overclock the B clock, you overclock these as well affecting your video card, RAM, CPU, Sound Card and more, be careful with this setting.

In the picture below at the bottom, you can see the BCLK is set to 125.03.  If you start overclocking the BCLK too much you will start having to adjust vcore voltages, cpu voltage, memory voltages and more and then passed 125 can be a bit dangerous.  Just above that you can see that the CPU cores have been downclocked to 30, so that would be 3000Mhz but that’s the CPU, we don’t want to underclock that do we?  The trick here is that by raising the BCLK frequency to 125.03 Mhz, we have to multiply 30 by 125.03 which equals 3750.9Mhz, so actually the CPU has been overclocked just by setting the XMP Profile to profile 1.  This also brings the memory frequency to 3000Mhz.

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Then also, something very important is that you can verify if your memory is running in Quad Channel using a few different pieces of software, but I will show you inside of CPU-Z.  Please remember, I am running 2 x Dual Channel kits here, so yes if you use 2 Dual Channel kits, it will work in Quad channel but there can be issues.  I will go over a Dual channel configuration later in this review and its potential issues because I did run into them.

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[nextpage title=”Benchmarking”]

Ok, now I will walk you through some benchmarks and first discuss my suite of tools.  Here is what I am using.

Let me explain why I use these pieces of software, please chime in if you would recommend anything different.

3DMark: While not a benchmark for memory, it does provide overall system performance.  It does of course steer more in the direction for video but memory speeds do play a role in its performance.

7Zip: While 7Zip is a tool for file compression, it also provides a tool to benchmark the speed of your processor and RAM.  The Compression speed test relies heavily on your RAM latency, Data cache size and speed and TLP or translation lookaside buffer.  The TLB is a memories cache that stores recent translations of virtual memory into physical addresses for faster retrieval of that cache.

Decompression relies more on the CPU’s integer operations and very little on memory and its own cache, but it is wrapped in the test.  The performance is based off of MIPS (Million Instructions per second.  The overall score is calculated from the measured speed of its calculations.  I run this test for 100 passes, not only test get a better tested score but also to test system stability under each configuration.

AIDA64: Is a benchmarking suite that can benchmark the entire system, but I will focus this test only on Memory, since we have a few other suites benchmarking everything.  The memory test here benchmarks reading, writing with data transfer bandwidth and latency.

CPU-Z:  Well this is not really a test, but a utility to tell you what speed your CPU, Memory and the likes are running at.  This piece of software provides information to confirm what you have done in the BIOS making sure all is well, confirming Bus Speeds, Multipliers, Frequencies, Channel’s and more.  Yes, many pieces of software do this as well, but this is 1 of them.

Intel Extreme Tuning Utility: honestly this is one that I completely forgot about till I was done with all the testing.  Yet another piece of software to double check on settings, but this also provides a Stress Test utility and a Benchmarking Utility.  The benchmark of course, is CPU related, but the CPU is where the memory controller is but the Memory Stress Test will stress the CPU and/or Memory as well.  While I don’t mention this during the review really, I test all settings in this as well to make sure the system is stable aside from the other suites as well.

PCMark:  Does not focus on memory specifically, memory and memory speed will affect its end result.  PCMark has various testing packages, Home Test, Creative test, Work Test, Storage Test, Application Test and Battery Life testing.  Some packages are self-explanatory; I will focus on the Creative Test.

The Creative Test includes works loads typically found on enthusiasts and professionals that work heavily with media and entertainment.  The suite performs various tests in the lines of Web Browsing, Photo Editing, Video Editing, Group video chat, Media transcoding and gaming.  These are all different types of workloads, but all are very memory centric, including overall system performance.

Sisoft Sandra:  Sandra is also a suite that can potentially benchmark the entire system and can also be used for diagnostic purposes, like most if not all of the previous software titles mention.  For memory, I will be running Sandra’s Memory Bandwidth and Latency tests.

For testing purposes I will be testing using Patriot’s Viper Elite Series DDR4 3000Mhz, two dual channel kits and Kingston’s HyperX Predator Quad Channel DDR4, both equaling up to 16Gigs.  Since Patriot only has one XMP profile, I will only be testing on XMP 1.0 to see exactly what the differences offer in performance.  The overclocking portion of this test may surprise you too, but just not for the reasons you expect right now, I didn’t expect it either.

I will also list my build as a point of reference.

Again for reference, here are the XMP Profiles:

Patriot Viper XMP Profile 1.0 (Patriot XMP 1.0)

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Kingston HyperX Predator XMP 1.0 (HyperX XMP 1.0)

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Differences here are the Patriot has the BCLK to 125.03, versus the Kingston HyperX’s 125.00 and the HyperX has a slightly tighter timing on the tCL but the loser on the tRAS, tRRD and tFAW.  Usually tighter timings equal better performance but the fact that the XMP Profile for the Patriot is slightly higher, providing more bandwidth across the system improving overall performance, not just in the RAM.

Now back to the benchmarks.

3DMark

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The memory differences were not significant at all from the 3000Mhz in Patriot XMP 1.0 against the HyperX XMP 1.0.  While HyperX XMP 1.0 does have tighter timings, which should improve performance, tighter timings on 3DMark wouldn’t make much of a difference since its focus is more heavy on the GPU alone.  It seems though that 3DMark actually preferred the looser timings and the higher system bus as there was a 0.76% improvement with the Patriot XMP 1.0.

PCMark

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In PCMark Patriot XMP 1.0 performs slightly better than HyperX XMP 1.0.  This is more over all overall system result and did not focus on graphics; we can see that again the looser memory timings did help a tiny bit, again not enough to call it a success.

7Zip

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On 7-Zip we can see that HyperX XMP 1.0 performed a bit better.  HyperX XMP 1.0 was 255MIPS higher than Patriot XMP 1.0, a 0.75% improvement, not bad.  This score is derived by CPU speeds but the latency plays a role in the compression speeds as well.

AIDA64

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We can see here the results are a bit skewed, though still very close.  Patriot XMP 1.0 performed best under Write at a .027% improvement and Read test at a .0614% improved and the HyperX XMP 1.0 performed best under Latency by a .51% improvement and Copy by a .50% improvement.

To break it down a bit, the “Write” test focuses on the maximum achievable memory write bandwidth, Latency measures the typical delay when the CPU reads data from system memory.  “Copy” measures the maximum achievable memory copy speed and finally “Read” measures the maximum achievable memory read bandwidth.

This test is a memory-centric test much more than the other tests, even though it does involve the CPU, but it is inevitable since the memory controller is on the CPU.

Sisoft Sandra

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The results here are not as confusing as AIDA64’s, they are straight out in favor of the Patriot XMP 1.0.  Yes, Time to Copy is lower, but that is good because you want it to take less time to copy than more time to copy right?

Both held their own very well here in some areas the Patriot performed better and in others, the HyperX performed better.  So now we are moving onto the overclocking aspect of the review, issues did occur, they were explained but regardless results we provided,… though not in the way you would think they would be.

[nextpage title=”Potential overclocking disaster”]

There is no good review if there isn’t a bit of overclocking to show you what more the memory can do above standard clocks, and we got that here is well.  Now, the thing is that the Kingston HyperX Predator 3000Mhz Quad Channel Kit 16Gig came in one kit, the Patriot Viper Elite Series DDR4 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit came in two separate kits, equaling up together to 16Gigs, each was an 8Gig Kit. That is where the problem starts, but it might not be the problem you are expecting.

So the Quad channel kit is tested together, all 4 sticks are tested and benchmarked together at the factory to assure that they work perfectly together, this also insures that they have the same IC’s.  Memory IC’s are integrated circuits (IC) in memory, make, model, manufacturer, date and lot codes to make sure there are no incompatibilities, though even then issues can occur but are less likely.  Date codes are literally the Date the memory was made stamped on the memory and lot codes are the codes of the actual lots where the memory was manufactured, also stamped on the memory.  They don’t always have date and lot codes exactly written out just like that, but they have differentiators to help the manufacturer have a more tight QA process and to determine where faults in the QA process and assembly process might lay.