INTRODUCTION

   RAM may not affect the performance of any system nearly as much as the CPU (or the GPU when it comes to gaming and 3D applications) but its capacity/amount has always come no less than 2nd for people looking to get the best possible outcome. Of course, speed/frequencies are also important and even though it's been proven time and again that these may not affect the performance of your PC nearly as much as capacity/amount still the highest possible speed possible is always good to have. For good or bad looks (more specifically RGB lighting) have also come into play lately and so this too is a feature that happens to matter to quite a large number of people (gamers and enthusiasts primarily). With their latest Viper Steel RGB line of DDR4 RAM Patriot Memory wants to cover most users out there and with me today i have the 32GB 3200MHz kit (PVSR432G320C8K).

   Viper Gaming is a brand of Patriot Memory, a global leader in performance memory, Solid State Drives (SSD's), and flash storage solutions. Viper Gaming was established in 2007 with the unveiling of the well-known, top-tier line of computer memory. Since then, the Viper Gaming brand has become synonymous with elite performance and reliability among gamers worldwide. In 2015, Viper Gaming decided to expand its product categories to include gaming keyboards, headsets, and mice. Offering entry, mid-level and high-end solutions with rich feature sets. Viper Gaming's award-winning peripherals provide gamers everywhere the best price-for-performance and reliability that enables every Viper Gamer to dominate in their sport.

   The brand new Viper Steel RGB line of DDR4 RAM is currently available in both single (8/16/32GB) and dual-channel (16/32/64GB) kits with frequencies up to 3600MHz (3200/3600MHz), CAS latency timings as low as 18 (3200MHz CL18 / 3600MHz CL20) and voltages set at 1.35v for all kits. Under the black aluminum heatspreaders we find single rank 16GB memory chips by Micron (others seem to be using Hynix modules) and just over them a plastic RGB LED bar (contains an unknown number of LEDs) which is fully compatible with all the popular mainboard sync technologies (including ASUS AURA Sync, GIGABYTE RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light Sync and ASRock Polychrome Sync). As with other RAM lines Patriot covers their new Viper Steel RGB kits with a limited lifetime warranty.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The new Viper Steel RGB DDR4 RAM kits get shipped inside a small box that has two openings at the front from where you can see the modules themselves, the company logo, capacity, speed and the compatible RGB lighting technologies.

At the rear Patriot has placed a few words about the Viper Steel RGB series in 9 languages.

Just a Viper Gaming logo is placed inside the box alongside the two RAM modules.

THE VIPER STEEL RGB 32GB 3200MHZ CL18

The Viper Steel RGB modules feature tall black aluminum heatsinks along with the company logo at the center (in yellow).

As usual at the rear we also see a small sticker which contains information about the module such as frequency, amount and timings.

At roughly 48mm the Viper Steel RGB modules are not exactly short.

The LED bar at the top of each module is compatible with all motherboard sync technologies currently in the market.

These modules look very nice even on a motherboard without sync capability like the Z390 DARK by EVGA (rainbow effect is selected by default).

Here you can see information about this particular kit thanks to the Thaiphoon software.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Thanks to XMP (2.0) profiles the only thing one needs to do in order to run this RAM kit at its advertised frequency, timings and voltages is to choose/enable it from within the Bios and reboot. That being said if you're into overclocking you may not wish to use the main XMP profile but instead to choose your very own frequency, timings and voltages to achieve even higher performance numbers and that's exactly what we'll also be doing during our DDR4 tests. To be more specific aside testing each kit with its XMP profile we will also be upping the voltages (up to 1.4V max – even though most kits can function at higher voltages I don’t recommend doing so) and frequencies (200MHZ increments) until we find the maximum achievable stable frequency. We also thought about upping voltages and reducing timings instead of increasing the frequency of the modules as high as it can go (always stable and without going over 1.4V) but the end results are pretty much identical.

   As for the how we'll be testing each DDR4 Quad/Dual-Kit to arrive in our lab well there aren't that many benchmark programs that only test RAM (or at least RAM and CPU without anything else coming into play) but we got most of them and so you will be seeing results from following benchmarking programs, AIDA64 Engineer Edition, Cinebench Release 20, MaxMemm2 (because we are getting low performance numbers this doesn't seem to play well with our test rig - probably because of the X299 architecture - but we decided to include it regardless), Passmark Performance Test 9, Sisoftware Sandra Titanium and WPrime v1.55. All tests are performed on a fresh Windows 10 Pro installation (complete with all updates until the day of this review) and are repeated a total of 6 times after which the average numbers get recorded into our charts.

* In addition to Quad-Channel tests since March 2020 I’ll also be using the brand new Z390 test rig (check above) for Dual-Channel RAM tests.
** Since May 2020 three game benchmarks (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, GEARS 5 and Metro Exodus tested on the X299 system at 1080p resolution and with the ASUS ROG RTX2060 OC set at Gaming Mode) have also been added in the charts.

TEST RESULTS - XMP PROFILE / DUAL CHANNEL

TEST RESULTS - OVERCLOCK / DUAL CHANNEL

Hitting a stable 3400MHz without even changing timings and just by upping the voltage to 1.37V only took but a few seconds to do. Unfortunately, just like with previous kits, even by upping the voltage at 1.4V I was unable to climb any higher (should be doable however if you reduce timings and/or surpass 1.4V).

CONCLUSION

   There are two types of consumers out there, those who buy a RAM kit and run it using its XMP profile at stock speed and those who like to overclock quite a bit. For the first the Viper Steel RGB 32GB 3200MHz kit (PVSR432G320C8K) leaves almost nothing to be desired. Performance is what you’d expect from such a kit (timings are slightly up compared to similar models but that shouldn’t matter to most consumers, at least not for every day performance) and as for looks well pictures speak for themselves. For people who like to overclock everything they get their hands on however this Viper Steel RGB kit may not be ideal. Granted I never want to surpass 1.4V in my reviews since that’s the “safe” limit set by most motherboard manufacturers but even at that i should have been able to hit 3600MHz (which i was able to do once but the system wasn't stable). What did bother me slightly is the lack of “variety” with the Viper Steel RGB series by Patriot since they are only available at two speeds (3200/3600MHz) and with the competition going all the way up to 4400MHz (some even higher) this may look bad to potential buyers looking for something faster.

   As I type these lines the Viper Steel RGB 32GB 3200MHz CL18 DDR4 RAM kit (PVSR432G320C8K) retails for USD159.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 169.99Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) a price tag which is more or less balanced for such a kit. If you’re looking for a kit designed for based on my results (there’s always a chance that there’s a motherboard incompatibility with the kit tested) this isn’t not the kit for you but if you plan on using the default XMP profile then i highly recommend giving it a chance.

PROS

- Good Overall Performance
- Lifetime Limited Warranty
- RGB Lighting
- Available Capacities

CONS

- Dual Channel Kits Only
- Overclocking Potential
- Only Two Speeds Available (3200/3400MHz)