Closer Look

Similar to other Patriot products, the Viper Xtreme stuff ships being secured via a plastic case, which, because of its transparency, could also look attractive hanging in a showcase.

The actual modules are fitted with a medium-height two-part heatspreaders colored black, silver and copper. We believe that the copper coloured bits are actual copper, as with the total height of 42mm or 37mm above the memory slot, these weigh in at 75 gramms each, which is not what you’d call lightweight.

Taking a look at the SPD, we find multiple JEDEC profiles, highest of which is DDR3-1333. In addition, we get two XMP, both of which are commonly being misread by CPU-Z. In reality, one sets up the memory for 2133 11-11-11-30-3T and the second for 1866 9-11-9-27-2T operation in case the user can’t or don’t want to set these values themselves.

Removing heatspreaders from Patriot memory has always been a challenge in the past as the used glue was very sticky so they wouldn’t come off without a fight and when they did – they’d tear one or two memory ICs off with them. This time, we brought along a sledgehammer, a powerdrill and a gas torch … just to make sure our balls are solid enough to give it another go.

Things turned out to be easy – having applied minimal heating and pullforce, the heatspreaders popped off revealing Hynix 2Gbit CFR memory chips. Those of readers with IC knowledge would instantly say that these are not the ones overclockers are looking for as they’re weaker compared to their predecessor, the Hynix 2Gbit BFR. And they’d be right. But you never know, so let’s find out.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 4 - Results
Page 2 - Closer Look	Page 5 - Conclusion
Page 3 - Photo Gallery

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