A Closer Look

Patriot has three different series currently for DDR5 available under the Viper Gaming branding. These include Viper Xtreme 5, Viper Venom and Viper Elite 5. All have distinct aesthetics and are targeted at different consumers. The Xtreme 5 starts at 7600 MT/s and currently goes up to 8400 MT/s (with 9,000 MT/s shown off at CES 2024). This Xtreme 5 is Patriot's flagship product line. As of now, these are only sold with black heatspreaders with both RGB and non-RGB versions in standard and non-binary capacities.


Patriot has placed the Viper branding on both sides of each memory DIMM. On the left is the Viper brand logo (snake head).


On one side of each DIMM module is the identification sticker listing the product number, rated XMP operating frequency, voltage, and CAS value.


Laying the DIMMs on the side, you can see "VIPER" written in black on one corner. Since these are non-RGB, the opaque plastic strip used for light diffusion on top has been replaced with a bright red version, part of the Xtreme 5 signature look.


The Patriot Viper Xtreme 5 DDR5-8200 Z-Height is 47 mm after rounding up with calipers and weighs in at 48 g on the scale.


After taking the heat spreader off, we see that these are single-sided DIMMs with eight (24 Gbit) 3 GB ICs. Included is the standard thermal pad that covers all the memory ICs. This particular kit does have coverage for the PMIC and surrounding components as well.


Currently, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix are the three suppliers of DDR5 ICs. However, only Micron / Spectek and SK Hynix have released Non-Binary 3 GB ICs to the consumer market. Both of which may "perform" worse than their 2 GB counterparts at the same frequency due to different primary and sub-timings. So far, Micron 3 GB ICs have shown to reach at least 7000 MT/s, while SK Hynix is much higher at 8400 MT/s+

A closer look at the ICs shows that these are SK Hynix (H5CGD8MGBD-X021). Which can be abbreviated to SK Hynix 3 GB M-Die, not to be confused with SK Hynix's first DDR5 M-Die (2 GB) in 2021. Up until the release of (24 Gbit) 3 GB ICs, the previous world record crown was held by SK Hynix A-Die (16 Gbit) 2 GB which is still considered a good choice for high frequency overclocks paired with lower primary timings, only to be outdone by the SK Hynix 3 GB variant for highest frequency.



With DDR5, one of the major changes is how the motherboard directly provides 5 V to the memory module's PMIC, which is then stepped down and split accordingly. No longer is the motherboard responsible for regulating the voltages, as with DDR4. The PMIC has the part number "OP=AF FG1," software reports Richtek being the manufacturer.