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 different targeted markets to offer a kit for every type of consumer. The Xtreme 5 starts at 7600 MT/s and currently goes up to 8000 MT/s, placing it as the current flagship product line for Patriot. As of now, these are only sold with black heatspreaders. Non-RGB versions are listed on the website, though not found for sale yet.


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. The entire plastic strip in the middle will be illuminated when the system is powered on and lighting can be controlled with supported motherboard software.


Patriot Viper Xtreme 5 kit weighs in at 50 grams on the scale. For Z-height, it comes in at 47 mm rounding down.


Removing the Viper Xtreme 5 heatspreaders was one of the easiest examples to do. Two screws at the top of each side holds the light bar in place. Once removed, some heat applied from a hair dryer to the heatspreaders and the thermal pad glue loosens up, allowing it to come apart intact and reusable. While removing the heatspreaders most likely voids any warranty, those who are going to use a waterblock will be happy to hear it's easier than most memory kits to take apart.

With the heatspreaders removed, we see that these are single-sided DIMMs with eight 2 GB ICs. This is as expected for 16 GB DDR5 DIMMs. The thermal pad covers all the memory ICs. This particular kit does have a thermal pad covering the PMIC and surrounding components. This is a nice addition from Patriot to include a thermal pad when many other vendors do not. It becomes extra important for those who will do heavy overvolting and don't want to take these apart and use custom heatspreaders.


A closer look at the ICs shows that these are SK Hynix (H5CG48AGBD-X018). Currently, Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix are the three suppliers of DDR5 ICs. When it comes to higher frequency memory, SK Hynix is currently unmatched and without a direct competitor. Micron's first DDR5 iteration, Rev.A only reached a mere 5600 MT/s, with the recently released Rev.G coming in at 6600 MT/s. Samsung has been mostly absent so far, with Samsung B-Die (DDR5) rarely seen in retail kits above 6400 MT/s. While both companies have more revisions in the works, SK Hynix's new A-Die memory is currently the only one breaking the 8000 MT/s retail barrier.

The kit we have here today uses SK Hynix A-Die. It will overclock the highest of all the current memory ICs offerings. New 3 GB ICs from Micron and SK Hynix are also available to consumers, but lag behind from looser primary timings and sub-timings due to the increase in capacity.


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 "0D=9E34B," software reports this as Richtek being the manufacturer.