Introduction

In early 2020, we published a video that compared DDR4-3200, 3600, and 4000 RAM on both Intel and AMD platforms. Then in July 2020, we published a follow-up video looking at three 3600MHz kits with different timings. The combined lessons of these reviews was that frequency matters, but timings potentially matter even more. Alas, we only scratched the surface by sticking to default frequencies and timings, so this time we’ve decided to go all in, using the fastest kit Patriot sells, its 2x8GB Viper Steel DDR4-4400 CL19 kit, but customizing the timings for optimal performance. We’re going to take this kit for a test drive on both our Intel and AMD benchmarking systems to see what it can do!

Special thanks to Patriot for providing this review sample!

TBG’s Video Review

Going forward, all of TBG’s reviews will be released exclusively on YouTube, as video provides far more opportunity to offer details and insight into production design and functionality than a written review ever could.

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Conclusion

There’s just no other way to put this: the Patriot Viper DDR4-4400 kit is awesome, and more importantly an awesome deal, but you have to know how to harness its potential. In our opinion, it’s being marketed ineffectively, because it’s probably too fast to boot at its default XMP settings for most Intel systems, and far from ideal on AMD systems, even if they’ll boot. We think Patriot could market two different kits based on this SKU, first a 4000 kit with very tight timings for Intel, and then a 3600 kit with even tighter timings for AMD. We hope Patriot considers “rebranding” the 4400 kit to get it into the hands of more enthusiasts. While a “rebrand” is never a good thing in the CPU or GPU world, when it comes to RAM, getting just the right combination of frequency and timings for a particular system actually does make a big difference, even if it’s the exact same hardware underneath. Maybe this review will be the one that convinces Patriot that it has something great on its hands!

Overall, we can definitely recommend the Patriot Viper DDR4-4400 kit for AMD users who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty with the DRAM Calculator for Ryzen, we think Intel users may actually be better served with the Patriot Viper DDR4-4000 kit we reviewed earlier this year, and pulled back into service for this review, where it performed just as well as our 4400 kit when tuned for our Intel system!