Introduction
Like with most NVMe SSDs nowadays, the Patriot Viper VPN100 is a Phison-controled device and is rated for excellent numbers in terms of performance. This is also coupled with the fact that the Patriot Viper VPN100 comes at a top capacity of 2TB, so anyone who can afford such a product can easily store their game library on this drive along as being a boot drive. Your sole storage for your gaming PC, so to speak. But any competing product can do that. So what makes the Viper VPN100 from Patriot a standout? Well, a large heatsink is a start. As a reference design Phison E12, it sports BiCS3 64L TLC flash which puts it in good company amongst some high-performance products in the market right now. To make it standout though, Patriot is banking on looks and cooling with its large heatsink.
What Patriot has to say about the Viper VPN100:
PEAK PERFORMANCE FOR PRIME GAMEPLAY
Viper Gaming’s VPN100 delivers the perfect combination across ultimate performances, ultra-fast speeds, and mult-tasking capabilities. 5x faster than SATA SSDs, the VPN100 is the best-in-class reliability SSD for gamers, tech enthusiasts, content creators, 3D modelers, and video rendering professionals looking into blazingly fast start up times and instantaneous access to their data for better productivity.
The Viper VPN100 m.2 Solid State Drive is designed with an External Thermal Sensor which diminishes risk of overheating and eliminates performance drops, as well as includes built-in aluminum heatshield and 6 thermal fins providing excellent thermal dissipation. VPN100 delivers superior performance and maximum reliability, becoming the best solution for all-in-one PC kits, small form-factor or high performance gaming PC builds.
Read on to find out more about the Patriot VIPER VPN100 M.2 NVMe SSD in this review.
Specification and Features – Patriot Viper VPN100
- 1TB High Performance SSD, Solid State Drive; for desktop PC builds; due to product height not compatible with laptops
- 4K Aligned Random Read: up to 700K IOPs; Write: up to 700K IOPs
- Sequential Read: up to 3,450MB/s; Sequential Write: up to 3,000MB/S
- Phison E12 Series Controller . 2280 M.2 PCIe Gen3 x 4, NVMe 1.3
- Backed by Patriot’s award winning build quality and 3-year warranty
Packaging and Closer Look
Patriot packages the Viper VPN100 in a small box but feels really well-done. The thickness of the material for the packaging is great and the full-color print makes you feel what you have is substantial. On the front you have the capacity printed in large text with a shot of the product. On first release this was a good idea, as it helped made apparent that future products get identified on the front especially with the new VPN4100 released. On the back are some details.
The front has a flap which opens up revealing a cutout window for the VPN100. Marketing text is on the flap with performance rating decorating the side of the window cutout.
Its hard to gauge in photos how thick the VPN100 is but it has a significantly large heatsink. Large enough to cause compatibility issues with some graphics card if your M.2 slot sits underneath your PCIe x16 slot. The heatsink cover up much of the SSD with the back, depending on what capacity you have, may have flash chips as well.
The heatsink isn’t one solid chunk so its not as heavy as it looks but it does pack significant weight.
The Viper VPN100 still conforms to traditional M.2 dimensions so it still fits in 2280 size M.2 length.
And here’s a shot of the SSD with a GPU mounted on top of it. Reference PCB graphics cards will probably not have any issues but wider coolers especially ones that extend towards the PCIe slot may have problems.
Performance Testing – Patriot Viper VPN100
Test Setup
Processor: Intel Core i9 9900K
Motherboard: ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XI EXTREME
Memory: G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3600 16GB
Storage: WD Blue SSD 1TB SATA (OS), Patriot Viper VPN100 1TB
PSU: Seasonic Platinum 1050w
Cooling: Fractal Design Celsius S36 AIO Liquid cooler
Monitor: Viewsonic VX2475smhl-4K
VGA: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FE
Potential Performance (ATTO Disk Benchmark)
ATTO Disk Benchmark benchmarks a drive’s read and write speeds with increasing file sizes and graphs them.
Anvil Storage Utilities
Anvil Storage Utilities is a disk benchmarking utility designed to offers a simpler method of scoring a storage device’s performance for both read and write as well as overall. The scores are presented in scores from the benchmark window.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD benchmarks SSDs and provides a score. In our charts, we’ll show you the performance results instead. AS SSD uses synthetic read/write tests with selectable test size.
Crystal Disk Mark v6
Crystal Disk Mark is storage benchmarking software was developed by “hiyohiyo” of Japan, and is available for free. This benchmark measures sequential, and random read/write speeds of storage devices.
ez IOmeter
ezIOmeter is a user-friendly port of the popular IOmeter benchmark. IOmeter is a professional load testing tool for measuring storage performance for enterprise solutions.
Conclusion
Due to its price margin, its hard not to compare the Viper VPN100 to the Seagate FireCuda 510, given they compete against each other in the same market segment. In terms of overall, performance the VPN100 overtakes the Seagate FireCuda 510 easily in most of the benchmarks. For mostly large files, both will be neck to neck but smaller file operations will have the Viper VPN100 hold the edge.
Going back to the heatsink, its the design may be good in terms of aesthetics but Patriot still needs to improve contact on the heatsink to the components on the SSD. The heatsink cools the NAND chips more than the controller as the controller chip has a gap which means it doesn’t fully make contact with the heatsink.
EDIT: Patriot has responded to our review citing the gap between the heatsink and components have been improved and a pad is now in-place to increase contact. This is most evident in retail releases after its initial launch. Our sample does show this and the gap is realistically minimal but still present but testing does show its a non-issue.
Still, giving them the benefit of the doubt, still leaves us wondering that even hours of testing, Patriot just decided to go with this design knowing they could improve performance further.
So does the heatsink actually work? Thankfully it does allow the VPN100 to sit in the 40ish range and tops out at around 49*C during benchmark usage (which is an abnormal load for SSDs) which you’ll probably never encounter in real life unless you’re using the drive as a scratch or swap drive for creative apps. Still, we wanted to see how the controller is doing and trying to pry the heatsink off means possibly damaging the PCB as Patriot has used very secure adhesive to keep the heatsink in place.
Final things to talk about the heatsink: to RGB or not? We feel this is ultimately subjective and including RGB on a possibly hidden component further devalues its inclusion. It could’ve also raised prices which could hurt Patriot’s positioning of the Viper VPN100 further.
As of this moment, the Patriot Viper VPN100 1TB is priced at Php7500. That is an amazing offer and the 256GB for Php2850, 512GB for Php4300 and the 2TB top-end capacity is at an incredible Php15500. To put that into perspective, Samsung and Seagate prices their 1TB M.2 NVMe at Php14000. Street prices will be lower but ultimately, Patriot has the edge in value in this segment and its primary competitors are primarily Taiwanese brands most noteworthy is the ADATA SX8200 Pro but still priced a touch higher than the VPN100.
In terms of cooling ingenuity, Patriot still lags behind AORUS in terms of functional design but at the end of the day, the Patriot Viper VPN100 offers solid bang-for-the-buck performance and its without a doubt a excellent performer. Longevity is a tough thing to measure and only time will tell if the VPN100 is a durable design thanks to its ginormous heatsink but for now, it excels in a lot of things making it an easy recommendation… but do note of the size compatibility.
Patriot backs the Viper VPN100 with a 3-year warranty. We give it our B2G Gold Award and B2G Recommended Seal.
