Patriot Viper 3 1866MHz ram review

We don’t see a whole lot of Patriot memory in Australia, and it’s unfortunate, as it seems the company’s making some rather decent mid-range kits, like the Viper 3 tested here. It’s got a moderate frequency of 1866MHz and respectable timings of 9-10-9-27. Sure, it’s not the fastest RAM available, but it’s one of the better value kits around for anyone wanting to give memory overclocking a try.

For our testing we usually run an i7 3770K on an ASUS Maximus V Extreme, and for this kit it was no different. Firing up the system and enabling XMP saw us running the memory’s default settings without flaw, completing all benchmarks and tests trouble-free.

Going back into BIOS, we began the overclocked testing, raising the frequency to 2133MHz, keeping the same cache timings. We boot into Windows, though come unstuck in testing. It seems this kit needs a little more voltage to run 2133MHz CL9 successfully. 1.75v was applied, and testing was completed without issue.

Pushing the kit further, we didn’t manage to get above 2300MHz, even with 1.8v applied, a small increase in IMC voltage and a loosening up of cache timings. It seems the best result one could expect out of this kit is around 2300MHz with cache timings of CL10-11-10-27; not bad at all for a $75 piece of hardware that’s only rated for 1866MHz.

Memory overclocking has become a very strange conundrum, as it’s completely unnecessary for day-to-day tasks, and even in the overclocking scene only very specific benchmarks see a benefit from it. For this reason many people will tell you not to bother with high performance RAM when building your new system, and we’d agree if you have no intention of overclocking or tweaking your rig.

If however you do enjoy your hardware, and overclocking is something you like to do, rather than [i]need[/i] to do, buying an enthusiast RAM kit is a very worthwhile investment. At only $75 this kit is one of the cheapest components in an overclocking or gaming PC, so why not have some fun with it? With RAM at its current price it really isn’t that expensive to upgrade from the budget kit you had your eye on, to a kit like the 1866MHz Viper 3s.