Patriot memory kits were a big hit on the X58 platform, particularly the Viper Extreme range with their sky blue, oversized heatsinks. I was looking at today's quad channel kit and couldn't help thinking how much more 'grown up' they look. Rather than having 'out there in leftfield' looks, they ooze class and hint at uber performance. Aesthetically, the one area which let's the whole visual appeal down is the use of a green PCB. With so many enthusiasts now placing visuals high on the agenda, this could easily be enough to deter many potential buyers regardless of how well they perform, such is the weight given to aesthetics in today's materialistic society.

Looks aside, the memory kit did perform well and while it was hindered at stock settings throughout the benchmarks with slacker timings, it still overclocked well reaching 2133MHz which is none too shabby for a 16GB memory kit costing less than £150 and made up for the less than average performance at reference settings.

Note* The above kit is pictured with a black PCB which goes to show just how much better they would have looked!

Were the PCB of the retail samples black and the timings and voltages matched to the competition then it could well be a Silver or even Gold award winner. However, the green PCB is unforgivable and the high stock voltage means less headroom is available to push the memory kit as far as we would have liked so the Patriot kit will have to settle for a Bronze award this time around.

If you can see past the green PCB, Patriot have on offer a very good memory kit that is more then capable of holding it's own against the big boys even if it requires more voltage to do so and assuming you don't mind a quick, 5 minute tweak to the latency. Also, if overclocking is your bag then this kit will give you an easy 2133MHz which should be enough to make you give the Patriot Division 4 Viper Extreme serious consideration when deciding upon a quad channel memory kit.

Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net. Thanks to Patriot Memory for providing today’s review sample.