Patriot Division2 Viper Xtreme 4GB DDR3 RAM kit

Extreme Performance PC3-12800 (1600MHz)
Low Latency (8-9-8-24)
Voltage: 1.65V
XMP Ready
Equipped with an extruded aluminum shield build around a copper core to provide improved cooling
100% Tested and Verified
RoHS Compliant
Tested on Intel® P67 platform

Patriot’s Viper Xtreme Series, Division 2 Edition memory kits are designed for Intel’s® 2nd Generation Core™ processors. Engineered for PC Gamers and enthusiasts the Viper Xtreme Division 2’s utilize a custom designed heatshield solution with an outer shield built around a copper core to provide enhanced cooling. Each module has 6 grams of copper at its core paired with extruded aircraft-grade aluminum outer shield. Built from only using the highest quality pre-sorted IC’s available, they are rigorously tested and validated on the Intel® 6 Series platform to achieve maximum performance and stability. These modules are engineered to reach PC3-12800 (1600MHz) at 8-9-8-24 timings and are available 4GB kits (2 x 2GB) and 8GB kits (2 x 4GB). Each module is 100% hand-tested to quality assurance and is backed by a full-lifetime warranty and industry leading customer service.

As you’ll hopefully notice, those specified latency numbers are impressively low.  As you’ll also hopefully notice, I copied Patriot’s introduction from the first page of the article here to, well, take a closer look at it.  Please direct your attention to the emphasized section – they mention the use of a “heatshield”.  One can only hope that this is in a metaphorical marketing sense, as a heat shield is a device used to keep heat away from sensitive components – and in this case, the sensitive components are the ones generating the heat in the first place.  Having examined the modules in person, this seems to be nothing more than a silly choice of words by the marketing team.  Everything about these modules are designed to get heat out, not hold it in.  There are many good reasons not to buy a product, but this sort of marketing slip-up is not one of them.  A good reason would be, say, that it doesn’t boot on an AMD platform, or an Intel platform, and you may want to hang on to your nice RAM when you upgrade your motherboard for Llano or something like that.  Fortunately, as our tests show, Patriot’s engineers are far too good for anything like that.  Even at stock speeds, the Viper Xtreme kit was impressively fast.  We’ll have a look in a moment, but first off, let us establish what we have going on in our test rig.  We installed the modules in a Fatal1ty P67 motherboard from ASRock, running an Intel I5 “Sandy Bridge” chip running at 3.3 ghz.