RAM continues to be a hot item and the release of the Z68 platform means memory companies are back at it again creating more and more memory for us to test. It's going to get even busier in the coming months as we see the new Bulldozer platform come along with the new Intel platform which will make use of Quad-Channel memory.

Today, though, we're checking out a Dual Channel kit from the team at Patriot which falls under the Viper Xtreme series. This is one of my favourite series because the heatsink quality is one of the best on the market, and while we're not 100% sure how useful heatsinks are these days, people don't want to buy RAM without them, and who can blame them? We're all shallow.

So onto the kit itself; it's a typical Viper Xtreme kit with that great looking heatsink we just spoke about. On the speed front the kit comes in at 2133MHz DDR with a timing setup of 9-11-9-27 @ 1.65v. As for the size, we're dealing with two 2GB modules to make a 4GB Dual-Channel kit.

Specification wise, it's not bad. For this speed it's similar to what we see from most companies. Of course, we've seen some companies go a little more aggressive for a higher price while others have loosened up timings to save you a few bucks. We did manage to run the kit at 1T, though, so that's always good.

On to the testing side of things. We got up and running in Windows easily and you can see our CPU-Z validation here. Up and running in Windows, it was time to check out the performance we could get.

Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 21,147 MB/s / 18,193 MB/s, Copy speed of 22,206 MB/s and latency of 39.9ns.

Getting into the BIOS to see what we could do with clock speeds, we didn't run into much luck initially. Before we gave up, though, we figured we'd move from 1T to 2T and see if we could give ourselves a bit of a boost in MHz and fortunately we could.

We ended up in Windows at 2252MHz DDR with the timings running at 9-11-9-27-2T @ 1.65v. You can see our CPU-Z validation here. Up and running in Windows, it was time to check out the performance we could get.

Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 22,133 MB/s / 19,205 MB/s, Copy speed of 23,372 MB/s and latency of 38.8ns.

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So since everything was going so well, it was time to head back into the BIOS and see what we could do with our CPU. Normally we'd just up it to 52x, but that wasn't really an option due to the fact we were running at 105.6 BCLK. Instead, we moved to 50x and as you can see below, that puts our CPU at 5278MHz and yields some strong performance under AIDA64.

Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 25,722 MB/s / 26,835 MB/s, Copy speed of 28,742 MB/s and latency of 35.6ns.

As usual, Patriot has put together a really nice kit that offers some great performance. To be honest, I was a little surprised by the overclock we managed to achieve as quite often we see most 2133MHz DDR kits offer very limited range when it comes to overclocking higher. The combination of moving to 2T, though, and have a 4GB kit with 2GB modules instead of an 8GB one with 4GB modules also opens up the opportunities to get higher clocks.

While not available on NewEgg yet, in Australia they can be found for the low, low price of $69 AUD. Considering we tend to be a bit more expensive here, locally in the states you should find them for a really good price.

Good out of the box performance, overclocking headroom and an excellent quality cooler, the Patriot Viper Xtreme PC3-17066 4GB kit is a great option for people who only want 4GB of RAM and are looking for something that is made extremely well.