Patriot Viper Elite 5 RGB TUF Gaming Alliance DDR5-6600 48GB Dual-Channel Memory Kit Review

TweakTown's Rating: 96%

The Bottom Line

Patriot and ASUS combined forces to deliver the Elite 5 RGB TUF Gaming Alliance DDR5, and it is the leader in its class, and takes on many of the heavyweights that outclass them. At the current price and density, it's a deal you need to look into.

Pros

• RGB
• Overclockability
• Lower cost
• White spreaders
• M-Die ICs

Cons

• Availability
• Wish there were ROG kits

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

There is nothing new about companies partnering with the industry's big boys, combining teams to develop products that can benefit specific users from these partnerships. In RAM, we recall Avexir delivering kits for all the major players in the motherboard game. We can see something like that sinking a company due to the massive number of SKUs you have to keep on hand, and that is why many RAM makers will offer only ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE, etc., tied products at some point in their product history, but is not something we feel can be sustained long term.

Many of these products are off-the-shelf units with lipstick applied. By this, we mean that there has been no special "tuning" or even making any effort to give these users a leg up. However, Patriot went another way. Not only did they ensure that their profiles were stable, but the tuning is tight, while still offering users the stability they have come to expect from Patriot. Only when the kits satisfy the team that they cannot go much further across the series will they add the new markings and deliver these kits out into the wild.

Even if you do not own a TUF series motherboard from ASUS, it is easy to appreciate the style and additional paint applied to the Elite RGB kits. Again, these sticks are tuned to help TUF users get more from this RAM than with the average kits of this speed. You don't need a TUF motherboard to take advantage of the Patriot R&D, as we will be running them in our APEX Encore, just like the rest of the kits we have tested. However, for anyone wondering where the real home to this kit resides, well, the TUF Gaming Z790-BTF WIFI is the true home for these Patriot Viper Elite 5 RGB TUF Alliance DDR5.

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Looking at the part number of this new kit, we do not see much difference from the typical offerings. However, at the end of the PVER548G66C34KT is that T, which signifies that this kit is the TUF Gaming Alliance set. As a member of the Patriot Elite 5 RGB series, the aluminum spreaders are white, but this time, they sport some of that ASUS TUF yellow and the TUF GAMING ALLIANCE name.

These are another of the Patriot M-die offerings with 48GB of density across both sticks, with a JEDEC profile that delivers 4800 MT/s with 40-40-40-76 2T timings, sipping just 1.10V to do so. However, this DDR5 is designed to go much faster with one of the XMP profiles set at 6600 MT/s with 34-40-40-84 2T timings but with the voltage set to 1.40V for additional stability across the TUF Gaming Alliance series. A secondary option is set in the XMP profiles, where a user can select 6400 MHz with 30-38-38-84 2T timings, still requiring 1.40V.

The last few things in our chart cover the 133.9mm length, 41,1mm height, 7mm thickness, and 42.9-gram weight per stick. On top of everything else Patriot puts into this set of RAM, just like all other Patriot sticks, they come backed with a limited lifetime warranty.

In the end, what it all comes down to is cost. It is just the reality of this industry, where many will go with a more affordable solution, not thinking anything of it. However, what we have here is different than most. Where companies will often charge a premium for such a product, we find that this new TUF partnership comes with a price cut. The standard PVER548G60C42KW will set you back $183.23 right now, and that is a 6000 MT/s kit with wide open timings. Compared to the PVER548G66C34KT we have in hand at $162.99, you can see why we alluded to the fact that you may want these, even if the ASUS TUF Gaming Alliance products were never on your radar, to begin with.

Packaging and Patriot Elite 5 RGB TUF Gaming Alliance

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Even when it came to the box, Patriot made sure to take the vanilla concept from their Elite 5 lineup and add a couple of the TUF yellow stripes. We still get the logo and sticker with the RAM specs on it, but this time, the TUF Gaming Alliance Elite 5 RGB is shown with ASUS TUF complimentary colors behind the diffuser.

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Even the back of the box takes on some of that TUG flavor, with the DDR5 at the top and the little slashes at the bottom. The rest is standard for Patriot, with the information on the left and a view of the sticks inside on the right.

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Fresh out of the box, still held tightly inside of the plastic inner packaging, our Elite 5 RGB looks like standard fare from this side, but rest assured, Patriot took care of the other side, ensuring the aesthetics are a dead match to what the ASUS TUF Gaming alliance has in their Z790-BTF WIFI motherboard.

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With the "front" of the kit now in view, it is easy to see that the white spreaders will fit with the motherboard, but it is the TUF GAMING ALLIANCE and the yellow slashes below it that make this kit a perfect match for the situation it is intended to be used in.

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We have seen the backs of these sticks already, and outside of the lack of the TUF bit, the change is in the placement of this sticker. The part number, type, density, speed, timings, voltage, and a message not to remove it are on it.

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Once installed, with or without the TUF Gaming Alliance motherboard, these Patriot sticks will give you this view. As said, the TUF GAMING ALLIANCE painted on the side does not bother us in the slightest. Even without the TUF motherboard, we still like the visual appeal, and that yellow is eye-catching.

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Even if you cannot see the sides of the sticks inside your build, with or without the RGB, the TUF GAMING ALLIANCE x VIPER painted onto the flat portion of the diffusers is still easy to see.

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Opening our Elite 5 RGB shows that the ICs are cooled with thermal tape while the PMIC receives a thermal pad. The ICs on the black PCB are SK Hynix H5CGD8MGBDX021, and the PMIC is the 0P=AL., an unlocked chip from Richtek.

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As with any of the Elite 5 RGB kits, the TUF Gaming Alliance starts the same way. Once powered, there is a Knight Rider KITT display of red LEDs, and once booted, they will display in full RGB as any other Patriot RGB RAM will do. Once set up with the TUF Gaming Alliance motherboard, you can use Armoury Crate to change the lighting to match the motherboard, as seen on the front of the box.

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To verify what we saw with the heat spreader removal, we opened up Thaiphoon Burner. In it, we see these are Patriot sticks with 24GB of density, programmed back in April. The IC is not fully named but confirms the 4800 MT/s JEDEC setting.

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Using Mem TweakIt to get a better look at the timings, we can see that CAS 34 and the main timings are maybe not as tight as you might expect. However, when looking at the tRFC below 550 and the tREFi below 7000, we can tell that the tweaking to these sticks went beyond the initial timings to help users get the most from this XMP profile.

Test System Details

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To obtain the Intel CPU-Z screenshots, you will see directly following this image; this is the system we used to do it, as well as to get the results seen in the following pages. Thanks to ASUS, Intel, be quiet!, MSI, EKWB, and Sabrent for supporting us with this venture. Detailed specifications of the system can be found below.

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As we expected, once the XMP option was set, we botted into Windows to see what CPU-Z says about the profile. We see that we are at 6600 MHz with 34-40-40-84 2T timings, and rechecking with BIOS, our VDD/q was set to 1.40V, while the SA sat at 0.865. and the MC was using 1.190V

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In our attempt to get to the lowest stable timings with the default 6600 MHZ still set, we bottomed this kit out at 30-38-38-84 2T. To do so, we did need 1.50V for VDD/q, and we also bumped the SA to 1.10V while the MC was raised to 1.20V

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We then went for maximum speed with the XMP timings in play and were shocked to see how far we got at CAS 34. At 1.50V for VDD/q, we saw 6933MHz but could tell they had more to give, so we pushed it to 1.55V and had 7000MHz 34-40-40-84 2T completely stable. To lock it down, we need to use 1.235V for the SA and 1.385V for the MC.

Chad's Intel DDR5 Dual-Channel Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Maximus Z790 APEX Encore - Buy from Amazon
• CPU: Intel Core i9 14900K - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: EK Nucleus AIO CR360 Lux D-RGB - Buy from Amazon
• Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming Trio 24G - Buy from Amazon
• Storage: Sabrent Rocket 4 PLUS-G 4TB - Buy from Amazon
• Case: Custom Thermaltake Core P3 TG
• Power Supply: be quiet! DARK POWER PRO 12 1500W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Home - Buy from Amazon

Intel Performance

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Our starting point is the Elite 5 RGB TUF Gaming Alliance, which has 102,554 MB/s of read performance, which is more than the Colorful kit, its direct competition. With tighter timings, we got a boost of 1351MB/s over XMP, but with that added speed at CAS 34, we got an additional 6236 MB/s from this kit.

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Again, Patriot is ahead of Colorful in write performance, hitting 89,294 with XMP set. At CAS30, we gained only 989 MB/s, but with added speed, we got another 4792 MB/s for a few minutes' worth of overclocking.

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Copy performance has Colorful slightly ahead of Patriot this time, but 91,509 MB/s is nothing to laugh at. With tighter timings, we got an additional 1530 MB/s over XMP, but with the RAM pushed to 7000 MHz, we gained 5537 MB/s with little effort.

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Latency results with AIDA64 show that Patriot is well ahead of its direct competition, and we get better latency with this set than we saw in the Xtreem Narvic Black. Even though 65.4ns is a good jumping-off point, we took it down into the low 63s with some tinkering.

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Within four-tenths of a second, the Colorful kit slightly edges out the Patriot TUF DDR5. Typically, a lower CAS setting does well in Super Pi, but in this instance, we lost performance. However, cranking the speed up and boosting some of the voltages took almost three seconds off the time.

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As we have often said, PCMark 10 is more of an efficiency test where the balance of timing and speed wins the day. Out of the box, this 6600 MHz kit leaps into third place. More speed killed the results for this metric, but you can see how well the 6600 MHz at CAS 30 did.

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If your day consists of compressing files all day, you may want the Colorful kit over the Patriot set if you do not want to tinker to get the best from them. For those who like to tinker, you can take another 9.3 seconds off that XMP result with a reduction in timings, or you could opt for more speed and get a 12.1-second reduction in the time to complete our 7-Zip run.

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If transcoding is your thing, we feel bad saying this, but only two kits are worse for this workload. With a baseline of 631 seconds, we were pleased to see that 629-second result with tighter timings. On the flip side, we had no idea that adding speed to this kit would eliminate over eleven seconds from the result, taking Patriot up into third place.

Final Thoughts

Many of you may not even know what the TUF Gaming Alliance motherboard looks like, and we feel that is a key part of what Patriot has done to their Elite 5 RGB and the ASUS partnership. The white spreaders of the Elite 5 series are a perfect choice for the Z790-BTF WIFI motherboard. ASUS opted for a black PCB with white and exposed aluminum as the theme of the motherboard, and the spreaders match that theme. The image below shows what ASUS and the TUF Gaming Alliance Z790-BTF WIFI are all about.

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While we obviously could not come up with an image of the TUF Gaming Alliance RAM from Patriot on the board, as we do not own it, Patriot was nice enough to send over an image from their in-house imagery. As seen below, the combination of the white spreaders and color-coordinated RGB to the TUF theme is a match that is tough to beat.

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The performance of this set of DDR5 is impressive for how little speed it has. In most testing, Patriot beats Colorful, which is its direct competition with matching speed and CAS latency. Sure, Transcoding and file compression could be better, but for the gamers and daily use PC people out there, Patriot delivers where it matters. We also love that Patriot fine-tunes the secondary and tertiary timings specific to the ASUS TUF series, which, as seen, has its advantages across most of the tests.

As said, this set of Patriot Elite 5 RGB TUF Gaming Alliance DDR5 may not be for everyone, but it looks good enough that we honestly do not care what board it's on. Even on the APEX Encore, the contrast and bits of yellow are insufficient to keep us from using them 24/7. They could be pink if we continue to get the performance, high-quality components, and flexibility we have come to enjoy from Patriot RAM.

With the price of this 6600 MHz CAS 34 kit being what it is, it is fair for the market. Looking around, most of the 6600 MHz kits are in binary form, which leaves them a third short of the density of what Patriot offers, and they are in the range of $130 for the G.Skill and Corsair offerings. At $162.23 at Amazon, it is easy to see the value of such a product, which helps round out what has been pleasurable, shocking at times when overclocking, and is our new favorite part in the Elite 5 RGB lineup. As said, even without the TUF Gaming Alliance Z790-BTF WIFI, we would have no problems using these Patriot Viper Elite 5 RGB TUF GAMING ALLIANCE DDR5 kits on any system.