Eric Garay

I’ve been stretched pretty thin as of late more mentally than physically. When I get like this, some regular-joe play time is in order. After unplugging with some physical activities like working out and bbq’n, it was pretty easy getting back in to some of the cool tech toys that make PCs fun.

Enter, the Patriot Memory Viper II 2000 MHz (GT-RT10-VR4-R32-WRX-STi-OMFG-NOS) Triple Channel Memory. Ok, you got me. It doesn’t really use NOS to run fast, but you’d think so with the way it operates on a humble little ASRock X58 Extreme motherboard.

Right from boot, the motherboard insisted on running the memory at 1066 MHz (via BIOS and CPUZ) which is actually 2133 MHz because it’s double data rate RAM. That’s as far as the RAM would go with this BIOS which is the norm with the X58 Chipset and Intel Core i7 processors.

Between the Auto overclocked settings in the BIOS and memory, SANDRA’s memory benchmark test posted 34,654 MB/s (or, 34.6 GB/s) almost consistently. You can see on the stickers that these run stock 8-8-8-24 memory timings. Between those timings and 2000 MHz, you can get a lot of things done sooner than later. That bandwidth makes for extremely quick Photoshop and/or video rendering.

On the non-technical side of the things, the new Viper II memory sinks are pretty dang nice. The original Viper resembled fangs which were great for an intro. The Viper II sinks return to a more contemporary, well manicured fin design.

If you’re looking for something a little less elite to save some cash, check out their new Patriot Gamer Series. The timings are a little higher, but they accomplish the same objective in any video game. The memory comes in Dual and Triple Channel flavors supporting AMD AM2 and AM3, as well as Intel Core 2 and Core i7.

Alright, enough blabbering. It’s time to load up World at War or Left for Dead. This Zotac GTX295 needs heating up!