Patriot’s Viper VP4300 pumps out fast sequential speeds of up to 7.4/6.8 GBps read/write and looks great, making it a top contender for our best SSDs list. Whether you’re loading the latest Call of Duty update or scrubbing 4K or 8K content, Patriot’s Viper VP4300 delivers responsive performance. And with two optional cooling solutions included, it stays cool and looks cool during the most strenuous tasks imaginable.
When PCIe 4.0 SSDs first hit the market, they all had one formula in common: they were powered by a Phison E16 SSD controller which was just a repurposed PCIe 3.0 design modified to work with the PCIe 4.0 interface. . and was then combined with BiCS4 flash. This pairing improved the end-user experience, but lacked the look and feel we now see from new clean-sheet controller designs that use the fast PCIe 4.0 interface, such as the Phison E18 and the controllers with the latest Samsung and WD SSDs.
Patriot’s Viper VP4300 now joins the list of new drives with all-new controllers. This SSD slides its way onto our test bench with a new Rainer controller designed by InnoGrit. This new PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD controller comes paired with a healthy helping of Micron’s 96-Layer TLC flash for fast performance.
The Viper VP4300 also comes with many of the features we expect from a high-end NVMe SSD, and even some of them don’t. Patriot even adds two cooling solutions: a streamlined 4mm thick aluminum heatsink and an ultra-thin graphene label for installations with tighter tolerances, such as in notebook computers. Add to that the high endurance of the VP4300, which even surpasses the Samsung 980 Pro and WD Black SN850, and it seems to be a very competitive drive. Let’s put it to the test.
Specifications:
| Product | Viper VP4300 1TB | Viper VP4300 2TB |
|---|---|---|
| Prices | $254.99 | $499.99 |
| Capacity (User / Raw) | 1024GB / 1024GB | 2048GB / 2048GB |
| form factor | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 |
| Interface / Protocol | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 |
| controller | InnoGrit IG5236 | InnoGrit IG5236 |
| drama | DDR4 | DDR4 |
| Memory | Micron 96L TLC | Micron 96L TLC |
| Sequential Read | 7,400MBps | 7,400MBps |
| Consecutive writing | 6,800MBps | 6,800MBps |
| Random reading | 800,000 IOPS | 800,000 IOPS |
| Random writing | 800,000 IOPS | 800,000 IOPS |
| Security | AES 256-bit encryption | AES 256-bit encryption |
| Endurance (TBW) | 1,000TB | 2,000 TB |
| part number | VP4300-1TBM28H | VP4300-2TBM28H |
| Guarantee | 5 years | 5 years |
Patriot’s Viper VP4300 comes in just two capacities of 1TB and 2TB. Each is capable of delivering speeds of up to 7.4 / 6.8 GBps sequential read/write throughput and supports up to 800,000 random read/write IOPS. The Viper VP4300, priced at $255 for the 1TB model and $500 for the 2TB, launches with high prices surpassing both the WD Black SN850 and Samsung 980 Pro.
However, the Viper VP4300 has very robust endurance. The 1 TB model can handle up to 1,000 TB of writes within the five-year warranty period, while the 2 TB model can handle up to 2,000 TB. The VP4300 has very little factory overprovisioning, about 7% of the SSD’s capacity is dedicated to the task, and it uses InnoGrit’s Proprietary 4K LDPC ECC along with end-to-end data path protection to ensure reliable performance over the lifetime of the device. to guarantee the product.
A closer look
Patriot’s Viper VP4300 comes in an M.2 2280 double-sided form factor and includes two optional thermal solutions (“heatshield options,” as they call it) to choose from. You can either install the slim but aggressive looking aluminum heatsink measuring approximately 72 x 22 x 4mm, or you can use the very thin graphene sticker for installation in smaller spaces, such as notebook computers.
Like the Samsung 980 Pro and WD Black SN850, the Viper VP4300 uses a powerful PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD controller and matching NAND flash. InnoGrit’s IG5236, codenamed Rainer, is a multi-core NVMe 1.4-compatible SSD controller with a DRAM-based architecture.
Two 8Gb SK hynix DDR4 DRAM chips are present on the PCB, one on each side, speeding up FTL accesses to ensure responsive performance. The controller is based on TSMC’s 12nm FinFET process and uses multiple consumer-oriented power management techniques to keep it cool while performing efficiently.
Patriot paired the controller with Crucial’s fast 512Gb 96-Layer TLC flash. The controller communicates with this flash over eight NAND channels at speeds of up to 1,200 MTps, and there are 32 NAND chips distributed across the four NAND packets. The flash features a quad-plane architecture for a high level of parallelism per die, and is also quite robust and efficient due to the unique use of circuits under array (CuA) design and tiling groups.