The Patriot DDR3 DIMMs come with the familiar look of front and back side aluminum heat sinks with small fins. The product sticker does not only hold the model number, but also some technical details such as the rated memory speed, voltage and timing settings. Patriot does not (yet) support Intel's Extreme Memory Profile.

Watch the model numbers carefully: We received model PDC32G1600LLK, which stands for DDR3-1600 RAM for low latencies of CL7-7-7-18 timings, while the ELK version only supports CL9-9-9-24 settings and hence works a bit slower. Our low latency memory could be operated at the default 1.8 V voltage at up to DDR3-1700 speed. Once we wanted more performance, we had to increase the voltage to 2.0 V. Any further voltage increase did not result in further clock speed gains.

Patriot's Viper series is currently available at up to DDR3-1866 speeds and CL8-8-8-24 timings. Different from the regular DIMMs, Viper is equipped with a more sophisticated heat sink, which, according to the Patriot website, is composited of aluminum and copper.