Patriot Viper Gaming has launched a new PCIe M.2 SSD in the high-performance Viper VPN100. The Viper drives will start at 256 GB capacities up to a large 2 TB. The VPN100 uses the latest controller from Phison to reach speeds of 3,450/3,000 MB/s reads and writes (1 TB SKU), making it one of the fastest PCIe M.2 SSDs around. The VPN100 targets hardcore gamers, PC enthusiasts, content creators and video rendering professionals.
As is typical with SSDs, drive performance will vary depending on capacity. In this case, the 256 GB and 512 GB drives take a hit in write performance and IOPS compared to the two larger capacities. To that end, the 1 TB drive is the fastest Viper SSD in the lineup (details in the table below).
In order to maintain these speeds over longer periods of time, the VPN100 comes with a built-in aluminum heat spreader with six fins, which should reduce the chance of overheating and performance drops due to thermal limitations. Though the heatsink looks pretty big, it will still fit below a graphics cards in the PCIe slot. The heatsink also has an external built-in thermal sensor for monitoring the drive when it is in the system.
The Viper’s Phison E12 controller was announced last year (PS5012-E12) and uses the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and supports NVMe 1.3. It has eight NAND channels along with 32 NAND chip-enabled lines supporting 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND along with DDR4 or DDR3L DRAM support. The VPN100 uses 512MB DRAM cache. The E12 controller supports LDPC and Strong ECC error correction.
Patriot VPN100 PCIe-NVMe SSD Specs and Price
| Product | 256 GB | 512 GB | 1 TB | 2 TB |
| Controller | Phison E12 | |||
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x4 / NVMe | |||
| Sequential Read | 3,000 MB/s | 3,100 MB/s | 3,450 MB/s | 3,100 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 1,000 MB/s | 2,200 MB/s | 3,000 MB/s | 3,000 MB/s |
| 4K Random Read | 250,000 IOPS | 300,000 IOPS | 600,000 IOPS | 500,000 IOPS |
| 4K Random Write | 100,000 IOPS | 100,000 IOPS | 600,000 IOPS | 500,000 IOPS |
| Endurance | N/A | |||
| MTTF (Mean Time To Failure - Hours) | 2,000,000 | |||
| DEVSLP (mW) | N/A | |||
| Price (MSRP) | $79.99 | $137.99 | $244.99 | $499.99 |
Patriot says the VPN100 is engineered with advanced wear leveling for maximum performance and endurance with a MTBF of 2,000,000 hours and comes with a 3-year warranty. Pricing for the drives are $79.99, $137.99, $244.99 and $499.99 for the 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB models, respectively. The units are available now but are sold out at the Patriot website. You can, however, pick them up from other retailers, like Newegg.
