Patriot Viper VP4300 2TB Gen4 Solid State Drive Overview
The Patriot Viper is your typical M.2 2280 or 80mm M.2 drive. It has an all black PCB and unlike most M.2 drives we’ve reviewed this drive does not have a sticker on its main side. This is because Patriot figures you are going to use either the graphene heatshield or the heatsink on this side of the drive.
Taking a look at the components on the main side of the drive first we have the controller which is the InnoGrit IG5236 8-channel Gen4 x4 controller. This 8-channel controller can handle MLC, TLC, or QLC NAND up to 8TB. Currently Patriot is offering this drive in 1TB and 2TB versions. Next to the controller is one of the two DDR4 cache chips.
There are two NAND chips on the main side of the drive, these are 512Gb 96-layer 3D TLC NAND chips.
Flipping over to the back we do have the typical sticker we are used to seeing on the main side of most M.2 drives. This is a double-sided drive we have have a second DDR4 cache chip and two more NAND packaged on the backside of the drive.
Patriot provides both an aluminum heatsink and a graphene heatshield. The graphene heatshield is to be used if you plan on using the M.2 heatsinks on your motherboard, Patriot does caution that this is a one-time use heatshield meaning that once you apply it, you can’t take it off. I decided to install the larger heatsink. It has thermal tape on it and it was easy enough to line up and install on the main side of the drive.