Final Thoughts
So Patriot is back with a Gen4 version of their very popular Viper VPR100 drive. This is one of the few RGB M.2 solutions that does the RGB right in my opinion. It is very subtle, yet will definitely catch someone’s attention. I also like it that you can easily control the RGB lighting on the drive either with your motherboard’s RGB software or the Viper Gaming software. Also for those worried about the drive being upside down on their motherboard you can easily remove the heatsink and flip it over.
When it comes to speeds this drive is definitely not the fastest Gen4 drive out there. It has advertised speeds of 4600 MB/s read and 4400 MB/s write. In CrystalDisk mark we saw read speeds of 5151.02 MB/s and write speeds of 4768.67 MB/s. Similarly in ATTO Disk Benchmark read speeds were around 4800 MB/s and write speeds were around 4480 MB/s. So the drive definitely performed up to specifications, but like I said these speeds are not the fastest. The speeds are very similar to first generation Gen4 drives, which would average around 5000 MB/s, while the second generation drives we are seeing now are getting anywhere from 6500 MB/s to 7000 MB/s.
Another thing to consider is the aesthetic of your motherboard. A lot has changed since 2020 in terms of motherboard design and in most cases the entire bottom-half of our motherboards are covered in heatsinks. Removing one of those could totally mess up the look of your motherboard. Or you have a single heatsink that covers two M.2 slots. The empty slot is going to look a bit odd unless you are populating both slots with a VPR400. That’s not to say that this drive looks excellent and I would love to have all of my M.2 slots outfitted with these drives!
When it comes to price Patriot is selling the 1TB version of the drive for $127.99, which is actually more expensive than Patriot’s own Viper VP4300 which has speeds around 7000 MB/s. While the RGB lighting on the drive is very cool I think Patriot needs to be more aggressive on the price. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Patriot Viper VPR400 RGB Gen4 NVMe Solid State Drive an 8 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– RGB lighting on an M.2 done right!
– Performance exceeds advertised speeds
– Compatible with motherboard RGB software
– Can easily flip the heatsink over
Cons:
– Price
– Faster Gen4 drives out there
