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Patriot Viper VPN100 M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD Review

SSDs aren’t all equal and Patriot surely proves that with their VPN100 M.2 NVMe SSD. Today I’m taking exactly this drive with a 1TB capacity and put it under the microscope to check how well it performs.

Patriot Viper VPN100

Just by looking at the Viper VPN, you know that this isn’t your everyday SSD. Well, within it is – but it sure doesn’t look like it. The huge heatsink which is placed on top of the drive gives it a height of 105mm. While that’s large, it sure looks good.

The Viper VPN100 is built with a Phison E12 controller, 3D TLC NAND, and DRAM cache of 512MB on the 1TB model. Besides this 1TB drive, there’s also 256GB, 500GB, and a 2TB versions to chose from.

Naturally, the drive is based on the PCIe Gen3 x4 and comes with NVMe 1.3 support. Aside from the heatsink, it’s a standard 2280 M.2 module which will slot right into your motherboard.

Performance and Endurance

Patriot’s Viper VPN100 isn’t just a drive that looks great, it promises a performance to match. It is rated for sequential performance of up to 3450MB/s when reading and 3000MB/s when writing. The random performance is at least as impressive with figures of 600K IOPS for both reading and writing 4K data.

Endurance is at least as important as performance. After all, you don’t want your drive to stop working before you replace it with something better. Patriot rates the drive with a Mean Time Before Failure of 2 million hours and it has a TBW rating up to 3200TB. Last but not least, you get a 3-year warranty.

Heatsink, Do We Need It?

The amount of data which is pushed through a drive with this kind of performance results in a lot heat generation from the controller. To prevent damage, they feature thermal throttling which will kick in if it runs above safe temperatures. That’s a great feature as it prevents damage to the drive, but it’s also an annoying feature as you might lose speed when you need it the most. That’s why more and more drives come with built-in heatsink.

While I’ve seen and tested other M.2 drives with a heatsink, I think this is the largest I’ve seen so far. And I don’t mind, it isn’t in the way. The heatsink on the Viper VPN100 is made of aluminium and features 6 thermal fins for excellent thermal dissipation.

While all drives have an internal temperature sensor, the VPN100 also features an external sensor. This allows the drive to find the perfect balance between performance and heat.