Patriot Viper VP4100 Gen4 1TB SSD Review
Patriot Viper VP4100 – Phison E16 with Firmware v13.0
The Patriot Viper VP4100 used the Phison E16 controller and the PCIe Gen 4.0 interface to deliver sequential performance of up to 5,000MB/s Read and 4,400MB/s Write. This is about 10 times faster than SATA SSDs and up to 50 times faster than traditional HDDs. If you haven’t updated your storage drive in a number of years the move to an M.2 NVMe Gen4 drive will be one that you’ll likely notice!
This drive came out in Q3 2019, so we were a little shocked that Patriot sent over a sample this late in the game. We didn’t know how to it in with our content as the Phison E18 controller is now on the market and is the successor to the E16 controller that this drive uses. Then we figured out that Phison recently released firmware v13.0 for the E16 controller and we’ve not tested that yet. The last time we tested a drive based on the Phison E16 development board was the Corsair MP600 earlier this year and it was tested with firmware v11.3.
Phison doesn’t release details on what has changed in their firmware and neither do any of their customers, so this article will show how a Phison E16 based drive does with firmware v13.0!
| Product | VP4100 500GB | VP4100 1TB | Viper VP4100 2TB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $104.99 (Amazon) | $204.99 (Amazon) | $399.99 (Amazon) |
| Price Per GB | $0.20 | $0.20 | $0.20 |
| Capacity | 500GB | 1000GB | 2000GB |
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 |
| Interface / Protocol | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.3 | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.3 | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.3 |
| Controller | Phison PS5016-E16 | Phison PS5016-E16 | Phison PS5016-E16 |
| DRAM | 512MB DDR4 | 1GB DDR4 | 2GB DDR4 |
| NAND Flash | KIOXIA 96L TLC | KIOXIA 96L TLC | KIOXIA 96L TLC |
| Sequential Read | 5,000 MB/s | 5,000 MB/s | 5,000 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 2,500 MB/s | 4,200 MB/s | 4,400 MB/s |
| Random Read | 400,000 IOPS | 800,000 IOPS | 800,000 IOPS |
| Random Write | 550,000 IOPS | 800,000 IOPS | 800,000 IOPS |
| Endurance (TBW) | 850 TBW | 1800 TBW | 3600 TBW |
| Part Number | VP4100-500GM28H | VP4100-1TBM28H | VP4100-2TBM28H |
| Warranty | 5-Years | 5-Years | 5-Years |
As you can see from the table that we put together above the performance of the Rocket 4 Plus series does slightly differ depending on the capacity of the drive that you get. All are backed by a 5-year warranty if you register the drive with Sabrent within 90-days of purchase. If you don’t register the drive you’ll only have a 1-year warranty.
Patriot sent us Viper VP4100 1TB drive to review that is sold under part number VP4100-1TBM28H and is a M.2 2280 form factor SSD.
The full color packaging is nice and goes into details about the drives key features. The drive packaging says that it comes with a 5-year warranty and the product sheets show that it has a 3-year warranty, so we asked Patriot which one was correct. They confirmed that the drive has a 5-year warranty.
Patriot went with a nice looking black heatsink that helps keep this PCIe Gen4 SSD cool when it is under load. We dont recommend removing the heatsink, as the adhesive on the thermal tape is very strong and you could rip components off the blue PCB. Yes, they are using the blue reference design PCB from Phison.
On the back of the drive is a label that shows the full model number, serial number and place of manufacture.
In the image above you can get a view of the heatsink on the Patriot Viper Vp4100 from the side. It features three raised fins and three mostly enclosed tubes to help dissipate the heat generated by the controller and TLC NAND Flash.
With the purchase of the Patriot Viper Vp4100 you also get access to the Patriot PCIe ToolBox. The Patriot PCIe ToolBox is a tool that allows you to review certain aspects of your drive, from checking drives health to running secure erase or even upgrading drive firmware if one is available. The screenshot above is of Patriot PCIe ToolBox v1.7 as that was the most recent build when we tested the drive.
We tried to update the firmware from EGFMv13.0 to something newer, but the toolbox let us know that the drive was shipped to us with the latest version on it.
Let’s take a look at the test system and then dive into the performance tests to see how the Patriot Viper Vp4100 performs!