Specifications and Closer Look
FEATURES:
• Phison E12 Controller
• 2280 M.2 PCIe Gen3 x 4, NVMe 1.3
• DRAM Cache: 512MB
• Built-in Thermal sensor
• Heatshield design
• Extreme high performance
• Operating Temperature – 0° ~ 70°C
• MTBF: 2,000,000 hours
• 4K Aligned Random Read: up to 300K IOPs / 4K Aligned Random Write: up to 100K IOPs
• Sequential Read (ATTO): up to 3,100MB/s / Sequential Write (ATTO): up to 2,200MB/S
• Sequential Read (CDM): up to 3,300MB/s / Sequential Write (CDM): up to 2,200MB/s
• O/S Supported: Windows® 7/8.0/8.1/10
VIPER VPN100 SPECIFICATIONS:
| Series | VPN100 | VPN100 | VPN100 | VPN100 |
| Model | VPN100-256GM28H | VPN100-512GM28H | VPN100-1TBM28H | VPN100-2TBM28H |
| Form factor | M.2 NVMe | M.2 NVMe | M.2 NVMe | M.2 NVMe |
| Interface | PCIe Gen 3 x4 | PCIe Gen 3 x4 | PCIe Gen 3 x4 | PCIe Gen 3 x4 |
| Physical Capacity | 256GB | 512GB | 1TB | 2TB |
| Format Capacity (7% OP) | 238GB | 476GB | 953GB | 1.86TB |
| Controller | Phison E12 | Phison E12 | Phison E12 | Phison E12 |
| DRAM Cache | 512MB | 512MB | 1GB | 1GB |
| NAND Flash | 3D TLC | 3D TLC | 3D TLC | 3D TLC |
| NAND Brand | Toshiba | Toshiba | Toshiba | Toshiba |
| Max SEQ Read(ATTO) | 3000MB/s | 3100MB/s | (3,450MB) | 3100MB/s |
| Max SEQ Write(ATTO) | 1000MB/s | 2200MB/s | 3000MB/s | 3000MB/s |
| Max 4K Read(IOPS) | 230K | 300K | 600K | 500K |
| Max 4K Write(IOPS) | 100K | 200K | 600K | 500K |
| TBW | 380TB | 800TB | 1665TB | 3115TB |
| Operating Temperature | 0-70°C | 0-70°C | 0-70°C | 0-70°C |
| Unit Weight | 25g | 25g | 25g | 25g |
| Heatshield | Black | Black | Black | Black |
| Warranty | 3y | 3y | 3y | 3y |
Patriot is not providing additional software and it’s not really required. Windows is covering the driver part while firmware can handle everything else. Below is a screenshot from a popular CrystalDiskInfo. Here in 8.0.0. version. As we can see, there are no issues with our drive. Health status is showing 100% and the idle temperature is 37°C. I will only add that the temperature under load was around 60°C. It’s below specified maximum and far from a throttling point.
Patriot Viper VPN100 arrived in a retail package. The package is a small box but the SSD is also small so all seems right. Exterior tells us about everything we need to know about the drive so, besides capacity, we can read about the key features, declared performance or find info about the support.
The only thing which is a bit misleading is the expected bandwidth. I actually had to check it twice when I started performance tests as somehow I was sure that the drive supposed to reach 3000MB/s write while I was constantly achieving about 2200MB/s. In fact, the 512GB version is specified to offer up to 3100MB/s read and 2200MB/s write bandwidth. The fastest is the 1TB version which can make up to 3450MB/s read and 3000MB/s write.
The drive is covered by three-year warranty what isn’t really long considering that competition already offers five years or more for their top SSD series. On the other hand, the typical life of a home PC is about three years. The VPN100 has higher endurance than most competitive drives. For the 512GB capacity, expected is at least 800TB written. It’s more than most users can write in five years. Higher capacities have even higher endurance.
Patriot used Toshiba 3D TLC NAND and the latest Phison E12 controller. I don’t think any other brand used this combination. In our tests, you will find out it works great. Phison controllers were also used in previous top performing Patriot drives like the Hellfire.
One of the unique features is a heatsink which we can find on some competitive M.2 drives but in this case, it’s much larger and has additional fins which improve thermal dissipation. There is also an external thermal sensor which protects our drive and helps to keep it cool.
