It's been a very long time since we last looked at a Patriot NVMe SSD - it was actually the Hellfire from way back in 2017 to be exact. Today, however, we can present our review of Patriot's latest SSD, the VPN100, which sits in the company's Viper Gaming portfolio. Is it up to snuff when compared against the competition? The Viper VPN100 range consists of four capacities, the entry 256GB model, 512GB, 1TB (the drive we are looking at here) and a flagship 2TB drive. The first thing you notice about the drive is the massive, well engineered passive cooler that comes attached to it. At the heart of the VPN100 sits a Phison PS5012-E12 controller. The PS5012-E12 is Phison's second generation PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe controller. The 8-channel controller is built on a TSMC 28nm process and has been designed to work with TLC and QLC NAND technologies with support for Phison’s SmartECC and the latest LDPC (Low-Density Parity Check) error correction as well as AES256, TCG OPAL and TCG Pyrite hardware encryption support. With 8 NAND channels and 32 NAND chip enable lines, the maximum amount of NAND the controller can support is 8TB. Patriot quote Sequential performance figures for the 1TB drive as up to 3,450MB/s for reads and up to 3,000MB/s for writes. The quoted 4K random read/write figures for the 1TB are very impressive at up to 700,000 IOPS for both reads and writes. The 1TB VPN100's endurance is rated at 1665TB TBW and Patriot backs the drive with a 3-year warranty. Physical Specifications: Usable Capacities: 1TB. NAND Components: Toshiba 3D TLC. NAND Controller: Phison PS5012-E12. Cache: 1GB. Interface: PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe 1.3. Form Factor: M.2 2280. Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 10.5mm. Drive Weight: 45g. Firmware Version: ECFM12.1 The VPN100 comes in a compact, well-constructed box. On the front is an image of the drive along with Sequential read and write figures, as well as a sticker showing which capacity drive is in the box. The rear of the box is covered with multi-lingual points about the drive's performance and available capacities. The front of the box is in fact a lid which, when opened, allows the drive to be viewed behind a clear plastic window. The underside of the lid displays more information about the drive and its uses, along with another large image of the drive. The VPN100 1TB drive is a dual sided design. The front of the drive is covered by an impressive looking, large passive heatsink. Sitting under the heatsink is the Phison PS5012-E12 controller along with two 256GB packages of Toshiba 3D TLC NAND (labelled TABBG55AIV) and a 512GB SK hynix H5AN4G8NBJA DDR4 DRAM cache IC. The rear of the PCB is pretty much covered by a white product sticker. Under the product labels are two more 256GB NAND packages and another 512GB SK hynix H5AN4G8NBJA cache chip to give 1GB of total cache. The large aluminium heatsink features six internal vertical fins which, together with an external thermal sensor, ensure that the drive is working at peak performance. Patriot’s SSD management software, the Patriot PCIe Tool Box (v1.2) looks a pretty basic utility compared to some of its competitors offerings but it really does offer all you really need to keep an eye on your drive. It shows information on firmware version, serial number, total capacity, endurance, power-on time, if TRIM is enabled ,and SMART data. It also allows the secure erase of the drive. The one thing missing from the current version (v1.2) is an option to update the drive's firmware. For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system. This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits. Main system: Intel Core i7-7700K with 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, Sapphire R9 390 Nitro and an Asus Prime Z270-A motherboard. Other drives Corsair Force MP500 480GB Corsair Force MP510 960GB Crucial P1 1TB Intel Optane SSD900P 480GB Intel Optane SSD905P 480GB Intel SSD760p 512GB Kingston A1000 480GB Plextor M9Pe(Y) 512GB Plextor M8PeG 512GB PNY CS2030 240GB Samsung SSD970 EVO 2TB Samsung SSD970 PRO 1TB Samsung SSD960 PRO 2TB Samsung SSD960 EVO 1TB Samsung SSD960 EVO Plus 1TB Toshiba XG6 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 512GB Western Digital Black SN750 1TB Western Digital Black NVMe 1TB Western Digital Black PCIe 512GB Software: Atto Disk Benchmark 3.5. CrystalMark 6.0. AS SSD 2.0. IOMeter. Futuremark PC Mark 8. All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behaviour query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active. CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using v6.0. Looking at the two sets of benchmark screens it appears that the Phison PS5012-E12 controller in the Viper VPN100 is much more efficient when reading compressible data at lower queue depths. The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. We are using version 3.5 for our NVMe disk tests. Patriot quotes Sequential performance figures for the 1TB VPN100 as up to 3,450MB/s for reads and up to 3,000MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO benchmark we could confirm both figures, with the review drive producing a read score of 3,414MB/s and 3,064MB/s for writes. AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures. In the more demanding AS-SSD benchmark, the drive scored well when it came to read performance, with its score of 2155 putting it third on our list. However, the write score of 2229 comes up a bit short compared to other drives at the top of the results chart. IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a Solid State Drive, so our results will sometimes differ from the manufacturer’s quoted ratings. We do test all drives in exactly the same way, so the results are directly comparable. We test 128KB Sequential read and write and random read and write 4k tests. The test setup’s for the tests are listed below. Each is run five times. 128KB Sequential Read / Write. Transfer Request Size: 128KB Span: 8GB Thread(s): 1, Outstanding I/O: 1-32 Test Run: 20 minutes per test 4K Sustained Random Read / Write. Transfer Request Size: 4KB Span: 80GB Thread(s): 4, Outstanding I/O: 1-32 Test Run: 20 minutes per test 4K Random 70/30 mix Read/Write. Transfer Request Size: 4KB Span: 80GB Reads: 70% Writes: 30% Thread(s): 4 Outstanding I/O: 2 – 32 Test Run: 20 minutes. 128KB Sustained Sequential Performance. In our 128KB Sequential testing we could confirm the official figures of up to 3,450MB/s for reads and up to 3,000MB/s for writes, with the review drive producing a read figure of 3,477.71MB/s and writes of 3,084.92 MB/s. 128KB Sustained Sequential Read Performance Compared. Patriot's Viper VPN100 shows solid Sequential read performance throughout the tested queue depths, but especially at a QD of 32. 128KB Sustained Sequential Write Performance Compared. If anything the Sequential write performance of the drive is even stronger than the reads, particularly at QDs 2 and 32, where it sits just below Samsung's SSD970 EVO Plus at the top of the charts. 4K Random Read v QD Performance. The Patriot Viper VPN100 produced a very consistent performance curve in our 4K random read test, topping out at 363,188 IOPS at a queue depth of 32. 4K Random Read Performance Compared. The drive sits around mid table in our results charts at all the queue depths tested. 4K Random Write v QD Performance. In our 4K random write test, the drive peaked at the QD8 mark at 189,457 IOPS before falling back to finish the test at 183,738 IOPS at a QD of 32. 4K Random Write Performance Compared. The drive's performance at QD1 gives it the highest position in any of the 4K random write charts - which is no bad thing as it's at this queue depth most of the everyday workloads occurs. 4K 70/30 Mixed Performance. The 1TB Viper VPN100 displays strong, consistent performance in our mixed 70/30 read/write test topping out at 220,012 IOPS (909.36MB/s) at a queue depth of 32. In our throughput test, the drive peaked at 2,787.15MB/s, a fair way short of the maximum official 3,450MB/s - but this peak did occur at the end of the test. The drive's performance was still climbing as the test finished. When it came to the write throughput test, the VPN100 performed very well, in fact it just scrapes past the Corsair Force MP510 (which also uses the Phison PS5012-E12 controller) to take top spot on the chart. Futuremark’s PCMark 8 is a very good all round system benchmark but it’s Storage Consistency Test takes it to whole new level when testing SSD drives. It runs through four phases; Preconditioning, Degradation, Steady State, Recovery and finally Clean Up. During the Degradation, Steady State and Recovery phases it runs performance tests using the 10 software programs that form the backbone of PCMark 8; Adobe After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop Heavy and Photoshop Light, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Battlefield 3 and World of Warcraft. With some 18 phases of testing, this test can take many hours to run. Preconditioning The drive is written sequentially through up to the reported capacity with random data, write size of 256 × 512 = 131,072 bytes. This is done twice. Degradation Run writes of random size between 8 × 512 and 2048 × 512 bytes on random offsets for 10 minutes. It then runs a performance test. These two actions are then repeated 8 times and on each pass the duration of random writes is increased by 5 minutes. Steady State Run writes of random size between 8 × 512 and 2048 × 512 bytes on random offsets for final duration achieved in degradation phase. A performance test is then run. These actions are then re-run five times. Recovery The drive is idled for 5 minutes. Then a performance test is run. These actions are then repeated five times. Clean Up The drive is written through sequentially up to the reported capacity with zero data, write size of 256 × 512 = 131,072 bytes. Overall the Patriot Viper VPN100 takes PCMark8's Consistency test in its stride. There is a dip in bandwidth during the last two Steady State phases but it recovers well. PCMark 8’s Consistency Test provides a huge amount of performance data, so here we’ve looked a little closer at how the Viper VPN-100 performs in each of the benchmarks test suites. Adobe Creative Cloud In the Adobe CC phase of the test it's normally the Photoshop Heavy trace that causes most stress to a drive, but the Viper VPN100 deals with it very well. The most erratic test is the Indesign one. The drive also recovers pretty well from the stress of this test suite. Microsoft Office There's a huge drop in bandwidth with the Microsoft Office Word trace at the fourth Steady State stage, and another but less dramatic drop in the fourth Recovery run, but the drive recovers from both very quickly. There's also a small drop in the Excel test run at the fifth Steady State phase. Casual Gaming The Viper VPN100 struggles with the World Of Warcraft trace but seems to wake up during the recovery phase of that test trace, as the bandwidth rockets up from the fifth Steady State phase to the first Recovery phase, although the performance pans out afterwards. Just like the Consistency test, PCMark 8’s Standard Storage test also saves a large amount of performance data. The default test runs through the test suite of 10 applications three times. Here we show the total bandwidth performance for each of the individual test suites for the third and final benchmark run. The drive handles the PCMark 8 Standard Storage Test without any problems. In the third and final pass of the test, the best results come from both the Adobe Photoshop traces with the Photoshop Heavy trace leading the way with a bandwidth figure of 1,528MB/s, followed by the Photoshop Light trace with 1,378MB/s. The drive produces a very respectable 645.68MB/s bandwidth figure for the whole of the PCMark 8 Standard Storage test. For the long term performance stability test, we set the drive up to run a 20-minute 4K random test with a 30% write, 70% read split, at a Queue Depth of 256 over the entire disk. The Viper VPN-100 1TB drive averaged 87,296 IOPS for the test with a performance stability of 65.46%. To test real life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO. We use the following folder/file types: 100GB data file. 60GB iso image. 60GB Steam folder – 29,521 files. 50GB File folder – 28,523 files. 12GB Movie folder – 24 files (mix of Blu-ray and 4K files). 10GB Photo folder – 621 files (mix of png, raw and jpeg images). 10GB Audio folder – 1,483 files (mix of mp3 and .flac files). 5GB (1.5bn pixel) photo. The Viper VPN100 handled our real life file transfers without any problems at all. We also tested the transfer speeds of the same files but moving them to and from another NVMe drive, in this case a 512GB Toshiba OCZ RD400. The drive handles large file sizes much more efficiently than the smaller bity files found in the 60GB Steam, 50GB file and 10GB Audio folders. Patriot's Viper VPN100 drives were first seen being demonstrated at CES 2018 so they have taken a while to get to market. The drive is, at the time of writing this review, the only SSD in Patriot's Viper Gaming brand product portfolio, which contains an extensive range of memory modules plus keyboards, mice, headsets and other accessories. The one thing you can't ignore about the drive is the big old heatsink it uses which gives the drive a height of 10.5mm, which may not sound much but it pretty much rules out installation in a notebook. You may even need to check the clearance around the PCIe x16 slots just to make sure it won't obstruct any graphics card when it's in place. The heatsink is well constructed from aluminium, however, with six vertical fins inside it to help dissipate the heat generated when the card is being pushed hard. In addition to the standard internal heat sensor, Patriot has fitted an external sensor as well, to allow the drive to perform at its best. It's also a very quick drive, Patriot quotes Sequential performance figures for the 1TB model as up to 3,450MB/s for reads and up to 3,000MB/s for writes. We could confirm these figures with the ATTO benchmark and our own Sequential tests. Testing the drive with ATTO produced read score of 3,414MB/s and 3,064MB/s for writes, while our other tests produced figures of 3,477.71MB/s and 3,084.92 MB/s for reads and writes respectively. Random performance is quoted as up to 700,000 IOPS for both reads and writes. We couldn't match those figures with our standard tests, the best read score we got was 363,188 IOPS and 183,738 IOPS for writes using 4-threads. We did, however, do a quick test with 8-threads and got a read score of 644,176 IOPS and 584,831 IOPS for writes. The VPN100 1TB is available from Amazon UK for £149.99 HERE. Pros Overall performance. Endurance rating. Well engineered heatsink. Cons Heatsink size may limit some installations. KitGuru says: We haven't seen a Patriot drive for quite some time, but the new Viper VPN100 puts the company back in the thick of things as it's a drive with a very good all-round performance.
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