Overall and Final Verdict
With most new builds supporting PCIe 4.0 M.2 drives not to mention consoles like the PS5 as well it has been exciting to see everyone update their product lineups to include 4.0 drives. Patriot had the P400 that I previously took a look at and under their gaming brand Viper Gaming they did have the VP4300 as well but this is the first drive from Viper Gaming that also has the same heatsink and RGB lighting that Viper had with their VPR100. They paired it up with an Innogrit controller and currently they have 512GB and 1TB options but the packaging and the drive itself shows that a 2TB capacity option is in the works as well. The lighting on the Viper Gaming VPR400 looks great but I do know that not everyone is going to care about lighting. I think a bigger issue however is that with so many motherboards now using integrated M.2 coolers there is a good possibility that lighting might not be visible and you may even have to remove integrated heatsinks like the one on the VPR400. Thankfully if that ends up being the case the heatsink was easy to remove. But if you don’t have a motherboard M.2 cooler having the heatsink does help absorb some of the heat and even without the lighting, the black finish looks great.
As for performance the Viper Gaming VPR400 did well in most of our tests but is a little late to the party now with some of the highest-end drives getting up into the 7000-8000 range. The VPR400 did outperform its advertised performance by a surprising amount and overall it was often in the middle of the pack with the other PCIe 4.0 drives that I tested. It did struggle in the AS SSD file copy tests and while overall it did well in our real-world file transfer tests I did have a few issues with it seemingly overheating or hiccupping and dropping in performance for a second and sometimes longer.
Overall the Viper Gaming VPR400 falls into a relatively specific nitch with you needing to have a setup where you can even see the M.2 drive and also needing the consumer to love RGB lighting to the point that every component needs it. But for that nitch, the Viper Gaming VPR400 is the only option out there. This is the first PCIe 4.0 drive with RGB. It is listed at $134.99 for the 1TB model that I tested which is in line with heatsinked 4.0 M.2 drives without the lighting and at one point I saw the Viper Gaming VPR400 1TB selling for $99.99 which would be a steal I don’t know if that was a mistake though. Even if you don’t want the lighting but need a heatsink if this pricing stays it could still be a good option but I do hope that we still see a Viper Gaming SSD soon that reaches that 6000-8000 MB/s range soon.
Live Pricing: HERE
