The best budget DDR4 kit Patriot Viper Elite 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400MHz

With more than 30 years of experience, Patriot has become well known for creating high performance, affordable RAM. The company has recently ventured into the PC gaming peripheral space, but they're still making some killer memory. We've had some great results with their DDR3 kits in the past and the Viper Elite Series DDR4 is no exception.

The Patriot Viper Elite 8GB may not be the cheapest DDR4 memory bundle you can find, but in our opinion it holds great value when you're on a budget. This dual-channel kit is priced lower than competitors like the HyperX Fury and Corsair Vengeance LPX while also offering similar levels of performance. And unlike cheaper kits, the Viper Elite features decent heatsinks and overclockability.

For those looking to take full advantage of what the Viper Elite has to offer, some simple overclocking pushes its performance to match that of much more expensive options for DDR4 RAM. One of the awesome things about DDR4 is that it generally operates at 1.2V (down from 1.5V for DDR3). This means even the slightest voltage increases can give you quite a bit more power while still remaining cooler than DDR3.

With some small tweaks made in the BIOS, manual overclocking of the Viper Elite kit will allow you to reach 2800MHz and 3000MHz speeds with ease. With all of our overclocking tests, we found Patriot's memory to be quite resilient and stable at nearly every level. With a less conservative overclock, 3200MHz and higher speeds can also be easily achieved.

Seeing as how a 3200MHz 8GB kit can cost nearly 50 percent more, we found this kit to be our clear winner for value. If you're currently running a DDR3 system with enough RAM capacity and speed, DDR4 won't make too much sense unless you're hoping to overhaul your whole PC. But with Kaby and Coffee Lake processors readily available, now is the perfect time to switch as Z170 motherboard and Skylake processor prices are at an all-time low.