As we come together and lament OCZ's bankruptcy in late November and its purchase by Toshiba earlier this month, let's take a moment to remember how such a young technology company has come to revolutionize the computer market in the last decade or so. I vividly recall buying a pair of Corsair Value Select PC3200 2x512MB dual channel kit in 2004 for a rock bottom price of $206.98, simply because I could not afford anything better. What I really wanted, of course, were the OCZ EL Platinum 2x1GB, but for $400 at that time, it was a little too much money for someone who was in Grade 9. So why were OCZ RAM so popular? Obviously, they were fast -- but in my personal opinion, it was really because they first ones to slap a heatspreader on practically every model they sold. Sure, the heatspreaders really didn't do anything performance-wise, but who cares? This was a resounding success, because the company sold tons of memory kits, and everyone else had no choice but to follow suit. Over the years, OCZ went pretty crazy with their heatsink designs, like the copper heatpipe enabled Reaper HPC, the ReaperX HPC with a even more intense setup, and who could forget the water cooling capable OCZ Flex XLC? Unfortunately, all these crazy heatspreader designs posed a major issue with the same people who also own large CPU heatsinks. It was not until recently that companies finally came to their senses, and decided to strike a balance between marketing and practicality by implementing low profile heatspreaders with their RAM. Today, we will take a look at the Patriot Viper 3 Low Profile PC3-17000 4x8GB. As its name suggests, it carries a low profile heatspreader. However, unlike the name it suggests, it is not modest in speed and capacity. Is this time kit that will rock you Christmas tree next week? Read on to find out!