Published on October 13th, 2013 | by Admin
Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 120GB Review
Summary: The Kingston HyperX 3K SSD wasn't the fast SSD that we have tested but given the cost and the size, it definitely should be taken into consideration when choosing a drive. It should also be noted that the technology used to create this drive does include a cheaper manufacturing process which does mean its overall life will be shorter than some other drives but given the length of time you keep a PC for these days, it's relatively a moot point.
3.3
Almost fast
Company: Kingston
Product: Kingston HyperX 3K SSD
Reviewer: Peter Bourke
Review Date: Oct 2013
As SSD’s have become the new computing standard, the increase of these drives have increased considerably across the globe and Kingston have added the HyperX 3K SSD to the line-up which is one of the faster units available. SSD means solid-state drive or disk that is based on the technology used on memory cards that as a result is faster, smaller and cheaper to run.
Kingston have also changed the production of this drive that as a result makes it cheaper for the end user. However the drawback is that the longevity of the drive may be smaller and the performance has taken a slight hit as well. The drive also boasts read speeds of 555MB/s and write speeds of 510MB/s, however we were unable to mirror these speeds as mentioned by Kingston.
Form Factor |
2.5″ |
Controller | SandForce® SF-2281 |
Components | MLC NAND (3k P/E Cycles) |
Interface | SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s) |
Capacities | 90GB, 120GB, 240GB, 480GB |
Sequential reads |
SATA Rev. 3.090GB / 120GB / 240GB – 555MB/s 480GB – 540MB/s |
Sequential writes |
SATA Rev. 3.090GB / 120GB / 240GB – 510MB/s 480GB – 450MB/s |
Sustained Random 4K R/W |
90GB – 20,000/50,000 IOPS120GB – 20,000/60,000 IOPS 240GB – 40,000/57,000 IOPS 480GB – 60,000/45,000 IOPS |
Max Random 4K R/W |
90GB – 85,000/74,000 IOPS120GB – 85,000/73,000 IOPS 240GB – 86,000/60,000 IOPS 480GB – 75,000/48,000 IOPS |
Power Consumption |
Idle – 0.455 W (TYP)Read – 1.58 W (TYP) Write – 2.11 W (TYP) |
Dimensions | 69.85mm x 100mm x 9.5mm |
Weight | 97g |
Operating temperatures |
0°C ~ 70°C |
Storage temperatures | -40°C ~ 85°C |
Shock Resistance | 1500G |
Vibration | Operating – 20GNon-operating – 2.17G |
MTBF | 1,000,000 Hrs |
Total Bytes Written (TBW) | 90GB: 57.6TB120GB: 76.8TB
240GB: 153.6TB 480GB: 307.2TB |
The review unit we received from Kingston contains everything you need to connect this to your PC, including a 3.5″ internal drive adapter. Once installed in our PC which took under 5 minutes we were ready to test the unit with a fresh installation of Windows taking around 25 seconds to successfully boot.
We tested two benchmarking tools on the SSD unit which included HD Tune and Crystal Benchmark with the results below;
- HD Tune Sequential Read/Write (261.2/194.2
- Crystal DiskMark Read/Write (459.3/183.2)
Although the scores are nothing to scoff at, we could not get faster speeds as indicated by Kingston. However through our real-world tests such as booting up windows, Adobe Photoshop or loading large excels files, the drive did perform slightly better than average for an SSD unit.
Final Thoughts?
The Kingston HyperX 3K SSD wasn’t the fast SSD that we have tested but given the cost and the size, it definitely should be taken into consideration when choosing a drive. It should also be noted that the technology used to create this drive does include a cheaper manufacturing process which does mean its overall life will be shorter than some other drives but given the length of time you keep a PC for these days, it’s relatively a moot point.