When solid state drives first made their push in to the mainstream, the average consumer on a modest budget had to settle for a low capacity unit that most likely offered so-so transfer rates. Things have changed lately, with bigger and faster drives getting priced well within reach of those with plenty of other things to spend their hard earned cash on.
Kingston has been one of the more prominent brands in the SSD market, in part because they offer a diverse line up of SSDs to cover the full spectrum of capacity, performance, and budgets.
The item up for review today, Kingston's HyperX 3K 240GB solid state drive, is a perfect example of how high performance and high capacity are achievable without an astronomically high price. If you follow any of the bargain shopping websites you may have seen deals on this drive for as low about $180 US (thanks in part to a mail in rebate). If that is still too much money, the 120GB version was recently around $90 and the 90GB version was about $70 after rebates. These are impressive prices for SSDs of these capacities, even before you consider the fact that the specifications rate this drive up to 555MB/s for sequential reads and 510MB/s for sequential writes.
Before taking a closer look at the drive provided for review, let's take a look at some published information on it, as taken from
the official product page on the Kingston website.
Features:
» SandForce controller technology
» High-speed SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s) transfer speeds
» Advanced Wear-Leveling Technology
» User-Configurable Over Provisioning
» Performance â€" incredible speeds for enhanced productivity
» Reliable â€" much less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
» Shock-Proof â€" dropping your notebook no longer means losing your data
» Cool & Quiet â€" runs silent and with no moving mechanical parts to generate heat
» Innovative â€" uses NAND Flash memory components
» Supports TRIM â€" enhances device wear leveling by eliminating merge operation for
all deleted data blocks
» Supports S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology)
» Guaranteed â€" three-year Kingston® warranty, 24/7 tech support
Specification:
» Capacity: 240GB
» Sequential Reads: SATA Rev. 3.0 â€" 555MB/s
» Sequential Writes: SATA Rev. 3.0 â€" 510MB/s
» Form factor: 2.5"
» Dimensions: 69.85 x 100 x 9.5mm
» Operating temperature: 0°C ~ 70°C
» Storage temperature: -40°C ~ 85°C
» Vibration operating: 2.17G
» Vibration non-operating: 20G
» MTBF: 1,000,000 hrs
» Total Bytes Written (TBW): 153.6TB (based on 140GB per day for 3 years)
» Interface: SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s)
» Controller: 2nd generation SandForce® controller SF-2281
» Components: Intel® 25nm compute-quality MLC NAND (3k P/E cycles)
» Warranty/support: three-year warranty with free support
» Sustained random 4k read/write: 40,000/57,000 IOPS
» Max. random 4K read/write: 86,000/60,000 IOPS
» PCMARK® Vantage HDD Suite score2: 60,000
» SMART tools: Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology to ensure a healthy drive
» Power consumption: 0.455 W (TYP) idle / 1.6 W (TYP) read / 2.05 W (TYP) write
This drive is marketed toward the fairly budget conscious computing enthusiast who wants solid performance without breaking the bank. Sporting the latest Sandforce SF-2281 controller and 25nm Intel MLC NAND flash memory chips, it is well equipped to perform at a high level.
