Kingston's HyperX SandForce SSD

[onethreehill]

Kingston is a pretty big player in the SSD space but mostly on the mainstream/value end of the spectrum. With a fairly conservative strategy we haven't seen Kingston be competitive with higher end drives since the release of the X25-M. That's all about to change now that Kingston is officially a SandForce partner.

The Kingston HyperX SSD uses Intel 25nm NAND and a SF-2281 controller, making it very similar to a Vertex 3 (it's unclear if it'll have the same performance-limited firmware as the OWC drive we tested).

The drive will come with a 3-year warranty and be available in 120GB and 240GB capacities.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4390/k...-sandforce-ssd

Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Reviews
http://www.kitguru.net/components/ss...gb-ssd-review/
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/s...b_ssd_review/1
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/422...iew/index.html

Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD Review
http://www.ocaholic.ch/xoops/html/mo...php?itemid=554

[Gilgamesh]

Specification:

seq. Read / Write
525/480 MB/s


120 GB
4K Random Read
Burst: 95.000 IOPS
Sustained: 20.000 IOPS

4K Random Write
Burst: 70.000 IOPS
Sustained: 60.000 IOPS

240 GB
4K Random Read
Burst: 95.000 IOPS
Sustained: 40.000 IOPS

4K Random Write
Burst: 60.000 IOPS
Sustained: 60.000 IOPS

[onethreehill]

Kingston HyperX SandForce SSD is available @newegg

Kingston HyperX SH100S3/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III SSD (Stand-alone Drive) @$269.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820139599

Kingston HyperX SH100S3B/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III SSD (HyperX Upgrade Kit) @$299.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820139601

Kingston HyperX SH100S3/240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III SSD (Stand-alone Drive) @$499.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820139600

Kingston HyperX SH100S3B/240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III SSD (HyperX Upgrade Kit) @$549.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820139602

[onethreehill]

Datasheet

Kingston's HyperX® SSD combines the latest SandForce® controller technology with premium NAND Flash, reducing load times while increasing performance and endurance. It provides high-speed SATA Rev 3.0 (6 Gb/s) transfer speeds for larger bandwidth, which power users require for advanced gaming, multitasking and multimedia computing power. Kingston's HyperX SSD lets users load games and applications faster, increase frames per second (FPS) and quickly transfer and edit large media files. It's cool, silent and requires less power and no additional cooling requirements.

When configuring the HyperX SSD partition, the user can choose between having the maximum available capacity for data storage or giving up a little space to increase performance and endurance. This additional space is called over provisioning on an SSD. The amount of performance and endurance increase depends upon the type of data being stored on the HyperX SSD. The more data that is MPEG, JPG, ZIP or ARC file types, the greater the benefit for this increased over provisioning.

HyperX SSD uses an advanced wear leveling technology that distributes writes evenly across all the flash blocks in the SSD to maximize overall drive endurance. Additionally, wear leveling ensures that the individual Flash memory blocks are consumed at a very balanced rate, not to exceed a 2-percent difference between the most often written blocks and least written. This enables the HyperX SSD to provide the longest possible life for the user while maintaining optimal performance.
Features:

SandForce controller technology
High-speed SATA Rev 3.0 (6 Gb/s) transfer speeds
Performance — incredible speeds for advanced gaming, multitasking, and multimedia computing power
Reliable — much less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
Shock-Proof — dropping your notebook no longer means losing your data
Cool & Quiet — runs silent and with no moving mechanical parts to generate heat
Innovative — uses NAND Flash memory components
Supports S.M.A.R.T., TRIM, and Garbage Collection
Guaranteed — three-year Kingston® warranty, 24/7 tech support


Specifications:

Form factor — 2.5"
Controller — 2nd Generation SandForce® Controller SF-2281
Components — Intel® 25nm Compute-Quality MLC NAND (5k P/E Cycles)
Interface: — SATA Rev 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s)
Capacities — 120 GB, 240 GB
Sequential reads 6Gb/s — 555MB/s for all capacities
Sequential writes 6Gb/s — 510MB/s for all capacities
Sustained Random 4k Read/Write —
120GB - 20,000/60,000 IOPS
240GB - 40,000/60,000 IOPS
Max Random 4K R/W —
120GB - 95,000/70,000 IOPS
240GB - 95,000/60,000 IOPS
PCMARK® Vantage HDD Suite Score —
120GB - 81,196
240GB - 81,394
Supports S.M.A.R.T., TRIM, and Garbage Collection
Warranty/support: — Three-year warranty with free 24/7 support
Power Consumption —
120GB: 0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.6 W (TYP) Read / 2.0 W (TYP) Write
240GB: 0.455 W (TYP) Idle / 1.5 W (TYP) Read / 2.05 W (TYP) Write
Dimensions — 69.85 x 100 x 9.5mm
Weight — 94g
Operating Temperatures — 0°C ~ 70°C
Storage Temperatures — -40°C ~ 85°C
Shock Resistance — 1500G
Vibration Operating — 2.17G
Vibration Non-Operating — 20G
MTBF — 1,000,000 Hrs

http://www.kingston.com/ssd/HyperX.asp

[Bojamijams]

hasn't SF2281 proven to be a major failure? It really seems to be that way.

[Elmy]

Uploaded with ImageShack.us


I just got 2 of them in the mail today. Once tested I'll post in the SSD thread.

[Etihtsarom]

Nevermind the benchmarks, tell us the difference you see in usage.

[SkullCracka]

these look like the same as Mushkin Chronos. hmmm

[onethreehill]

Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Review
http://www.kitguru.net/components/ss...gb-ssd-review/
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/s...b_ssd_review/1
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/422...iew/index.html

Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD Review
http://www.ocaholic.ch/xoops/html/mo...php?itemid=554

[ZenEffect]

some quick benchmarks before digging into them.

windows 7 ultimate x64
Maximus IV Extreme-Z
2x 120GB Kinston HyperX SSD RAID 0 64K Stripe
Onboard SATA6 (Intel Chipset)
Driver: 10.5.0.1026







How does it FEEL?

Very very fast.

[Elmy]

Is it better to use 64K for the stripe than 128K ?

[Hondacity]

@davis

two ssd's and you're burning every result out there

[ZenEffect]

Is it better to use 64K for the stripe than 128K ?

that question is what im going to answer tomorrow night. loading os over and over again testing differences in stripe size with the benchmarks I posted previously.

my bet is 128k is fastest though.

@davis

two ssd's and you're burning every result out there

Am I? I was only comparing against a revodrive 3 x2 during testing. This solution is much much faster in comparison, and cheaper as well.

[Elmy]

These are my scores in Raid 0





-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 857.520 MB/s
Sequential Write : 312.634 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 697.071 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 323.871 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 29.700 MB/s [ 7250.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 59.052 MB/s [ 14417.1 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 261.660 MB/s [ 63881.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 307.042 MB/s [ 74961.5 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 7.3% (16.3/223.5 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/08/04 17:25:18
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)


Thats with crystal mark with 128K stripe

This is AS SSD .... couldnt find an english version last night... and I hit the English tab in the program and it doesnt switch to english...

Anyways I can test mine too for comparision on your tests. Let me know....

[ZenEffect]

Did you install the Intel Rapid Storage driver? If so, what version did you use? If not, its highly recommended.

as ssd you have to unpack it with the folder to get english to work

[LightSpeed]

Have the SF-2281 issues been fixed? There was a major uproar over this controller a month or so ago IIRC with many vendors not selling drives with these controllers any more.

[Elmy]

Got a little faster after updating the IRSD

[Russian]

Yeah, the Intel RST drivers will make a pretty noticeable difference and you've always gotta make sure you have the latest version since they don't update automatically.

[spajdr]

Have the SF-2281 issues been fixed? There was a major uproar over this controller a month or so ago IIRC with many vendors not selling drives with these controllers any more.

Im afraid not, i have 120GB version for two weeks and games crashed randomly, though nothing else was overclocked, playing the game RIFT informed me inside the game that some data is probably corrupted and i should check data integrity, 120MB was redownloaded, but sadly, game and other games still randomly crashing, for now i disabled write cache and hoping it will help for now and that kingston will released newer firmware that fix this. I just sent bug report to kingston right now.

[th3pwn3r]

I've yet to have any problems with mine. Hopefully it keeps working smoothly.

[LightSpeed]

Im afraid not, i have 120GB version for two weeks and games crashed randomly, though nothing else was overclocked, playing the game RIFT informed me inside the game that some data is probably corrupted and i should check data integrity, 120MB was redownloaded, but sadly, game and other games still randomly crashing, for now i disabled write cache and hoping it will help for now and that kingston will released newer firmware that fix this. I just sent bug report to kingston right now.

Well that sucks. I just pulled the trigger on a m4, waited long enough for the SF issues to be fixed and the m4 with new firmware is fast enough for me.

[Elmy]

I got 2 of them in Raid 0. Getting over 1000 MB/s read times and I haven't had one problem at all. These things are blazing wicked fast!

[k0pc1n4]

I buy one 120GB HyperX SSD several days ago with new system.

System specs:
Intel Core i7 2600K
Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD4
Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GT (Temporary)
Patriot Sector 7 16GB 1600MHz 9-9-9-24
Kingston HyperX 120GB
Seagate Momentus 500GB 7k 16MB
Seaasonic SS-620GM
Cooler Master HAF 912 Plus

Windows 7 64bit (optimized for SSD)

Here is benchmark results:




Everything working well (at least for now) and I'm satisfied.


P.S. Is these results normal for that drive?

[Russian]

Here are the scores I got...

Kingston 240GB HyperXSSD 3.JPG

Note: This is the 240GB model, not the 120GB.

[Sailindawg]

@Russin & previous poster

Aren't your sequential write scores about half of what the spec is? Reading reviews & manufacturer specs, it seemed these drives are rated for 500 Mb/s sequential write. Are you using the most recent firmware for the drives?