The people asked, HyperX listened. Fresh from the warehouse from the gaming arm of Kingston comes the HyperX Fury RGB, a classic SATA based SSD that deliver speedy performance storage and a more affordable rate than its M.2 based cousin. There’s no NVMe that can shine like this one, either, so if you have a case that can show off the bling and an ARGB header on your motherboard this is the review for you.
Specifications
- MSRP: $74.99 (240GB), $124.99 (480GB), $219.99 (960GB)
- Interface: 2.5” SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) - backwards compatible with SATA 2.0 (3Gb/s)
- Capacities: 240, 480, 960 GB
- Controller: Marvell 88SS1074
- NAND: 3D TLC
- Sequential Read/Write: 240GB-960Gb - up to 550/480MB/s
- Power Consumption: 0.2W Idle, 0.6W Avg, 1.2W MAX READ / 2.5W MAX Write
- Dimensions: 100.14mm x 69.85mm x 9.5mm
- Operating Temps: 0°C~70°C
- Storage Temps: -40°C~85°C
- Weight: 165g
- Vibration operating: 2.17G Peak (7-800Hz)
- Vibration non-operating: 20G Peak (10-2000Hz)
- Life Expectancy: 1 million hours MTBF
- Warranty: Limited 3-year w/ free tech support
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Total Bytes Written:
- 240GB - 120TB
- 480GB - 240TB
- 960GB - 480TB
With everyone clamoring for NVMe drives operating on the PCIe interface and Intel Optane (which is ridiculous overkill for a gaming machine) it’s easy to forget that for a long time SATA SSD drives were the go to drives for our operating systems to make our computers nice and speedy. As the price has dropped over the years and competition has driven that beautiful free market forward we are seeing higher capacities at lower prices: opening the doors for gamers to use SSD storage for a handful of games for faster loading times. NVMe prices for higher capacity storage still hasn’t hit that sweet spot in my opinion yet but 2.5” SATA SSDs are right where I want them to be.
One of the nice things about HyperX when it comes to storage is they are the gaming branch of Kingston, a trusted name in memory and storage. There’s no need for Kingston to try and break into the RGB/Gaming craze having HyperX around and HyperX doesn’t have to prove anything since it’s all Kingston under the hood. So when it came time to take a look at the HyperX Fury RGB SSD it was a no brainer - who wouldn’t want a Kingston SSD with a splash of lighting flair? Well probably some people but not this writer. Check out this video real quick before we dive into all the data:
Testing Environment
All testing was completed on a MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC w/ Ryzen 5 2600X Overclocked to 4.4Ghz on all cores. 32GB HyperX Predator 3200 DDR4, EVGA 1080Ti FTW3, ThermalTake 800W PSU. Kingston A1000 NVMe remained constant during testing as the boot drive.
ATTO
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The first benchmark we typically run on drives at MMORPG.com is ATTO, one of the oldest disk benchmarks around. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and represents the best case scenario of our drive performance. It will iterate different read write scenarios in varying sizes ranging from 512 bytes to 64 megabytes and reveals to us that until you reach file sizes about 64kb in size you aren’t going to be hitting the 500 MB/s read/write you typically like to see as minimums on SATA based SSDs. This is important when it comes to transferring folders that can contain a lot of small files (like you’ll see later) which is why our real world averages don’t usually match up to the “up to” claims of manufacturers.
Crystal Disk Mark
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CrystalDisk 6 is up next and is my personal go to when I’m going to be comparing multiple drives, such as with reviews! CrystalMark gives a few different results though for comparison purposes I again like to look at ‘best case scenarios’ which are our sequential operations. Collecting this data with ATTO is definitely possible but I find CrystalMark easier to run through multiple drives with compared to ATTO.
Our results are not that surprising. I included the Kingston A1000 PCIe M.2 because I think it’s important to see what these kind of drives costs so much more than SATA based SSDs, the performance increase is quite stunning. But focusing on the HyperX SSD it actually beat out all the other SSDs I tested, including the Samsung Evo 850. Now the Samsung Evo 850 isn’t the latest in the series from Samsung, this is true, but I was still surprised to see it lose as it still managed to beat out most other drives in its weight class. Three cheers for HyperX on this accomplishment - and with RGB to boot!
Real World Testing
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Remember earlier when I talked about the small file sizes affecting read and write capabilities? I hope so since it was only like two paragraphs ago. Without knowing that bit of information it might seem strange that our average speed for transfering The Witcher 3 folder was 160 MB/s. I calculated an actual average based on the size of the folder and the time it took to transfer. The folder is 36,200MB and took 226 seconds to fully transfer which gave us a transfer rate of 160MB/s. The lowest transfer speed was around 5MB/s and the highest was 350MB/s - we simply fall victim to transferring individual files before we can really ramp up to full speed. Pay particular close attention to the performance gain over using a standard 7200RPM mechanical hard drive. While great mass storage the transfer rates are at best ? of an SSD and can have significant impact on load times.
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The final metric of performance I like to use for us at MMORPG.com is load times. I took some of the popular MMOs being enjoyed today and spent a few hours calculating load times from the character screen to having control of my character. Looking at average transfer speeds and how the drives benched in CrystalDisk there weren’t any standout suprises here. The HyperX Fury RGB continued to perform consistently better than the competitors I had available to bench against but in the interest of fairness the EVO and HyperX Fury were imperceptible in real world differences - a compliment for HyperX.
RGB
The last thing I want to touch on is the RGB on the HyperX Fury. Connecting it to your motherboard was a lot different than what I was expecting. To be fair I’m not actually sure how I was expecting it to be but the included cable was micro USB to RGB header! So in addition to the data and power connectors there’s a small cable to route from the usb port on the drive to a free RGB header on your motherboard. Once that is done you control the single-zoned lighting from your motherboards lighting control, in my case MSI’s lackluster Mystic Light. It’s the same control schematic as their Predator RGB DDR4 RAM and truth be told I would really have loved to see a standalone program because there’s too much variability in quality between motherboard manufacturers RGB software.
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Final Thoughts
When it comes down to it I think the HyperX Fury RGB SSD not only stacks up with the competition in terms of performance but bring a degree of fun to the otherwise dull box that is an SSD. The lighting is vibrant but not overdone and accents the drive and case nicely. If I could replace all my 2.5” SSDs with HyperX Fury RGB drives, I would.
Pros
- Solid performance
- Fairly Priced
- Nice Lighting
Cons
- Have to use motherboard RGB software
The product discussed in this article was provided by the manufacturer for the purposes of review.
