There are one or two names that come to mind when you think about memory, be it RAM modules, Flash and now solid-state drives (SSD). The royalty of the bunch must be Kingston’s HyperX SSD’s. All hardcore PC gamers know that a fast drive gives you a super-fast gaming rig as normal HDD’s are the biggest bottleneck of today.

Kingston clearly understands that anyone looking at getting a solid-state drive is looking for something that will go more than just the extra mile, with performance margins so small between competing SSD manufacturers. Kingston has been a trusted name for many years and it’s always wise when buying a drive not to buy one from a company that makes microwave ovens and TV’s.

Extras included with the Kingston HyperX SSD:

- They included a 3.5 mount to fit your drive into your chassis if it doesn’t have a bay for 2.5 drives
- Kingston also included a nice pen like screw driver that has interchangeable heads.
- Then the best of all is a 2.5 external drive case. Not like you would want to use this drive as an external drive connected on a slow USB connection instead of a SATA3 connection, but if you want to you can get a cheap mechanical 2.5 drive and you will have yourself an external drive. The case also has its own USB cable.
- Comes with a SATA cable

Kingston has delivered a product aimed at the PC gamers market that is spot on. When I bought my SSD all I got was a sticker bragging how much better SSD is than HDD. They could have included a SATA cable instead of me digging around for one just to get my SSD running.

The Kingston HyperX 240Gb Solid State Drive Upgrade kit ticks all the boxes regarding why gamers should buy it. It has the speed, extra goodies, a trusted name and it looks boss in a beast gaming rig.

Here follows all the details:

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-Resistant — 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 2 — 120 GB, 240 GB
- Sequential reads 6Gb/s 3 — 555MB/s for all capacities
- Sequential writes 6Gb/s — 510MB/s for all capacities
- Supports S.M.A.R.T. TRIM and Garbage Collection
- Warranty/support — Three-year warranty with free 24/7 support
- Dimensions — 69.85 x 100 x 9.5mm
- Weight — 81g
- 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

Sustained Random 4k Read/Write

- 120GB – 20,000/60,000 IOPS
- 240GB – 40,000/60,000 IOPS

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

Max Random 4K R/W

- 120GB – 95,000/70,000 IOPS
- 240GB – 95,000/60,000 IOPS

PCMARK Vantage HDD Suite Score 4

- 120GB – 81,196
- 240GB – 81,394