A few months ago, we awarded the Kingston HyperX series SSDs an Editors’ Choice Award for very sound reasons: great performance, excellent firmware, and a great upgrade bundle. All of this helps ensure that you benefit from the full SSD experience. Then, Kingston released another winning choice in the surprisingly affordable V+200 Enterprise SSD. Because it uses less expensive 3K synchronous NAND, and didn’t sacrifice on performance, it also earned our top honors. That brings us to the new HyperX 3K SSD.
The HyperX 3K is a combination of both award winning SSDs. This new drive comes in a black on gun metal aluminum theme and looks great. It offers 3K MLC synchronous NAND to save costs, but still offers high performance. Plus, you can buy them in both stand alone and upgrade kits. We have a pair of them that are screaming to be cut loose on the test bench so let’s get to work!
Features and Specifications
The new HyperX 3K SSD (featured prior to launch in our recent Kingston Interview) series is just a taste of the things coming down the assembly line. NAND durability and reliability are still two factors users are keeping an eye on especially given the monetary investment. Using 3K synchronous MLC NAND helps extend the life of the cells while keeping costs down. Kingston’s SSDs carry a 3 year warranty across the board so there is no fear. 3K NAND adds a level of reliability to professional use in the V+200 Enterprise series and it is a good choice for the HyperX edition too.
With the exception of the NAND and capacities, the HyperX 3K specs are very similar to the original HyperX blue. Both offer up to 555MB/s read and 510MB/s write performance. The 3K series adds a 90GB model mostly because 90GB provides a good workstation price to performance ratio. Keep in mind that your particular chipset, system configuration and HBA or RAID card will effect performance as controllers make all the difference.
Pricing is the next concern. The Upgrade Bundle Kit is only $10 US/CA on average more than the stand alone package which brings me to a logical recommendation. It’s my humble analytical opinion that the kit alone is absolutely worth the extra money. Let me show you why next.
What’s in the Upgrade Bundle Kit?
This isn’t your regular mismatched pile of cables and pointless accessories often used to make it look like you’re getting a good value. Everything in the Upgrade Kit is very usable, especially the Acronis software. There is a data cable, external USB SSD enclosure, 3.5″ HyperX mounting bracket, HyperX screwdriver and Acronis True Image software disc.
Acronis True Image CD is bootable and allows users to backup, clean, manage and clone the data from your existing bootable storage drive to the SSD. It comes in very handy in that respect and saves you from having to reinstall everything. That’s a lot of time saved right there and totally worth that extra $10 bucks. I’ve used it over two dozen times in the lab and highly recommend you get the Upgrade Kit, if you don’t already have a bundle kit at your disposal.
Test System Setup
For testing, we’re moving to a new MSI Z77A-GD65 motherboard. The Z68 is still quite good in terms of chipset and Intel enterprise controller implementation but the Z77 is very similar at heart in that it shares the same controllers with a bit more PCIE bus bandwidth since the test system is in an SLI configuration for another mission. Plus, the MSI Z77A-GD65 is a very solid platform.
- Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge
- Motherboard: MSI Z77A-GD65 (A36 BIOS)
- Memory: Kingston HyperX 2133MHz 16GB DDR3 @ 1600MHz
- Graphics: ZOTAC NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti SLI
- Power Supply: Antec TPQ-1200 TruePower Quattro
- 6Gbps Test: Native SATA3 Ports RAID0
- Processor Cooler: Intel (Asetek) RTS2011LC
- OS: Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Since the native Z77 chipset is the faster storage solution on the platform, I’m only using the SATA3 ports. BIOS options were set to RAID0. Intel Rapid Storage was installed to better support the chipset controller. Single and RAID SSD configurations were tested.
PCMark7
Starting things off, we have PCMark7 which is a whole system benchmark based on office productivity performance. While not completely optimized for SSDs, PCMark7 does still reflect system benefits when compared to platter based hard drives. The system is far more efficient thanks to the SSD. Here are the results.
As you can see, SSD scores are noticeably better. The HyperX 3K doesn’t quite lead the pack but it’s right there with the best that often costs more. The interesting thing is that the score was pretty much the same whether in single or RAID0 configuration. RAID has other benefits which you’ll see soon.
CrystalDiskMark
CDM is a tough high compression benchmark on SSDs. It doesn’t hurt the internal components. It simply makes the controller and NAND put their best results forward. The scores are good indicators of what to expect from your system.
The HyperX 3K matches up pretty well against the synchronous competition. The 3K does well both in single and especially RAID configuration providing higher throughput than its older brother. Oddly, I noticed that the HyperX scores generated by CDM were very sporadic hinting to a possible glitch. That evidence is substantiated by the next two benchmarks. Let’s see how it does in IO performance.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
Users often appreciate a IO benchmarking because it gives a good representation of potential real world performance. ATTO is a very popular program for getting those performance numbers pretty much used by every SSD manufacturer.
Again, the HyperX 3K provides a bit more IO performance. It’s interesting to see the 4K block test just a bit lower than the HyperX Blue yet redeems itself with the larger IO test sets. In RAID 0, the scores improve even further again. In fact, the scores are noticeably better especially when loaded down with data.
Desktop Experiences
There are still quite a few people unaware how SSDs benefit their computer. Higher data transfer rates, which we just saw, will speed up boot processes, manage especially large programs faster, video games load much quicker and helps feed your processor much needed data for big projects. Here are the results compared to a 1TB hard drive holding the same OS.
The recorded time results pretty much say it all. It’s important to understand that these recorded times will differ depending on your SATA controller and size of your programs. But you still get the point. If you’re tired of your platter drive’s little pauses due to slow spin up or slowing considerably as you fill it up, or if you’re tired of being the last player to join your favorite game server, grab a HyperX 3K SSD. In a nutshell, you can do more faster and because of recent SSD price drops, cheaper too!
Final Thoughts
There’s no arguing that the HyperX 3K SSD is a worthy choice amung a market full of options. The 3K NAND and SandForce SF-2281 controller work together well providing a little more speed as well as added endurance. Granted, the question of endurance unfortunately can’t be fully measured even with a few months use. However, some of that endurance and resilience is visible after running repeated tests that start to weigh down the NAND. Like the V+200 Enterprise series, the HyperX 3K manages its resources well and should last for many years.
The Upgrade Bundle without question continues to be the most comprehensive kit for migrating any system over to a Kingston SSD. The Acronis True Image software alone is worth the extra cost which ensures you don’t have to start over from scratch. The cables and hard drive enclosure are just icing on the cake for fast moving pros looking to get their SSD fix.
Purchasing the great looking two-toned HyperX 3K 240GB Upgrade Kit will cost about $329.99 from online retailers. Recent pricing adjustments have moved costs a little downwards as more affordable Micron and Intel NAND volumes continue to grow. In fact, we’ve noticed that a bare 240GB drive can be as low as $289 at some retailers, as of the writing of this review.
Overall, the Kingston HyperX 3K series SSDs offers everything you want and need from an SSD and more. You really do get it all at an even more affordable price point. Definitely an Editors’ Choice calibre product, making the winning streak unbroken thus far.
Pros
- HyperX synchronous performance
- Great upgrade bundle kit
- Attractive black housing
- Best retail value at $329.99
- 3K NAND manages loads better
Cons
- Price limits speed adoption
Overall Rating: 9.0 / 10.0
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