Following the demise of the tape drive, floppy drive, then the CD, the traditional hard drive has been holding computer data since the beginning. With large internal circular disks that contain billions of 1s and 0s, hard drives have increased in capacity, reliability, and speeds, but sooner or later technology will advance to a point where they become extinct.
Flash storage is the successor to traditional hard drives and while they may seem like new technology, flash based storage has been around for many years. The most common type of flash storage is that found in USB flash drives. By using a memory controller and small storage cells, data can be electronically written to a drive and therefore be quicker, smaller, and more efficient.
In recent years, solid state drives or SSDs have taken a large role in the computer market. Their smaller size and incredible speeds make them desirable. When making their large debut a few years ago, their prices were a serious disincentive to upgrade, but with OEM computer manufactures like Dell, Lenovo, and HP beginning to include them as a standard option, the price has dropped dramatically, making them economically viable.
SSDs can be dropped, withstand heat, be easily mounted to anything, are incredibly fast, and can be used in nearly all applications that traditional hard drives could be used in. So with so many positives, why aren’t hard drive manufactures out of business? With their prices dropping, their smaller capacities make it difficult for users like gamers or photographers to load up their hundreds of gigabytes (GB) onto a 250GB drive.
When browsing on a popular computer retail store’s website, a quick search for an internal SSD will result in over 1000 products. With so many options to choose from and so many brands to pick from, choosing the right one can be a difficult task.
As a manufacturer of flash storage for multiple years, Kingston has been concentrating their business on USB flash drives and memory, then in recent years, they too have made the transition into SSDs. Placed under the supervision of their gaming brand, ‘HyperX’ has been offering some eye catching SSDs, but recently released the grand-daddy of them all, their ‘Savage’ branded SSD. The Savage brand of Kingston HyperX separates itself from their mainstream lineup, ‘Fury’, as it takes the extreme performance from other drives and combines it with style and reliability. So how does it stack up to other popular performance SSDs?
Welcome to my review of the Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB Solid State Drive. Throughout this in-depth review, I will be discussing the following topics: the design, functionality, and my final thoughts. I would like to thank Kingston for providing me with this SSD.
Design
Returning to the SSD search I spoke about above, when browsing the selection list of SSDs, you may quickly notice that many SSDs come in one color, maybe two, while others plaster labels on the face of the SSD that include product information. What an eyesore…
To stand out amongst the crowd, HyperX took their gaming design team and put them hard at work when developing the Savage SSD. Its all metal body is coated in a matte black finish that then has subtle black Savage branding on its front.
Its front face displays a stunning red HyperX shield that looks much better in reality than pictures can show. Then to finish it off, the shield has white, inward-pointing arrows that draw your eyes to the large HyperX brand.
But wait, there’s more. If you opt for the full laptop & desktop kit that I received, Kingston throws in some additional goodies. Inside the box is an all-black SATA cable, a HyperX metal pen-like screw driver, a HyperX 2.5” external hard drive USB 3.0 bay enclosure, necessary screws, a large HyperX case sticker, and to top it all off a lifetime key to Acronis True Image HD software, a personal favorite among some here at TSF.
Functionality
All of my desktop systems run a solid state drive as their boot drive and I’ve begun to get a good feel for what they have to offer in terms of speed. The Savage SSD was placed into a powerful machine that runs the following specifications: a Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z97 motherboard, 16GB 1866 Kingston Savage memory, Gigabyte G1.Gaming GTA 960, a XFX 650W Gold power supply, and finally a NZXT H440 case that is fully loaded with fans to eliminate any heat issues. The SSD is connected to a SATA 6.0 port and the system is running a fully updated Windows 8.1 64bit Professional operating system.
The Savage drive was then used as a storage drive to give it a fresh test for testing with hardware stress testing software. Afterwards, it was used for storage transfer and game storage.
I first began my testing by attempting to get the Kingston SSD software to update the firmware and to ensure everything was working correctly. However, on my journey on getting that software, I ran into a constant error stating that I was not an administrator of my PC. Even after following the Kingston advice on installing the software, I failed to install it and forgot about it.
Next came the bench testing of the Savage SSD and I compared it against the highly praised Samsung 840 Evo 240GB SSD. The first test was performed using CrystalDiskMark (CDM) followed by ATTO Disk Benchmark. The results may be surprising.
A quick understanding of CDM has the sequential tests that takes a selected 1 gibibyte (GiB) and measures the read/write speeds of the drive. Sequential data is like counting from one to ten and moves in a line, while random testing forces the drive to jump around making it perform harder to seek random access. Results are shown in MB/s and the higher the number, the better.
ATTO Benchmarking understanding is more straight forward as it tests the drive between a selected data range, in this case 0.5 – 8192KB. It measures the time to write the data and records the data on both graphic form and byte values. The higher the value, the better.
The Samsung drive is up first and when analyzing CDM, we notice a fast sequential read and write speed with 4K sequential dipping into the lower values. With an average read and write speed of 500MB/s, users can transfer a gigabyte of data in two seconds and allows for Windows 8.1 to boot in five seconds.
ATTO Benchmark shows the Samsung drive topping off a write speed of 500MB/s fairly quickly once hitting 64MB and topping out its read speed at 1GB. I’ll let the bench tests for the Samsung drive speak for themselves.
Now we switch our focus to the star of the show, the Savage SSD. Again, beginning with CDM, we notice sequential speeds in the upper 500MB/s, but with a surprise twist with 4K writing speeds hovering in the upper 300MB/s; three times faster on the write side than the Samsung drive. It doesn’t stop there with the Savage maintaining similar speeds to the Samsung drive with differences that would go unnoticed to the average user.
Jump down to the ATTO Benchmark results to find out that the drive reaches its full speed at 32MB and topping out at 2GB. ATTO clearly shows a better visual result on how the Savage drive can perform with one of the best drives on the market.
When being operated as a game and file storage drive, it performed flawlessly without any lag or freezes, both when transferring files and playing games. I moved music files and a backup file of 15GB from a hard drive to the Kingston drive with the task completing in just a few minutes.
Its 240GB capacity is large enough to hold my gaming library along with additional storage files. When Windows is installed on a different drive, the games can operate separately and perform better in my opinion.
Kingston Image
My Final Thoughts
Kingston’s HyperX Savage SSD is a drive that takes extreme performance and turns it into an extreme performer for any user that may find themselves looking for an upgrade. Its raw power matched by the stylish red gaming design makes it a desirable drive especially when matched with the laptop & desktop goodies box. Priced at $107 for the whole kit (the SSD itself is $105) and an included three year warranty, you can’t go wrong with this SSD and with it out performing a well-known drive, it sits proud at the top of the heap.
Buy it Now:
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