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Kingston unleashes super-fast HyperX SSDs

by Tarinder Sandhu on 2 August 2011, 09:19

Tags: Kingston

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa6sp

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Speedy Speedy Drive

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are, in our opinion, the must-have upgrade for any PC. With prices steadily falling and mainstream SSDs hitting that magical £1-per-GB metric, there's never been a better time to delve into super-fast storage.

Kingston is perhaps better known as a manufacturer of mainstream SSDs - its 96GB V+100 retails for £95 - but has now turned up the heat by finally releasing a premium SSD line called HyperX.

HyperX

Looking the business, HyperX, available in 120GB and 240GB capacities, uses the ubiquitous SandForce SF-2281 controller that's paired with 25nm MLC-based NAND from IMFT. Kingston reckons the 120GB drive is good for sequential read and write speeds of 555MB/s and 510MB/s, respectively, while 4K (maximum) read/write performance is pegged at an impressive 95K/70K IOPS.

As is Kingston's wont, the SATA 6Gbps drives is available as barebone models and part of a full retail kit, including a 2.5-3.5in bracket, 2.5in USB caddy, blue-coloured SATA cable and Acronis hard-drive imaging/migration software.

Priced at $270 for the 120GB and $500 for the 240GB drive - with a 10 per cent premium for the bundled drives - Kingston's HyperX SSD looks sharp. We know that second-generation SandForce drives are not created equal, so it will be interesting to see how they fare in our benchmarking tests.

You won't have to wait long, dear readers, as we have a 240GB HyperX drive on the test-bench right now.