As a device the SSD drive is nothing new, we have reviewed some SSD drives before and everyone knows that their best side is their data transfer speed that is huge when compared with their hard drive counterparts. But, when considering an SSD drive you should take into consideration their massive price also. Just for comparison a low-range SSD drive with a capacity of 120GB will cost about 200 €, which can be the price of a 2TB hard drive. This is changing these days, as the SSD drive consumption is rising, so the price of an SSD drive is almost half than the price it had last year.
This time we are reviewing an SSD drive from the well-known company Kingston, an SSD drive with a full name HyperX 3K SSD. The normal name HyperX is reserved for their top of the line DDR modules so this drive has top of the line NAND incorporated inside.
The HyperX 3K series is made, according to the manufacturer for enthusiasts and gamers with shallower pockets. It has a bit lower price than their top of the line products. Just for comparison it costs $45 less than its top of the line counterpart. You can find this drive in variants of 90, 120,240 and 480GB. The name is directly taken from their durability. The NAND chips inside can hold up to 3 thousand cycles of programing and whipping. Except this, from a technical aspect it has incorporated Advanced Wear Leveling and Trim technologies and operations, which give it equal usage. Except that with an special software the user can achieve better compressions and speeds but the software is not provided. The most important fact is that they are based on Sand Force controllers, which means that the best usage for this device would have the users with motherboards that have this technology.
According to synthetic tests, this drive can achieve the speeds that the manufacture stated and they are about 360MB/s sequential read and in some cases even exceed them. The manufacturer maybe overcharging for the drive at least they are generous with the additional equipment. Except for the screwdriver, you get an screws, SATA cable and external housing that coupled with an USB cable it can become a glorified USB drive.
