Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
Continuing the tradition of selling solid state drives with sharp styling elements, the Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB carries forward what was first laid down by the original Kingston HyperX SSD I have reviewed back in November 2011. The latest entry remains to a real looker in my personal opinion, even though no one really looks at it once installed. A brushed metal finish that resembles a large 'X' covers most of the front. The bring red is the same shade used in the Kingston HyperX Savage HX324C11SRK2/16 2x8GB heatspreaders, with a black background to keep the design language consistent with the rest of the brand. It features an aluminum housing to enhance heat dissipation, with a side benefit of being relatively lightweight for what you get. On top of the unique, stylized design is the HyperX logo embossed front and center; followed by the word "SAVAGE" in italic block letters at the bottom to ensure the user will make no mistake what this is.
Measuring in at 100 mm x 69.9 mm x 7.0 mm, the Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB conforms to the slim standard, and will ensure wide compatibility. It is also quite lightweight for having a metal enclosure at 96g, but a bit heavier than the competition that uses plastic. If, for some reason, a full 9.5 mm is needed for installation, a rubber spacer will be included out of the box. On the other hand, if you want to use it in your desktop and your chassis has no 2.5" mount, then you are in luck -- a 3.5" adapter bracket is also included, so you can easily install this SSD in any standard desktop internal drive bay. This makes the HyperX Savage quite convenient to deploy in either environments for the end user. Nowadays, it is hard to find a case without a 2.5" drive bay, but if you ever want to retrofit this SSD into an older desktop, it is nice the company included such an accessory.
Turning the SSD around reveals a dark grey metal backplate. It is enclosed by four security screws. Being me without any proper equipment, I was unable to disassemble the drive for a better look inside. Also, there is a warranty seal over one of the security screws as shown in our previous image above, so in order to take a peek inside the SSD, you will have to inevitably void your 3-year warranty, even if you have the right equipment. That said, although we were unable to take it apart, we still know what is inside -- so this is not really a big problem at all.
As always, there are no exposed printed circuit boards like you would normally see with a traditional hard disk. The only thing that is common between the Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB and a traditional hard disk drive is its SATA 6Gb/s and corresponding power connector at the end. As shown in our photo above, you will find a large label with the usual series of certification logos, along with information on the brand, capacity, and serial number. In case you missed it, our particular unit is the Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB, haha. Like many SSDs we have reviewed in the past, the Kingston drive is made in Taiwan.
The Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB uses Phison's PS3110-S10 flash controller, which we have seen before in the Patriot Ignite 480GB. It is built on the 55nm fabrication process, and features a 120-bit ECC scheme. In case you are not familiar with the company, Phison is a Taiwanese manufacturer of NAND flash controllers since 2000. In the past, they have focused on non-SSD applications like USB flash drives. The Phison PS3110-S10 is an improved version of the PS3108-S8, which has recently gained a lot of popularity among manufacturers looking to sell value oriented SSDs due to its low price. Furthermore, Phison allows smaller players to easily bring a finished product to market. In contrast, companies like Marvell supplies only the silicon, but manufacturers will need to develop their own firmware. Not everyone can afford an in-house firmware development team, and as such, offerings from companies such as Phison provides a very attractive package.
With that said, there is not a whole lot of information floating around that talks about how the Phison PS3110-S10 works. To pay a little bit of tribute to Jeremy Clarkson -- and with the last episode of Top Gear aired just earlier this week -- "Some say it is an eight channel controller. Others say it comes with DevSleep. All we know is, it is called the PS3110-S10!" In all seriousness though, it is an eight channel controller with device sleep support, plus a laundry list of stuff like End-to-End Data Path Protection, SmartECC, SmartFlush, GuaranteedFlush, TRIM, and SMART. The rated power consumption is 0.39W idle, 0.5W average, 1.4W read, and 4.35W write.
A total of sixteen NAND flash chips are found on the Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB solid state disk, with eight on each side. The chips used are Kingston branded flash memory labeled FD16B08UCT1-AF, with a capacity of 16GB per integrated circuit chip. These are Toshiba manufactured multi-level cells manufactured on the 19nm fabrication process. Its rated write endurance is 306TB, which equates to nearly 170GB per day for five years. This is actually really impressive, considering it is more than some high end drives out there. 16GB out of the 256GB total capacity (Just under 7%) is provisioned for the drive controller for overhead, so the actual usable space is 240GB, as advertised. You will see 223GB in Windows. One Nanya NT5CC128M16FP-DI 256MB DDR3L-1600 chip is present; used with the PS3110-S10 controller to ensure smooth operation.
Just like the Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB, the HyperX Savage 240GB desktop and laptop kits comes with some of the best bundles around. There are two parts to the package; namely, the hardware and the software. On the hardware side, we have a 2.5" enclosure, and a Philips head screwdriver with multiple sized tips. The enclosure is entirely tool-free. Just slide open the back cover, put in the drive, and that is it. Unfortunately, it feels quite flimsy, because it is made completely out of plastic. It is almost identical to Kingston enclosures we have seen in the past, except this one supports USB 3.0. The purpose of this enclosure is probably for users to plug in their Kingston HyperX Savage SSD and copy all the data over using the included Acronis cloning utility on the software side, and that is about it. I am not saying it is a disposable product per se, since you can always reuse it with other hard drives, and it is really lightweight.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.6GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-U14S (2x Noctua NF-A15)
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution
RAM: Kingston HyperX Savage HX324C11SRK2/16 2x8GB
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 960 4GB
Chassis: SilverStone Temjin TJ04-E (Noctua NF-S12A PWM, Noctua NF-P12 PWM)
Storage: OCZ Vector 150 240GB; Crucial MX200 500GB
Power: PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi Bravura
Optical Drive: LiteOn iHAS224-06 24X DVD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional
Compared Hardware:
- Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB
- Crucial BX100 500GB
- Crucial MX100 256GB
- Crucial MX200 500GB
- G.Skill Phoenix EVO 115GB
- Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB
- Kingston HyperX 120GB
- Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB
- Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB
- 2x Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB RAID 0
- OCZ ARC 100 240GB
- OCZ Agility 3 240GB
- OCZ Agility 4 256GB
- OCZ Octane 512GB
- OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB
- OCZ Vector 150 240GB
- OCZ Vector 180 240GB
- OCZ Vector 256GB
- OCZ Vertex 2 160GB 25nm
- OCZ Vertex 2 60GB 34nm
- OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB
- OCZ Vertex 3.20 240GB
- OCZ Vertex 4 256GB
- OCZ Vertex 450 256GB
- OCZ Vertex 460 240GB
- Patriot Blaze 240GB
- Patriot Ignite 480GB
- Patriot Pyro 120GB
- Patriot Pyro SE 240GB
- SanDisk Extreme II 240GB
- SanDisk Extreme PRO 480GB
- SanDisk Ultra II 240GB
- Silicon Power Slim S80 240GB
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
10. Conclusion
