HyperX, (a division of Kingston) recently released its new series of flash drives, the HyperX Fury USB 3.0 Flash Drive line. The flash drives are designed to appeal to budget-conscious gamers and enthusiasts, while providing solid performance. This review will be taking a look at the 64 GB version of the drive (model number HXF30/64GB).

The Fury drive feels solid in the hand. It has a lanyard loop on the back to attach to a lanyard or keychain. It also has a cap, as opposed to utilizing a slider to protect the USB plug. The cap can snap onto the back of the flash drive when the drive is in use to help prevent the user from losing the cap. It is this reviewers opinion that it would be better if USB drive caps had some sort of attachment to the body of the drive, in case the cap were to accidentally fall off the top of the bottom of the drive. However, in the case of the Fury, the cap appears to attach solidly to both the USB plug as well as the back (though not quite as securely on the back).

In order to test the Fury’s performance, two benchmarks were run: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark and CrystalDiskMark. The tests were run both while the drive was plugged into a USB 3.0 port as well as a USB 2.0 port. It should also be noted that the chipset used for the benchmarks was an Intel X79 board, which does not support native USB 3.0. It is possible that speeds would be slightly better in a USB 3.0 port on a newer chipset.

First up are the CrystalDiskMark results:

The Fury managed a sequential read speed of 186.8 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 144.0 MB/s while plugged into the USB 3.0 port. Both of these numbers far exceed the expectations of the listed specifications for the drive, but it is expected that the drive will lose some speed after some usage. Also, since most typical usage of a flash drive is not simply sequential reads and writes, the speeds will be diminished in general use cases.

In the USB 2.0 port, the drive had a sequential read speed of 34.50 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 30.26 MB/s. These numbers show that the limiting factor here was clearly the USB 2.0 specification, and those are approximately the speeds a user can expect from any drive running on USB 2.0 that would otherwise have higher speeds.

Next up are the AIDA64 Disk Benchmark results:

In the USB 3.0 port, the Fury 64 GB USB drive performed admirably, putting out linear reads of approximately 177 MB/s and a random read of just under 190 MB/s. It also had an average read access time of 0.81 ms, which is quite impressive.

The Fury plugged into the USB 2.0 port again performed as expected, with linear read speeds almost exactly 33 MB/s and a random read speed of 33.5 MB/s. The average read access time also took a hit in the USB 2.0 port, coming in at 1.22 ms, a 50% increase.

The HyperX Fury USB 3.0 64 GB flash drive currently retails at a price of $49.99. Other 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drives can be purchased online for as cheap as $25, but that does not mean the Fury is not worth it. Attributes to consider other than price include durability, warranty, reliability, fit and finish, and performance. Even though Kingston itself has other 64 GB USB 3.0 flash drives available for approximately $30, those tend to have a target audience of general consumers, whereas the Fury is marketed towards gamers and enthusiasts.

The drive itself is clearly nicer and more aggressive in appearance than a typical consumer flash drive. Also, as stated earlier, the drive itself feels very well made and sturdy. It also has solid performance, far exceeding its listed specifications. However, considering there are so many options available at under the $50 price point, it makes it difficult to suggest the difference in price is worth it for the Fury 64 GB USB 3.0 drive. Time will tell as the drive gets used, and its reliability will be tested. Also, the drive will eventually start to drop in price.

Considering the drive individually, it’s a solid product with great performance and this reviewer would highly recommend it. For those wanting to save more money, they can easily find some cheaper drives that may share similar performance and specifications.

The post Kingston’s Fury USB Drive: A Solid, Robust Storage Solution appeared first on VR World.

At Computex 2014, Kingston had a lot of products to show attendees at their HyperX suite which also featured Kingston’s HOT (HyperX OC Takeover) where overclockers competed for a share of $10,000 in prize money. The rest of the floor was shared by Kingston’s various new products, some never seen before, and others updated since CES. The main stage was where Kingston would show off these products as well as host their League of Legends competition.

The HyperX Main Stage

We got a private tour of all of the products that Kingston currently has to offer, including the lowdown on how the company is rebranding their HyperX line of products to be more consistent and simple. In fact, some of their product names won’t change at all, while others will change just for the sake of consistency. Those lines will start with Fury at the baseline for HyperX, then be followed by Savage in the middle and Predator at the top. This will be reflected across all of Kingston’s HyperX memory and storage products and should make understanding the expected level of performance quite easy for consumers. They will do away with the Gensis line of HyperX products and will brand their SODIMM line of HyperX memory as Impact, unrelated to the other naming schemes.

The first product we were introduced to was actually an update to their recently announced gaming headset, the HyperX Cloud Pro Gaming headset which is the company’s update to the original, offering a white color in addition to black. Otherwise, nothing really drastic.

After that, we took a look at their new HyperX Fury 240GB SSD. This SSD is part of the company’s entry line of HyperX gaming SSDs and features a SandForce 2281 controller. The expected read/write speeds are about 500/500 MB/s and uses a standard SATA 6Gb/s connector and uses locked synchronous NAND. It will come in 120 and 240GB capacities.

Hyper X Fury 240 GB SSD

After that, we got to take a look at Kingston’s new MobileLite Wireless G2 (Gen 2) which is designed to vastly improve upon the original version. It now has a whopping 4640 mAh battery for extended battery life as well as a network port to allow you to use the device as a router. I have personally been hoping for such a device because my laptop doesn’t have a wired port on it and the MobileLite gives me the ability to get near to wired connection speeds without a wired port. It also has a USB port and memory card slot for sharing the media like the previous MobileLite did and charges via MicroUSB. The router functionality for 3G dongles, unfortunately is only available in Asia, but may eventually reach the US. Kingston’s demo showed the MobileLite Wireless G2 playing content off their also newly announced DataTraveler MicroDuo 3.0 USB onto the tablets next to it.

After that, we got a chance to see their new Phison-based M.2 SATA SSD which is a 22×80 mm SSD and is rated for a 555/520 sequential read/write performance. But they also had other benchmarks running so that we could see things like CrystalDiskMark and others as well.

After Kingston’s Phison-based M.2 SSD, we took a look at their HyperX Predator SSD, this drive is rated for speeds up to 1.8 GB/s sequential read. Obviously there are going to be a lot of companies out with these kinds of PCIe SSDs with SanForce SF-3000 series controllers fairly soon, so it will be important to evaluate who’s got the fastest drive and what kind of performance it really has. As you can see below, Kingston’s HyperX Predator PCIe SSD will be offered in capacities up to 2TB.

They also showed us their Marvell based M.2 SSD, which is their more high-end drive, capable of astonishing speeds of up to 1.3 GB/s. These drives will come in capacities up to 512GB and will sport 16nm NAND. Because of the PCIe controller from Marvell, this M.2 drive is capable of astonishing speeds, more than double the other M.2 drive that Kingston currently offers.

After seeing that drive in action, we got to check out Kingston’s new V310 SSD, which is a 960 GB SSD capable of delivering fairly high performance using a Phison 3108 controller that still delivers a pretty good level of performance with sequential reads over 500 MB/s and writes of 485 MB/s as seen in the CrystalDiskMark below.

Below, we will have a full gallery of all of the products that Kingston showed, including new and old products. Some of those products include their already announced, but never shown Fury RAM as well as their DDR4 desktop and server modules, still currently under development.

The post Kingston's Newest Products Shown at Computex 2014 appeared first on VR World.