Kingston has recently announced a new SSD in their HyperX lineup that represents the next leap forward in high-performance solid-state technology.

The new HyperX Predator PCIe SSD features a PCIe x4 interface instead of the traditional SATA 6Gbps hookup, hitting up to blazing-fast 1400MB/s read and 1000MB/s write speeds for optimum multitasking.

Thanks to the slim/low-profile HHHL adapter and modular form, the SSD flexibly supports newer and older desktops with ease.

The Predator supports PCIe x4 when fitted in the adapter and can be separately detached to fit into an M.2 PCIe slot.

Although M.2 is supported, you’ll need to go the PCIe route to hit the SSD’s hit peak read/write speeds. The Predator is powered by a Marvell 88SS9293 Altaplus SSD Controller that’s optimized specifically for M.2 PCIe x4 lanes.

Like most leading-edge tech, Kingston’s new Predator PCIe SSD isn’t cheap. The 240GB drive will set you back $382, whereas the 480GB is a whopping $782.

Both flavors are only available via Kingston’s digital marketplace for right now, and come with a three-year warranty.

Below we have a full list of specifications for your perusal:

Specifications

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Asus’s Rampage Extreme line has long been considered by many as some of the top overclocking boards that have been on the market, and the Rampage V Extreme is in the same boat.

When the board first came out there was a lot of talk about the inclusion of a non-standard OC-Socket, an aftermarket LGA 2011-v3 socket that has additional contact pins.  These pins help feed additional voltage to the CPU and result in what we have found to be very impressive and stable overclocking from the board.

But is this just a gimmick or is it really something that will make a difference?  The answer we find is that this is no joke and that the board by far surpasses every other X99 motherboard that is currently available when it comes to cache/uncore overclocking.  This leads to massive performance gains that other boards will not be able to achieve and quite frankly they are left in the Rampage V Extreme’s dust.  Once again Asus continues the legend of the Rampage Extreme line with this shining example of engineering and hardware dominance.

Asus Rampage V Extreme Specifications:

• CPU Socket Type: LGA 2011-v3
• Supported CPU Technologies: Turbo Boost Technology 2.0
• Chipset: Intel X99Onboard Video: None
• Onboard Video: None
• Audio Chipset: ROG SupremeFX 2014
• Audio Channels: 8 Channels
• LAN Chipset: Intel I218-V
• Max LAN Speed: 10/100/1000MbpsWireless LAN: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 3T3R supports frequency band 2.4/5 GHz
• Wireless LAN: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 3T3R supports frequency band 2.4/5 GHz
• Bluetooth: Bluetooth v4.0

Memory:

• Number of Memory Slots: 8×288pin
• Memory Standard: DDR4 3300(O.C.) / 3000(O.C.) / 2800(O.C.) / 2666(O.C.) / 2400(O.C.) / 2133
• Maximum Memory Supported: 64GB
• Channel Supported: Quad Channel

Expansion Slots:

• PCI Express 3.0 x16: 4 (40-lane CPU @ x16, x16/x16, x16/x8/x8 or x16/x8/x8/x8; 28-lane CPU @ x16, x16/x8, x8/x8/x8)
• PCI Express 2.0 x16: 1 (Max. at x4 mode)
• PCI Express x1: 1
• Quad-GPU NVIDIA 4-Way SLI and AMD 4-way/Quad-GPU CrossFireX Technology (support up to 3-Way with 28-lane CPU)

 Storage Devices:

• SATA 6Gb/s: 8 x SATA 6Gb/s
• SATA Express: Intel X99 – 1 x SATA Express port, red, compatible with 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports , ASMedia SATA Express controller – 1 x SATA Express port, red, compatible with 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports
• M.2: 1 x M.2 Socket 3 with M Key, support type 2260/2280/22110 storage devices
• SATA RAID: 0/1/5/10

Rear Panel Ports:

• PS/2: 1
• RJ45: 1 x RJ45
• USB 3.0: 10 x USB 3.0
• USB 1.1/2.0: 2 x USB 2.0
• S/PDIF Out: 1 x Optical
• Audio Ports: 5 Ports

Internal I/O Connectors:

• Onboard USB
• 4 x USB 3.0
• 4 x USB 2.0

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While at Pepcom-San Francisco Kington’s representative introduced us to Kingston’s second-generation MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 battery charger and storage device. We were hoping for a significant improvement over the first generation. We were not very enthusiastic about last year’s first generation MobileLite Wireless unit. It was strictly a wireless card reader with internet pass thru capability, plus a portable battery for charging your mobile devices. The case design and functionality left a lot of room for improvement. We have Verizon’s expensive LTE data service which is great stateside. Other BSN* editors have wireless coverage from carriers that work best at their stateside offices. However, our editors travel outside the USA and several of them live in other countries. So stateside wireless data package coverage suddenly disappears or becomes outlandishly expensive.

Specifications

This is where the Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 steps up to store that data until you can get somewhere convenient to transfer it. It also extends your storage, streams your media, charges your devices, reads from USBs and SD cards, and allows you to connect to the web with it acting as a portable router. For those of you shooting multi-megabyte RAW photos with a Canon or Nikon DSLR camera, simply put your SDHC card into the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2. It will easily store those images until you get back to a place with a secure high-speed WiFi or wired network. Then you switch over to your second SDHC card and continue shooting the event. If you have a partner with you, they can take the MobileLite G2 with your SDHC card in it to the nearest secure WiFi and send the images and data files to your home or office webserver via FTP.

With its built-in 3.8v Li-ion battery at 4640 mAh, it can last for up to 13 hours of continuous use. That will keep your mobile devices alive, until you get back to your car or a location with 110V shore power.

Packaging

Kingston’s package explains the features on the front and inside flap of the box.

Just three items are in the box: a 1.5 foot USB 2.0 cable, a microSD to SD card adapter, and the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 device. You will have to download the Kingston MobileLite Wireless app from the appropriate app store – Google Play, Apple App Store, or Amazon Apps. We tested the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 application with the HTC One M8 (Android 4.4.4).

There is no documentation with the unit. You have to go to Kingston’s website for the manual. Your data storage is with an SD card, either the micro-SD format using an adapter or a standard SD card. For this review, we are using the Kingston 32GB SDHC Class 10 card with 30MB/S transfer capability.

The Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 includes 3G USB dongle support for direct connections and is compatible with Android 4.0+, iPad (2, 3rd Gen, 4th Gen, mini, Air), iPhone 4/4S/5, iPod Touch (iOS 7+), Kindle Fire, and Kindle Fire HD. When connected via USB to a PC, it can act as a USB 2.0 card reader for the system. For a desktop PC, it is compatible with many operating systems including Windows Vista (SP2), Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Mac OSX V. 10.6.X+, and Linux v. 2.6.x+. The MobileLite Wireless G2 has an 802.11 g/n WiFi access point that supports WPA2 data encryption. WiFi is one of the ways to access the MobileLite G2 when using a smartphone or tablet, thus having a fast and secure 802.xx connection is important.

User Experience

The white bezel has six buttons, LEDs, and ports. Below from left to right, first is the battery LED/ power which indicate remaining battery time. Pressing the larger white Power button (fourth from left) makes the LED change colors. Green indicates 51 percent to 100 percent battery charge is remaining. Orange indicates 25 percent to 50 percent remaining, and red indicates less than 25 percent battery charge is remaining. Next is WiFi LED which indicates current status of WiFi broadcast. The next LED to the right is for Bridged that lets you know if the MobileLite G2 is bridged to an Internet gateway via WiFi or with the Ethernet cable port.

The larger Power button turns the MobileLite G2 on or off with a short one second press. Holding the power button down for three seconds will put it into WiFi mode. Next to the right is the Reset button. Holding it down for more than 10 seconds will reset the MobileLite G2 to its original default configuration. The Micro-B USB port is a multi-function port. It is the way you charge the MobileLite G2. Or you can connect to a standard USB port on your computer for data transfer. The microUSB port is to charge the device’s internal 4640 mAh battery. The battery charge status indicator LED makes sure you charge the MobileLite G2 before you walk out your home/office door.

On the opposite side of the white bezel is the Ethernet port. Using a standard Cat 5e/6 cable you can connect the MobileLite G2 to your wired network. This allows you to create a hotspot for wireless Internet access. On the end of the white bezel is the SD card slot and a USB 2.0 port. The USB port works with the USB Standard Type A plug, the most common USB male end connector.

Kingston’s MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 app on our HTC One M8 was minimalistic. There is no GUI, it is just like an old-fashioned bare bones file directory app. This is the place where we went back to the 13 page owner’s manual. It was not very informative. The manual could use some better examples. We suggest Kingston partner with a software developer to build a full-featured GUI application. That would take care of the only short coming we found. Using our 14Mbps WiFi connection at 100 feet distance we were able to quickly load multiple music files and large video files from the Cobra ultraHD dash cam (which will be our next review). The app helps you make folders for keeping track of music, videos, and data. The app does include a basic photo viewer as well as a music player.

Conclusion

The Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 is a light weight device which has an amazing number of features. All the Mobile G2’s features worked, however, you should allow yourself a bit of time to learn how to use them all. Pricing of the Kingston MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 at Amazon is only about five dollars more than the eyeFi Mobi 8GB WiFi card. Plus the MobileLite G2 has battery charging with up-to 13 hours of functionality and you can use any microSD or SD card for storage. BSN* rates it as a must-have for everyone, especially those readers who have one of the older smartphones or tablets without a micro-SD expansion card slot. Special thanks to Kingston for providing the MobileLite Wireless Mobile G2 charger and storage device, and the Kingston 32GB SDHC Class 10 card and to David Leong, and Shealyn Johnson for their assistance.

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While at Pepcom-San Francisco we met with Kington’s David Leong and Shealyn Johnson. They introduced us to their HyperX Cloud gaming headset. Kingston developed the Hyper X Cloud headset with the assistance of Qpad, a peripheral company based in Sweden. Qpad has helped others launch their headsets. That immediately raised our expectations because of the positive reviews for the Qpad QH-90. The Hyper X Cloud headset is aimed at price conscious “pro” gamers. Pricing has a wide range from $80 at Amazon to $114 at Tiger Direct. BSN* considers the price point something that made us want to take a closer look.

The packaging has a colorful format in English and several Romance languages with the features listed on the back.

HyperX Cloud Headset Shelf Boxing

The specifications, as expected, are better than a lot of lower priced headsets, starting with closed ear cups, 53mm drivers, and frequency response range of 15Hz to 25,000Hz.

Slide the outer box off of the inner matt black box and you notice it has the stylized HyperX logo. Kingston put time and effort into showing that this headset is going to be special.

We lifted the lid of the inner box and found an introduction letter by HyperX General Manager, Anres “G8V1k1ng” Willumsen. Under the letter is a foam pad covering the parts. The inner box is also foam padded and at one end is a cover, again with the HyperX logo, which hides the carry pouch and a collection of cables. Software to control volume and tone was missing.

G8V1k1ng Introduction to HyperX Team

Under the foam pad are all the goodies in their own plastic bags. Kingston really did themselves proud in packing this product.

The detachable microphone has its own slot inside the black inner box as does the control box which has a one meter braded extension cord. The airline adapter has its own spot in the upper corner of the box. Additional cables are inside a black mesh padded bag.

All the parts in full view

A volume control wheel and a multi-function button are on the side of the control box. The multi-function button can answer or hang up a phone call when attached to a smart phone and pause music when attached to a music player. The Y-cord, two-to-one adapter that lets you use the headset with a smartphone or tablet.

There is a two meter extension cord with color-coded male ends, and the airline seat’s sound adapter. The Y-cord, two-to-one adapter plugs into the dual-prong airline adapter for those long overseas plane rides.

The Kingston HyperX Cloud is a well-built headset. The aluminum head band has foam padding and is covered in stitched soft leather with the HyperX logo. The headband is flexible, yet has a gentle clamping on your head. Several different people tried the headset and it accommodated sizes from youngsters to full-sized football player. The headband connects the closed ear cups with a hinge and there are braided cables to each cup.

There are optional soft velour cups for the headset. They will change the sound because they are permeable. One problem I had was it took me nearly an hour to switch from the leather ones to the velour and back to the leather ones. I would not recommend trying this just before you sit down to play a game or listen to music. The slot for slipping the elasticized edges of the cups back into the cups slot is a really tight fit which is good for listening, but difficult for changing out.

The microphone has a foam windscreen cover with a flexible six-inch boom. In the photo below you see the small plug that can be inserted into the left ear cup where the microphone plugs in.

How does music sound? Everybody hears sound differently. Younger people have better hearing than us older folks. Also how much variation in musical styles you are familiar with will affect your expectations.

When I first tried the Kingston HyperX Cloud headset, I plugged it into the ASUS A55M-AUSB motherboard. I found that neither the treble highs, the bass lows, nor the volume matched my expectations. Next I tried the ASUS F2A85M Pro motherboard which was only a small amount better. Finally, I switched to the MSI A88XM-E45 gaming motherboard and I got the performance I was looking for. I immediately noticed the difference in symphonic music with the clear separation of the orchestra’s instruments. Then I switched to hard driving Jimmy Hendrix feedback guitar solos from Woodstock turned up all the way. The headsets didn’t distort.

I tried a couple of different movie DVDs and the actor’s speech was clear over the background sounds. Explosions were distinct and didn’t fuzz out like some inexpensive stand-alone speakers do. Jet engine aircraft sounded like they do on the runway tarmac. Next I plugged them into an older Onkyo receiver and DVD changer using the Y-cord, two-to-one adapter. The response range was very good to my ears. I even dozed off wearing them and awoke without any pain from having them on for a long time. The HyperX Cloud headset uses 60ohms and is capable of 150 watts input. The 53mm drivers are capable of driving sound levels that can be painful. Overall, the sound was bright and BSN* recommends gamers use a proven gaming motherboard with this headset. When I had the velour ear cups installed, although cozy, I noticed a considerable drop in volume and the highs and lows were just not there.

The microphone worked well for Skype and passed the compatibility testing for Dragon’s Naturally Speaking speech-to-text application . The latter can be a problem for some so-called gaming headsets. If as a gamer, you want that ultimate 3D surround-sound experience, you will have to double or triple the price of Kingston’s HyperX Cloud headset. If you play mainly story driven games and isometric games, this headset will do the job. The Kingston HyperX Cloud headset build quality is very good and the comfort level is excellent. It is a very good quality audiophile headset that is being sold to the price conscious gamer.

BSN* recommends Kingston get our value award.

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If you’re looking for a high speed set of DDR4 RAM there are no shortage of choices these days, even if supplies are still fairly tight.  The HyperX Predator line from Kingston is fresh on the scene and is hoping to be the choice for many enthusiasts with its competitive pricing.  This kit is the 16GB Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4 3000 C15 quad channel kit ( HX430C15PB2K4/16 ).  It has two XMP profiles, of which are 3000 15-16-16-39 2T and 2666  14-14-14-36 2T.  Having the multiple XMP profiles provides a bit of comfort knowing that there are two good configurations provided with the kit that are set and forget.  These modules were a sample and did not come with the regular retail packaging, so what photos we have are limited to the actual modules.  Thankfully, you don’t buy memory for the packaging.  You buy it for the performance, and boy did this set post some very impressive results.

Specifications:

• Model – HX430C15PB2K4/16
• Type – 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM
• Capacity – 16GB (4 x 4GB)
• Speed – DDR4 3000 (PC4-24000)
• Cas Latency – 15
• Voltage – 1.35V
• Multi-channel Kit – Quad Channel Kit

Features

• Power Supply: VDD=1.2V Typical
• VDDQ = 1.2V Typical
• VPP – 2.5V Typical
• VDDSPD=2.2V to 3.6V
• Nominal and dynamic on-die termination (ODT) for data, strobe, and mask signals
• Low-power auto self refresh (LPASR)
• Data bus inversion (DBI) for data bus
• On-die VREFDQ generation and calibration
• Single-rank
• On-board I2 serial presence-detect (SPD) EEPROM
• 16 internal banks; 4 groups of 4 banks each
• Fixed burst chop (BC) of 4 and burst length (BL) of 8 via the mode register set (MRS)
• Selectable BC4 or BL8 on-the-fly (OTF)
• Fly-by topology
• Terminated control command and address bus

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Kingston has launched new memory modules in the HyperX Savage line. The modules are targeted at the enthusiast segment and will be replacing HyperX’s mid-tier Genesis line.

Featuring a bright red heatspreader cast out of aluminium, the Savage line of memory modules are designed to offer high performance and reliability. With dimensions of 133.35 mm x 32.8 mm, the modules are fairly low profile and are ideal in builds that feature large CPU coolers like the Noctua NH-D15. We first saw this memory back in Taipei at Computex 2014 and were given the low-down on the company’s efforts to re-brand their three different tiers of memory into HyperX Fury for entry-level gamers (to replace Blu), HyperX Savage for mid-level gamers (to replace Genesis) and HyperX Predator which will remain the top end line of HyperX products.

The HyperX Savage memory modules will be available in 4 GB and 8 GB as single modules, and from 8 GB up to 32 GB as dual-channel and quad-channel kits. Frequencies range from 1600MHz, 1866MHz, 2133MHz and 2400MHz, while CAS latency is either CL9 or CL11, based on the model. The memory modules are compatible with a wide variety of Intel chipsets like the H67, H97, P67, Z68, Z77, Z87, Z97 and H61, as well as A75, A87, A88, A89, A78 and E35 chipsets from AMD.

HyperX Savage

As with all HyperX modules, the Savage line is backed by a lifetime warranty.

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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.

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Remember when we were at Computex and Kingston had given us a special sneek peek at their new SSDs? Well, the SSDNow V310 was among one of those drives, but we didn’t know when it was going to be launched. Today marks the day that Kingston launches their new SSDNow V310 SSD with a 960GB capacity, which they’re calling 1TB. Since it isn’t a 1024GB SSD, we’re not going to be calling it a 1TB SSD, even if Kingston is just because once you format this drive you’ll probably be looking at under 900GB of formatted space. We’ve included some of the photos that we took of that drive in our article so that you can get an idea of what this drive is capable of doing.

The drive does indeed fit the 2.5″ drive formfactor and is only 7mm thick, meaning that it can easily fit into most laptops or desktops. It is also SATA 3.0, meaning its capable of speeds up to 6 Gbps. And below, we’ve got a picture of it running in a system.

We also have some preliminary speeds, thanks to Kingston’s own performance benchmarks and as you can see, the drive is capable of sequential reads and writes of 500 MB/s and 485 MB/s respectively, which isn’t necessarily near the top of the pack, but it is fairly good for such a large drive using SATA 6 Gbps.

We’ve spoken to Kingston and they’ve told us that the SSDNow V310 960GB SSD will be available shortly, however there isn’t a price for the drive just yet. But we did some poking around and were able to find an online retailer that already has the drive and price listed at $555, which may just be a pricing placeholder. But for now, that’s all we’ve got to work with in terms of pricing. But what does make this drive great is the fact that you can basically migrate over an entire hard drive onto the SSD without worrying about if you’ll run out of space, which is still a legitimate concern for a lot of people. Affordable SSD storage is important and hopefully this is the sign that we’re getting towards large enough capacities that smaller HDDs (2TB and under) are irrelevant.

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Recently, Kingston launched a new line of  ‘4K’ SDXC memory cards and they sent us their 32 GB and 64 GB variants for testing. Over the course of the past few months, we’ve put these memory cards through our paces, shooting thousands of images through each memory card, making sure that they were put to the test. In our testing, we will check the memory cards’ speeds relative to the competition as well as how they perform inside our D800. In addition to that, we will likely try to adjust our real world test to be used with something like an a6000 in the future because it is capable of 11 FPS compared to the 4 FPS of our D800.

Since memory card tests are simple, we’ll keep things simple. We’re looking to see if Kingston’s 4K memory cards are going to be comparable to using something like a CF card since their speeds are theoretically reaching CF card speeds. Also, remember that SD cards are fundamentally going to be slower because of the DRM built into the SD standard, something that the CF cards do not have. Also, one must remember that SDXC cards are not backwards compatible with SDHC devices, meaning that in order to get these faster UHS speeds you must have an SDXC capable device. Sure, SDXC, SDHC and SD cards will work fine in an SDXC device but the SDXC cards simply require hardware support, so keep this in mind when buying any SD cards for your camera, tablet or whatever else might use an SD card.

The back of the packaging of the Kingston SDXC 4K cards

As you can see, the back of the packaging is pretty simple much like the front but tells you how to and how not to use these cards. They are qualified for all of the standards, and if you noticed on the front of the packaging, these cards are warrantied for life, unlike a lot of their competitors that might only slap a 1 or 2 year warranty. For this alone, you can believe that Kingston’s cards are going to have some serious longevity and reliability. After all, nobody wants an SD card to suddenly go bad on them and corrupt itself and lose tons of images.

So far, I’ve been using both cards pretty heavily since I got them around March and they’ve continually performed quite well through my USB 3.0 card reader and we’ve got some performance benchmarks for you to see exactly how fast.

CrystalDiskMark

First, we tested CrystalDiskMark to get an idea of what kind of performance you could see from these memory cards in a best case scenario. Here, we saw the cards performing very close to each other, but they didn’t quite reach 90 MB/s that was rated on the front of the cards and packaging themselves. However, they were still faster than all of the SDXC cards that we tested from ADATA and Patriot. The 32 GB card had a sequential read of 83.72 MB/s and a write of 78.11 MB/s while the 64 GB card had a slightly better read speed of 84.19 MB/s and a slightly worse write of 76.14 MB/s. All of these speeds were taken as an average of three tests, which themselves are an average of 5 tests in CrystalDiskMark. The Kingston 32 GB CF 600X card blew away the competition in terms of read speeds with a 113.7 MB/s read speed but a much worse 59.24 MB/s write speed, indicating that the 4K cards actually have better write performance than the CF card does.

After these findings, we were excited to see how the 4K SDXC cards from Kingston would perform in our D800. The D800 supports both CF and SDXC which makes using these cards in it a perfect test platform to compare CF against SDXC. For our testing, we simply took each card, properly formatted it, and then held down the shutter button for 30 seconds and counted the amount of photos that were written to the card. We did this both in RAW+JPEG as well as RAW only, depending on your style of shooting. Since this is a professional camera we did not bother with JPEG only.

In Camera Real World Test

Here we saw a slightly wider gap between the different speeds of the cards. The Patriot 128 GB card performed at 27 shots per 30s while the ADATA 32 GB card shot 29, as did the Patriot EP 32 GB. The Kingston 32 GB 4K SDXC card managed 35 shots in 30 seconds and the 64 GB 4K card 37. However, the CF card bested both of these cards with a 20% or so improvement of 43 shots per 30 seconds, which means that either the SD pipeline on the D800 is fundamentally slower or that the memory cards are having a hard time coping with the JPEG + RAW write load. This question gets answered when you look at the RAW only performance.

With RAW only, the performance between all of the cards goes up except with the Kingston 32 GB CF card. The removal of the JPEG write obviously makes a difference on these SD cards very likely because of the SD DRM combined with the processing necessary for the camera to process JPEGs. The slower cards saw the best performance improvements, significantly reducing the performance gap between cards. The Patriot 128 GB SDXC card improved to 33 shots per 30 seconds while the ADATA 32 GB SDXC card got 34 and the Patriot EP 32 GB got 35. The Kingston 32 GB 4K SDXC card managed a speed of 38 shots in 30 seconds while the 64 GB card got 41 shots in 30 seconds. But once again, the CF card overall performed the best with 43 shots per second, indicating that the JPEG compression doesn’t appear to affect the performance of the CF card like it does the SD cards.

Unfortunately for our review, we weren’t able to test these cards capability of actually recording 4K video, but there are very few cameras that can actually record 4K to an SD card, and almost all of them require an SDXC card like the Sony FDR-AX100 4K video camera and Panasonic GH4. However, both of these cameras record at 100 Mbps, which means that these cards’ write speeds are more than ample enough to handle 4K recording from these cameras. Plus, their higher read speeds will mean that you’ll get your 4K footage off these cameras much more quickly as well.

The cards themselves are pretty reasonably priced for their performance and warranty, with the 64 GB version selling for $100 on Amazon and the 32 GB version selling for $53, so you’re not really saving any money by going for the bigger card if you don’t need the capacity. However, I personally prefer larger SD cards so that I don’t have to worry about running out or swapping. These cards are good enough that they’ve forced me to swap out my favored 128 GB Patriot SDXC card in favor of the 64 and 32 GB 4K SDXC cards from Kingston purely because of how quickly I can transfer the images. However, these cards slightly underperformed in our expectations for their read and write speeds, most likely because Kingston’s figures were tested using ATTO which is usually ‘best case’ scenario for any sort of storage medium.

Either way, these cards are going to be great for any photography or video you might shoot with them and you don’t have to have a 4K camera in order to use them. There are plenty of uses for such high performance cards and at a fairly reasonable price. SanDisk has a similarly priced card that quotes a 95 MB/s rating instead of Kingston’s 90 MB/s but the reality is that their card will likely perform about the same, even though it is a few dollars cheaper and doesn’t have a lifetime warranty. We will try our best to get one of their cards in our hands shortly, but until then, the Kingston 4K SDXC cards are the new kings of the SDXC hill.

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Kingston today held an overclocking competition with some of the world’s leading overclockers, their HOT (HyperX Overclocking Takeover). They offered a prize pool of $10,000 that would be distributed among the top 3 winners of 3 different benchmarks including Memory Clock speed, SuperPi 32M and Intel’s XTU. The teams were competing with eachother all day long and ultimately the majority of the competition was won by Team Gigabyte, who had utilized Kingston’s memory earlier in the week with their board to break the memory clock speed world record at 4.5 GHz.

Over the course of the day, the overclockers were competing to win the three different benchmarks. In the end, Team Gigabyte ended up hitting memory clock speeds of 2282.8 MHz which is an effective clock speed of 4.565 GHz on DDR3 memory that was originally clocked at 2.933 GHz. They ended up going home with $3,750 while TeamAU went home with $3,250 after getting 2nd place in all three benchmarks and finally Team China got $1,000 winning the SuperPi 32 benchmark.

HyperX OC Takeover Trophies

Kingston brought together all of these overclockers to show off how their HyperX memory is capable of some astonishing feats and will likely be able to go even higher than the current world record set at this event. 4.56 GHz is without a doubt an impressive memory clock speed and I have a feeling that there’s still a lot more to come from Gigabyte and Kingston in the coming days and weeks.

Kingston’s HyperX memory was well utilized by all of the teams present and will probably be used by a lot of the teams that competed today in order to try to get the best scores on the HWBot in the future as well to take their respective points. The winners today were certainly Team Gigabyte with their new Z97 boards as well as Kingston being able to get notoriety and yet another memory clock speed world record.

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As you would expect, Gigabyte has announced their new line of 9 series Intel chipset motherboards, with the primary focus being on their Z97 chipset motherboards. This time around, Gigabyte will have four different flavors of Z97 boards, which will support both 4th and 5th generation Intel Core processors. Gigabyte has rolled over a lot of the things from their Z87 line of motherboards, but also made some modifications and improvements to make the Z97 a worthwhile upgrade.

Gigabyte’s four different lines are their Gaming line, Ultra Durable line, Overclocking line and a new Black Edition line. The bulk of Gigabyte’s boards are going to be in their Ultra Durable line, which comes as a result of the fact that Gigabyte has decided to do away with the Ultra Durable numbering scheme, a good decision. In addition to that, Gigabyte is bringing more and more of their gaming and overclocking premium board features into their mainstream Ultra Durable line of boards. This is a welcome move because it simply improves the overall value of buying virtually any Gigabyte board. Some of those features include improved audio codecs and isolation as well as dual NICs and other gamer-focused innovations.

Gigabyte’s Z97 Gaming G1 Black Edition

However, in terms of excitement, Gigabyte’s most interesting announcement was the announcement of their Z97-OC LN2 board which is strictly an LN2 overclocking motherboard (or HE3). This board is especially interesting because of the way it was designed for optimal memory overclocking. This board recently broke the world record for the fastest memory, ever at 4.5 GHz, beating the previous record of 4.4 GHz on an ASUS board. It is a bit curious, though, that this new record isn’t being posted on HWBot, but maybe it will shortly… This Z97-OC LN2 board is special because it only has two memory slots and no mounting holes for the CPU. Because of these two major design decisions, this board is capable of overclocking memory higher than any board before it. And it was all done using Kingston memory, too.

The rest of Gigabyte’s line pretty much stays the same, gaining a few incremental upgrades here and there with the addition of M.2 connector and SATA Express support with the Z97 chipset. Obviously, not all boards will have these features but they will come and go through the product stack. The only new addition to Gigabyte’s line of boards are their Black Edition boards, which are Gigabyte’s premier quality boards designed and tested to last. All of Gigabyte’s Z97 Black Edition boards are designed for the ultimate durability, enduring 168 hours of grueling testing before being sent out to the customer accompanied by a 5 year warranty. Currently, Gigabyte only has three Black Edition boards, starting with a UD3 board, followed by a UD5 and finally completed with a G1 Gaming Z97 board which pretty much fills the Black Edition lineup with boards from all three different price and feature levels from Gigabyte.

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