SSDs was once considered a luxury and unnecessary a few years back due to its high price that not many could afford even for the smaller capacity 60GB or 64GB variant. As competition arises, price of SSD has become much more affordable and the once dreamed 120GB / 128GB SSD would probably cost you around RM250 or much lesser.
Kingston's HyperX SSD is one of the best performing SSD available since the HyperX 5K and 3K. Fury was Kingston's last year new lineup in the HyperX flagship memory products and we saw the new Savage coming when the new Savage memory is announced back in September 2014. The star of today's review, the HyperX Savage SSD arrived at Tech Critter's lab awhile ago - million thanks to Kingston in making this review possible! The price is yet to be decided at the time this article is written, but here's the rough estimation for each models with different capacity:
- HyperX Savage 120GB - $83.99 (298.90 MYR)
- HyperX Savage 240GB - $139.99 (498.83 MYR)
- HyperX Savage 480GB - $279.99 (996.40 MYR)
- HyperX Savage 960GB - $559.99 (1995.41 MYR)
Specifications
Overview
The HyperX Savage is rather luxurious in terms on the packaging, which somehow reminded us the HyperX 5K and 3K back then. Sweet!
Aside of the product description, Kingston has listed out the content at the back of the box. As expected, the similar upgrade kit from both HyperX 5k and 3K consisting the USB 3.0 enclosure, 3.5" bracket, SATA cable, screw driver kit and the spacer.
The HyperX Savage sits firmly in the middle of the padded foam cutout for the best protection.
At the base of the padded foam cutout, we can see the iconic 'X' logo of Kingston's HyperX flagship.
The full content of the package:
- USB 3.0 enclosure
- User's guide
- 3.5" bracket
- SATA cable
- HyperX sticker
- HyperX Savage SSD
- SSD spacer
- Screw driver kit
The 2.5" enclosure can be used for upgrade purpose or just simply to use the SSD as an ultra fast external hard drive.
The lever to lock/unlock the enclosure.
The inside of the enclosure.
The USB 3.0 header of the enclosure.
The screw driver kit, it has pretty much every size you need for installation.
The HyperX Savage has a very striking appearance, unlike any we've seen up to date. How much SWAG can you have?
At the back of the SSD we can see a warranty label covering one of the screw of the SSD enclosure - it's advised to not to tamper with it as it will void the manufacturer warranty from Kingston.
Testing Method
Test Rig Configuration | |
CPU Cooler | Corsair Hydro Series H100i |
CPU | Intel Core i7 5960X |
Motherboard | ASUS X99-PRO |
Memory | Kingston HyperX Predator 8GB |
Primary Hard Drive | - |
Power Supply | be quiet! Straight Power 10 600W |
Chassis | Vector Benchcase |
CrystalDiskMark
Developed by a Japanese coder that goes by the nickname Hiyohiyo, CrystalDiskMark is one of the most frequent used SSD Benchmark utility to measure SSD's read and write performance. There's 2 option for the test data used, compressible (0 fill) and incompressible (1 fill).
Developed by a Japanese coder that goes by the nickname Hiyohiyo, CrystalDiskMark is one of the most frequent used SSD Benchmark utility to measure SSD's read and write performance. There's 2 option for the test data used, compressible (0 fill) and incompressible (1 fill).
AS SSD Benchmark
Widely used SSD benchmarking utility that uses incompressible data to simulate the worst possible scenario for a SSD and thus giving a much lower sequential read and write speed result than what has been stated by the manufacturer as result of the heavy workload.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
The most frequently used benchmarking utility by many manufacturers for performance specification. As ATTO Disk Benchmark uses compressible data rather than compressible data, it results in higher benchmark scores. We've ran the benchmark with transfer size ranged from 0.5KB to 8192KB and total length of the test to be 256MB.
Anvil's Storage Utilities
By far the most complete SSD Benchmark utility available. The Anvil's Storage Utilities not only comes with the standard SSD Benchmark function, it also includes other functions such as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests and option to configure the compressibility of the test data.
Real World Usage
We've ran several test that with several SSD (including the HyperX Savage) with at least 40% capacity occupied with various commonly used software to simulate the real world scenario.
We've conducted few tests to simulate the real world usage - boot up time, launching photoshop CS6, launching Battlefield 4 and transferring a 5GB movie file. Among all the SATA based SSD tested, the HyperX Savage performs the best in terms of overall performance.
Final Thoughts
On aesthetic aspects, the HyperX Savage is not your average plain looking SSD with just a sticker. Gamers and enthusiasts who has been very picky when it comes to picking the right hardware to match their preferred color scheme would love this, especially for those who likes the black-red themed build.
Performance wise, the HyperX Savage might not be the best if it were to be compared with other top rated brands but it's a SSD that is worthy to be recommend to others based on the performance it has displayed throughout our test.
It might not be the cheapest SSD you can get, but it's no doubt a steal for what you can get from the HyperX Savage SSD - the upgrade bundle kit, good looking and the performance that lives up to the standard of a HyperX flagship SSD is worthy to be recommended.
Pros
- Comes with 3 year warranty
- Decent build quality
- Decent performance
- Good aesthetic aspects
- Awesome bundled upgrade kit
Cons
- A little costly
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