Kingston HyperX Fury RGB SSD Review

By Olin Coles

Manufacturer: Kingston Technology Corporation
Product Name: HyperX Fury RGB Solid State Drive
Model Number: SHFR200/480G
UPC: 740617283709
Price As Tested: $124.99 (Amazon)

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Kingston.

HyperX Fury RGB lights up that dark space in your case with customizable lighting effects, and is fully compatible with all modern RGB controllers. Utilizing the economical Marvell 88SS1074 storage controller with Toshiba 3D TLC NAND flash components, the Kingston HyperX Fury RGB SSD advertises 550 MB/s peak read speeds and 480 MB/s writes. The Fury RGB SSD also offers 500x its capacity is total bytes written, with a three-year warranty. In this article for Benchmark Reviews, we test the HyperX Fury RGB SSD against the leading SATA-based competition.

If you’ve kept up with technology news, you might have been misled into believing the SATA 6Gb/s interface was made obsolete by speedy M.2 2280 form factor on the PCIe 3.0 interface. SATA 6G is still very much the standard, with widespread platform support. The Kingston HyperX Fury RGB SSD is a 2.5″ solid state drive made for the SATA 6Gb/s interface, which is still widely utilized by most desktop computers and notebook PCs.

HyperX FURY RGB SSD Specifications:

• Interface: 2.5” SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) – with backwards compatibility to SATA Rev. 2.0 (3Gb/s)
• Capacities: 240GB, 480GB, 960GB
• Controller: Marvell 88SS1074
• NAND: Toshiba 3D TLC
• Sequential Read/Write: 240GB-960GB — up to 550/480MB/s
• Power Consumption: 0.2W Idle / 0.6W Avg. / 1.2W (MAX) Read / 2.5 W (MAX) Write
• Dimensions: 100.14mm x 69.85mm x 9.5mm
• Operating temperature: 0°C~70°C
• Storage temperature: -40°C~85°C
• Weight: 165g
• Vibration operating: 2.17G Peak (7–800Hz)
• Vibration non-operating: 20G Peak (10–2000Hz)
• Life expectancy: 1 million hours MTBF
• Warranty/support: Limited 3-year warranty with free technical support
• Total Bytes Written (TBW):
  • 240GB — 120TB – SHFR200/240G @ $74.99 (Amazon)
  • 480GB — 240TB – SHFR200/480G @ $124.99 (Amazon)
  • 960GB — 480TB – SHFR200/960G @ $219.99 (Amazon)

Bandwidth Speed vs Operational Performance

Solid State Drive performance revolves around two dynamics: bandwidth speed (MB/s) and operational performance I/O per second (IOPS). These two metrics work together, but one may be more important than the other depending on the workload. Consider this analogy: bandwidth determines how much cargo a ship can transport in one voyage, and operational IOPS performance is how fast that ship moves back and forth. By understanding this and applying it to SSD storage, there is a clear importance set on each variable depending on the task at hand.

For casual users, especially those with laptop or desktop computers that have been upgraded to use an SSD, the naturally quick response time is enough to automatically improve the user experience. Bandwidth speed is important, but only to the extent that operational performance meets the minimum needs of the system. If an SSD has a very high bandwidth speed but a low operational performance, it will take longer to load applications and boot the computer’s Operating System than another SSD that offers higher IOPS performance.