Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 128GB Portable SSD

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] While we were in Taiwan last summer for Computex, Kingston took us on a tour of its Hsinchu factory, and afterwards, gave us a preview of its HyperX portable SSD. After that point, it took the company nearly five months to bring the product to market, while others, namely OCZ, had similar products available for much longer. If there's one thing that's ultra-clear about Kingston's operation, though, it's that the company doesn't like to rush anything. Rather, it's more than willing to miss the boat in the beginning in order to deliver a knock-out product void of design bugs when the time is right. Can Kingston's first true portable SSD knock out some of the other similar products we've taken a look at in the past? We'll find that out by the time this article is through. Closer Look. Like OCZ's Enyo, what makes Kingston's HyperX Max 3.0 so special is not only that it's an SSD, but that it's a portable SSD. When plugged into any USB 3.0 port, you can enjoy the super-fast speeds you've come to expect of SSDs, and afterwards, you can unhook it and bring it elsewhere. This kind of convenience is a boon to those who move around a lot and don't want to wait forever for a large file or folder to copy over. The three densities that Kingston offers for its HyperX Max 3.0 are 64GB (~$190), 128GB (~$300) and 256GB (~$650), and all three offer the same sequential speeds: 195MB/s read and 160MB/s write. Despite it's fast speed, no external power is required; just the included USB 3.0 cable. For some reason, Kingston formats the HyperX Max 3.0 as FAT32, but for improved capabilities and file system data structure, I'd recommend reformatting it to either exFAT or NTFS. For all of our testing, we used NTFS, as it's a very common SSD file system, external or not. As we've come to expect with most of Kingston's HyperX line, the Max 3.0 comes in a dark blue color, and looks quite good overall. The device isn't much larger than a typical SSD, and features a smooth, tough surface (though it's not scratch-resistant). The underbelly of the Max 3.0 doesn't look much different than the top, but to prevent it from sliding off of a desk, four small feet grips are used. Kingston's HyperX Max 3.0 by all accounts looks simple, but under its hood is super-fast NAND flash that will help make any USB 2.0 drive you own look very unattractive. So, without further ado, let's test this thing out and see how it compares to other recently-reviewed drives. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Test System & Methodology; Iometer, HD Tune Pro & PCMark] For most of our performance-type content, we hold nothing back when explaining our methodologies and beliefs. But as this is simply an external storage review, we don't feel there's quite as important a need to do that. If you've read our other performance content, you already know how seriously we take our testing practises, as it's obvious that coming up with an accurate end score for any benchmark is very important. In the case of flash drives, we repeat all tests at least twice to verify that our results are accurate. Component Model Processor Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition - Quad-Core, 3.20GHz, 1.30v Motherboard Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 (Rev 1.0) - X58-based, F5 BIOS Memory Kingston HyperX - 12GB DDR3-1333 7-7-7-24-1T, 1.60v Graphics EVGA GeForce GTX 285 1GB - GeForce 197.45 Audio On-Board Audio Storage Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11 - OS Intel X25-M G1 80GB - (Data Transfer > USB Device) Power Supply Corsair HX1000W Chassis Cooler Master CM Storm Sniper Display Dell 24" 2408WFP Cooling Thermaltake FRIO Et cetera Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit For our real-world transfer tests, the source files are stored on Intel's X25-M G1 solid-state disk, which avails us a top-end read speed of around 250MB/s. Unless the USB device we're testing with is able to write in excess of that, there should be no bottleneck. Iometer 2006.07.27. To start things off, we're using Iometer, a popular storage benchmarking application that's as effective as it is customizable. It's for both of those reasons that we choose to use it, and also thanks to the fact that it's capable of outputting the results to both MB/s and IOPS (in/out operations per second). The latter is the value we focus on, as it's become a standard for measuring performance in enterprise/IT environments. Admittedly, running this test on most USB flash drives, especially 2.0 models, is not entirely important given the typical manner they're used, but it's our goal to see where one excels over another when dealing with such an intensive test. IOPS performance would be very important if you were to install an OS on a flash drive, as long as the bandwidth throughput is also good. Kingston doesn't stress over IOPS in its SSD products, and the case seems to be the same with the company's "thumb drive" products. While both OCZ and Super Talent scored higher in the IOPS department, Kingston's drive performed on par with an external hard drive. Where external storage is concerned though, IOPS isn't nearly as important as throughput, and unless you're running an OS on it, it's not important at all. HD Tune Pro 3.5. One of the simplest methods for testing storage is with HD Tune, and as it's able to give reliable and repeatable results, we like using it in our testing. Although the program offers a good range of testing methods, we use the basic test that gives us read speeds and also access latencies. Kingston's portable SSD isn't able to keep quite up to the Super Talent and OCZ equivalents, but it still delivers outstanding performance overall - 174.3MB/s average read! PCMark Vantage. One of the more popular storage benchmarks currently is Futuremark's PCMark Vantage. Even though this is a suite designed to benchmark your entire machine, it's HDD suite test is quite robust and is good at delivering scores that scale well with the storage device you are benchmarking. Almost all of the storage companies we deal with regularly recommend using it, so we do. Up to this point, OCZ and Super Talent have surpassed Kingston's HyperX Max 3.0 in throughput and IOPS, but according to PCMark Vantage, Kingston is way, way ahead of the pack in overall use. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=CrystalDiskMark, ATTO, Real-World] Over the past year, many storage companies have been jumping on the CrystalDiskMark bandwagon to help strut their product's performance, and it's easy to understand why. Compared to others, CrystalDiskMark delivers results that are much higher, and in some regards, they could be considered unrealistic given that real-world tests and even other synthetic benchmarks never seem to back up its claims. We include it for the sake of interest and because it is still a very thorough benchmark. Similar to our HD Tune tests, Kingston's drive falls just behind the other portable SSD solutions in the read test, but soars ahead in the write. That could well be the reason the PCMark Vantage score was so high... reliable write speed counts for a lot. ATTO. While CrystalDiskMark does well to show the absolute top-end value of a storage device, ATTO doesn't fall too far behind, if at all. Its test uses a wide-range of cluster sizes, for both read and write, but we only note 4KB, 64KB and 1024KB of the former. For those interested, we use a queue depth value of 10 for testing. This chart is a bit difficult to read, given the three tests are quite different in execution, but overall, Kingston's drive performs well here. It again doesn't manage to exceed Super Talent and OCZ in the throughput race, but it's not specced as high, either, so it's to be expected. Real-World. For real-world testing, we use a set of files and folders for the sake of measuring transfer speeds, and also convert images and music on the storage device to see just how well it fares for large intensive operations. For the transfer speeds, we use both 4GB and 16GB files and folders, and for the former, we also perform copy tests, which refers to copying the file or folder on the storage device. We don't do this for our 16GB files and folders as some 32GB drives refuse it due to coming so close to the total density. Kingston's drive offers superb performance here, being able to copy over a 4GB file in a mere 23 seconds, and a 4GB folder in 65 seconds. Continuing the great performance here, Kingston's drive keeps up close to OCZ's Enyo, though falls just a bit behind in the folder copy test - one area where an ultra-high IOPS can prove beneficial. Here, Kingston's drive managed to beat out the rest of the pack, and I'm not quite sure of the reason. The results were repeatable, though, so Kingston has something good on its hands when it comes to overall performance, a fact that PCMark helps back up. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Final Thoughts][Top Ad] It goes without saying that in today's market, any SSD product you pick up is going to count as a luxury purchase. On the desktop side, mechanical hard drives can be had for as low as $0.10 a gigabyte, while for SSDs, that number is rarely lower than $1.50 per gigabyte. Of course, prices are continually going down, but it's going to be a while before SSDs are a more feasible option. For external storage, there's always been a bit of a premium, especially where flash is concerned. In most cases, the sheer speed and durability makes up for any sort of price premium, but can the same be said for the SSD brethren? This is where the "luxury" comes into play. No one needs an external SSD, but for those who either are on the go often, or don't mind tossing $300 at such a thing, the option is definitely nice to have. With USB 3.0, transfer speeds have been unleashed, and while we used to see a 4GB file copy over to a USB 2.0 premium drive in about 170 seconds, we now see the same transfer happen on SSD USB 3.0 drives in about 25 seconds. That's what I call a major improvement. So, you have the cash to invest in a super-speedy USB 3.0 SSD; is Kingston's the one to go for? After...

Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 128GB Portable SSD

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Rob Williams