Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB SSD Review

By Chris Ramseyer
published

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Technical Specifications
Kingston HyperX Savage 120GB
Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB
Kingston HyperX Savage 480GB


MORE: Best SSDs For The Money
MORE: All Storage Articles
MORE: Storage in the Forums

Even without the new firmware, Kingston's HyperX Savage delivers solid performance. The sequential results we measured were some of the highest we've seen from a SATA-based product. At high queue depths, the Savage SSD is limited by that SATA bus, just like many competing high-end drives. Kingston doesn't publish performance numbers at low queue depths like Samsung and SanDisk, so we'll look at those areas in our testing today.

Kingston pairs the Phison controller with second-generation 19nm Toshiba Toggle-mode flash. Though it costs a bit more than the Micron flash used in Patriot's Ignite, performance should be a little higher with Toggle-mode flash.

Regardless of the flash alongside Phison's S10, this controller works with compressible and incompressible data differently, increasing sequential read performance when it's dealing with compressible information. We'll demonstrate the effect in question throughout our benchmarks.

Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews consumer storage.
25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • wtfxxxgp
    ouch
    Reply
  • mapesdhs
    Is there really anyone who would buy one of these over an EVO or Pro? I don't get Kingston's MO at all...
    Reply
  • AndrewJacksonZA
    Right in your article there's a link to Amazon that has the Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB for USD110. There's also a link to the SanDisk Ultra II 240GB on Amazon for USD85.

    I do realize that you can't track all the pricing changes and that you base your reviews on the MSRP, I just thought that I'd point out in the comments that your "Price" con could perhaps no longer be justified.

    Thanks for the review Chris. :-)
    Reply
  • AndrewJacksonZA
    Is there really anyone who would buy one of these over an EVO or Pro? I don't get Kingston's MO at all...
    In my current situation I'd go for a drive that gives me good value for money, which in my country, last time I checked, is a SanDisk or a Crucial, not the Samsung. However, your point is quite valid. Let's wait for the firmware upgrade, perhaps Chris might be willing to revisit this review.
    Reply
  • CRamseyer
    The issue with pricing right now is the reviews are taking a little longer than I expected to come out. This was finished a month ago.

    In the next 30 days or so Phison should have the "10K" update finished. When that comes out this product could be competitive with 850 Pro and 850 EVO in 4K random performance. That is what they tell us anyway but we've been waiting on the 10K update for quite a while now.
    Reply
  • rohitbaran
    This price better be an introductory price, considering that you can get a Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB SSD for $170 if you look around and that drive is unbeatable for the price as of now.
    Reply
  • teknobug
    I have a Kingston HyperX 3K, it's a pretty fast drive but once I got a Samsung 850 EVO I was blown away at the difference and the Samsung is just a much better performer. I also have a Kingston SSDNow V300 and let's just say we should all forget that series ever exists, mine is the original kind before Kingston made them 50% slower but still they're not very good performing SSD's, my first gen Intel SSD (X-25) still performs better than the SSDNow V300 does.
    Reply
  • Larry Litmanen
    If SSDs die after 3-4 years what is their future in consumer grade PCs. Regular people who have zero interest in tech will not be able to replace an SSD and boot OS on it.

    Reply
  • Glock24
    After the V300 scam, I don't trust Kingston any more. It's a shame, I used to like their products.
    Reply
  • Yoshihiro Shimokawa
    So wait, the 960GB model has 1024GB available to the user? That's a typo right?
    Reply