Backed by a Phison S10 controller, the Savage SSD from HyperX promises to be one of their fastest SATA-based solid state solutions.
Product on Review: Savage SSD
Manufacturer: HyperX
Street Price: (240GB Model) £76 GBP / $100 USD
Kingston have long been a household name within the storage sector and the HyperX brand bears the attributes of this success. HyperX has made a concerted effort in recent times to differentiate itself from the Kingston brand — even appearing as a completely separate entity at events. The primary focus for HyperX is to appeal to enthusiasts and gamers, while Kingston focuses on the consumer.
Today we’ll be exploring the delights of a newly announced product from HyperX – the Savage SSD. Savage uses the Phison S10 controller which boasts quad-core, 8-channel architecture. This controller promises to deliver some of the fastest read/write transfer rates possible to the SATA 6G interface – so we’re expecting good things from this new solid state drive.
HyperX on their Savage SSD
HyperX® Savage solid-state drive offers extreme performance for the extreme performer. The fastest HyperX SATA-based SSD, it’s powered by a quad-core, 8-channel Phison S10 controller that delivers incredible speeds of up to 560MB/s read and 530MB/s write, with read/write IOPS up to 100k/89k. The result is ultra-responsive multitasking and an overall faster system that maintains performance even as the drive fills up. With its low profile and slim, 7mm form factor, HyperX Savage SSD fits in most notebooks, desktops and HTPC builds.
Technical Specifications
Form factor: 2.5″
Interface:
SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) – with backwards compatibility to SATA Rev. 2.0 (3Gb/s)
Capacities:
120GB, 240GB, 480GB, 960GB
Controller:
Phison PS3110-S10
Baseline Performance
Compressible Data Transfer (ATTO)
120GB — 560MB/s Read and 360MB/s Write
240GB, 480GB, 960GB — 560MB/s Read and 530MB/s Write
Incompressible Data Transfer (AS-SSD and CrystalDiskMark)
120GB — 520MB/s Read and 350MB/s Write
240GB — 520MB/s Read and 510MB/s Write
480GB — 520MB/s Read and 500MB/s Write
960GB — 520MB/s Read and 490MB/s Write
IOMETER Maximum Random 4k Read/Write
120GB — up to 100,000/ up to 84,000 IOPS
240GB — up to 100,000/ up to 89,000 IOPS
480GB — up to 100,000/ up to 88,000 IOPS
960GB — up to 99,000/ up to 89,000 IOPS
Random 4k Read/Write:
120GB — up to 93,000/ up to 83,000 IOPS
240GB — up to 93,000/ up to 89,000 IOPS
480GB — up to 92,000/ up to 89,000 IOPS
960GB — up to 97,000/ up to 89,000 IOPS
PCMARK® Vantage HDD Suite Score:
120GB, 240GB, 480GB, 960GB — 84,000
PCMARK® 8 Storage Bandwidth:
120GB, 240GB, 480GB — 223MB/s, 960GB — 260MB/s
PCMARK® 8 Storage Score:
120GB, 240GB, 480GB — 4,940, 960GB — 4,970
Anvil Total Score (Incompressible Workload):
120GB, 240GB, 480GB — 4,700, 960GB — 5,000
Power Consumption:
0.39W Idle / 0.5W Avg / 1.4W (MAX) Read / 4.35W (MAX) Write
Storage temperature:
-40°C~85°C
Operating temperature:
0°C~70°C
Dimensions:
100.0mm x 69.9mm x 7.0mm
Weight:
120GB, 240GB, 480GB — 96g, 960GB — 92g
Vibration operating:
2.17G Peak (7–800Hz)
Vibration non-operating:
20G Peak (10–2000Hz)
Life expectancy:
1 million hours MTBF
Warranty/support:
3-year warranty with free technical support
Total Bytes Written (TBW):
120GB: 113TB 0.89 DWPD4
240GB: 306TB 1.19 DWPD4
480GB: 416TB 0.81 DWPD4
960GB: 681TB 0.66 DWPD4
Interface:
SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) – with backwards compatibility to SATA Rev. 2.0 (3Gb/s)
Capacities:
120GB, 240GB, 480GB, 960GB
Controller:
Phison PS3110-S10
Baseline Performance
Compressible Data Transfer (ATTO)
120GB — 560MB/s Read and 360MB/s Write
240GB, 480GB, 960GB — 560MB/s Read and 530MB/s Write
Incompressible Data Transfer (AS-SSD and CrystalDiskMark)
120GB — 520MB/s Read and 350MB/s Write
240GB — 520MB/s Read and 510MB/s Write
480GB — 520MB/s Read and 500MB/s Write
960GB — 520MB/s Read and 490MB/s Write
IOMETER Maximum Random 4k Read/Write
120GB — up to 100,000/ up to 84,000 IOPS
240GB — up to 100,000/ up to 89,000 IOPS
480GB — up to 100,000/ up to 88,000 IOPS
960GB — up to 99,000/ up to 89,000 IOPS
Random 4k Read/Write:
120GB — up to 93,000/ up to 83,000 IOPS
240GB — up to 93,000/ up to 89,000 IOPS
480GB — up to 92,000/ up to 89,000 IOPS
960GB — up to 97,000/ up to 89,000 IOPS
PCMARK® Vantage HDD Suite Score:
120GB, 240GB, 480GB, 960GB — 84,000
PCMARK® 8 Storage Bandwidth:
120GB, 240GB, 480GB — 223MB/s, 960GB — 260MB/s
PCMARK® 8 Storage Score:
120GB, 240GB, 480GB — 4,940, 960GB — 4,970
Anvil Total Score (Incompressible Workload):
120GB, 240GB, 480GB — 4,700, 960GB — 5,000
Power Consumption:
0.39W Idle / 0.5W Avg / 1.4W (MAX) Read / 4.35W (MAX) Write
Storage temperature:
-40°C~85°C
Operating temperature:
0°C~70°C
Dimensions:
100.0mm x 69.9mm x 7.0mm
Weight:
120GB, 240GB, 480GB — 96g, 960GB — 92g
Vibration operating:
2.17G Peak (7–800Hz)
Vibration non-operating:
20G Peak (10–2000Hz)
Life expectancy:
1 million hours MTBF
Warranty/support:
3-year warranty with free technical support
Total Bytes Written (TBW):
120GB: 113TB 0.89 DWPD4
240GB: 306TB 1.19 DWPD4
480GB: 416TB 0.81 DWPD4
960GB: 681TB 0.66 DWPD4
Packaging & Closer Look
HyperX Savage arrives in an eye-catching box which has been carefully designed. It features an image of the actual drive along with details such as warranty duration, capacity and expected transfer rates. The reverse of this box simply has a list of the included parts and the serial label with included standards.
Opening this box up we are met by a number of included items which include:
• 2.5” SSD (7.0mm)
• 3.5” bracket with mounting screws
• 7mm-9.5mm adapter
• Acronis cloning software
• Documentation
Since this package is regarded as the “upgrade kit” there are some added extras such as the metal bracket and adapter to allow the drive to be installed within a notebook-type device.
The Savage SSD is an expertly crafted device. HyperX has fashioned the drive to use a large “H” shaped piece of metal to which the HyperX logo sits. This logo and the respective shapes nearby use an interlaced pattern to give Savage some depth.
Though this type of device is often tucked away and out of sight, HyperX has done a great job with the aesthetics and it will look great on display.
On the reverse-side there are some star bolts holding the shrouds together and a specifications label which details the product code, serial number, standards and capacity.
Under the plates and at the very heart of Savage sits the Phison PS3110-S10 – an quad-core eight-channel controller. There are also eight 19nm MLC NAND flash chips inside which are 16GB each, totalling up to 256GB.
Test Setup & Methodology
Our test system is formatted and a fresh version of Windows is installed with just drives in place – no additional applications. Windows is then updated to the latest release and the drivers are installed. Included in the list of benchmarks are the following applications:
Benchmarks
Anvil Pro
AS SSD
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
Iometer
Futuremark PCMark 8
AS SSD
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
Iometer
Futuremark PCMark 8
Test system
CPU Intel Core-i7 5960X
Motherboard MSI X99S – SLI
Graphics PALIT NVIDIA GTX 760
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro (2666MHz) CL15
HDD
– Crucial MX200 1TB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX Savage 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force LX 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Plextor M6e 256GB(PCIe)
PSU Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Motherboard MSI X99S – SLI
Graphics PALIT NVIDIA GTX 760
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro (2666MHz) CL15
HDD
– Crucial MX200 1TB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX Savage 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force LX 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Plextor M6e 256GB(PCIe)
PSU Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit
Benchmarks: Anvil Pro
Anvil Pro from Anvil Storage utilities is one of the most popular storage benchmarking utilities today thanks to the large suit of tests available. You can test pretty much anything from Read/write Speed to IOPs with many variables to tweak allowing you to get either a single or host of results to compare with other likeminded enthusiasts. In our test we ran the standard suite 5 times, subtracting both the highest and lowest scores and determined the final result from the average of the remaining three results.
Benchmarks: AS SSD
AS SSD Benchmark is a straightforward tool for measuring the speed of your SSD drive.
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).
Benchmarks: ATTO
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
Benchmarks: Iometer
Iometer is based on a client–server model, where one instance of the Iometer graphical user interface is managing multiple ‘workers’ (each one representing a separate Dynamo.exe process) which are doing the I/O. Iometer performs Asynchronous I/O – accessing files or block devices (later one allowing to bypass the file system buffers).
Iometer allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file.
Iometer allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file.
Benchmarks: PCMark 8
We use the Futuremark PCMark 8 utility to measure storage via Photoshop performance under both light and heavy loading conditions. Accelerated (open CL) is used to perform this test. The test is measured in seconds to complete.
Conclusion
Although the SATA SSD market may be reaching saturation not all drives are capable of sustaining solid performance within a variety of environments/circumstances and this is clearly where the HyperX Savage diversifies.
Throughout our suite of benchmarks the Savage drive demonstrated consistently high-performance. Even under the most taxing of tests, this drive pushed through and delivered impressive results and certainly in this regard we can place confidence that it really does offer the claimed transfer speeds on the packaging.
The cost of SATA SSDs have really plummeted recently and this means that it really hasn’t been a better time to invest in fast, more reliable, and efficient storage options. Savage is positioned as one of the more affordable solutions out there – this 240GB model we reviewed today is priced at just £76 GBP / $100 USD.
HyperX present yet another solid product in the Savage SSD. This drive performs consistently good in a range of environments and is among the cheapest SSDs on the market.
Pros
+ Consistently strong performance
+ Attractive styling
+ Low-cost
+ 3-year warranty w/ tech support
Cons
– None!
+ Consistently strong performance
+ Attractive styling
+ Low-cost
+ 3-year warranty w/ tech support
Cons
– None!
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
