Storage

Kingston HyperX 3K Na`Vi 240GB Review

vortez
August 28, 2013 8 Min Read
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In the spotlight today is a limited edition SSD from Kingston Technology based around popular gaming team Natus Vincere aka Na`Vi.


Product On Review: HyperX 3K SSD – Na`Vi Edition
Manufacturer and Sponsor: Kingston Technology
Street Price: 240GB – £159 (at time of review)



Kingston are experts in the storage sector, their product lines and experience span over two decades. Kingston’s HyperX brand has been well received over the years, we ourselves have applauded the original HyperX and 3K SSDs, just recently Kingston announced a new limited edition variant of the popular HyperX 3K…

The HyperX 3K Na`Vi SSD Series is a limited edition option based upon Kingston’s sponsored gaming team Natus Vincere aka Na`Vi. Aside from the visual appearance, this drive remains much the same as the original 3K version – carrying with it SandForce SF-2281.



Kingston on their 3K Na`Vi SSD
The Na`Vi branded limited edition products are primarily aimed at gamers and enthusiasts, who require high performance and reliability, as well as all fans of Na`Vi and eSports, who want to own this unique product to show their support. The Na`Vi Limited Edition collection includes the SSD drives based on the high performance, award winning HyperX 3K model, available with a capacity of 120 GB or 240 GB, as well as top quality HyperX Genesis memory module kits.

Technical Specifications


Form factor
2.5″
Controller
SandForce ® SF-2281
Interface
SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA 2.0 (3Gb/s)
Capacities
120 GB, 240 GB
Sequential reads
SATA 3.0
120 GB/240 GB, 555 MB/s
Sequential writes
SATA 3.0
120 GB/240 GB – 510 MB/s
The average speed of random read/write data blocks to 4 KB
120 GB-20000/60000 IOPS
240GB – 40000/57000 IOPS
Maximum speed of random read/write data blocks to 4 KB
120GB – 85000/73000 IOPS
240GB – 86000/60000 IOPS
Rating PCMARK ® Vantage HDD Suite
120 GB / 240 GB: 60,000
Support for technologies SMART, TRIM and Garbage Collection (Garbage Collection)
Power Consumption 0,455 watts (typical) when idle / 1.58 W (typical) when reading / 2.11 W (typical) when recording
Dimensions
69.85 mm x 100 mm x 9,5 mm
Weight
97g
Operating temperature
0 ° C to 70 ° C
Storage Temperature
-40 ° C to 85 ° C
Shock resistance
1500G
Permissible vibration at work
2.17 G
Operating vibration of non-operating
20G
Mean time between failures (MTBF)
1 million hours
The total number of bytes written (TBW)
120 GB 96 TB
240 GB: 192 TB

Packaging & Closer Look


Rather than package their SSD in a large reinforced box as previous HyperX drives have been, Kingston have packaged the Na`Vi drive within a blister-pack. Whilst this does give us a good overview of the contents, it unfortunately also means a knife or pair of scissors are required to destroy the packaging.


Blister-pack packaging


The packaging consists of very few items. Infact the only included items are the instructions leaflet and a sticker.


Instructions and sticker


The Na`Vi drive retains similar characteristics to the original HyperX series, the notable difference is the black and yellow theme which coordinates with Na`Vi gaming team’s brand image.

The reverse features a specifications label detailing the capacity, interface and serial number for technical support.

Inside the Na`Vi SSD, Kingston have used the same components as with previous HyperX drives too. SandForce SF-2281 sits at the core and acts as the controller. Unfortunately the screws require specialist tools to remove and reveal the inner workings and we did not have these to hand.


The top side of Na`Vi SSD



The reverse with specifications label

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
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
AS SSD
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
Iometer
SiSoftware SANDRA 2012
Windows 7 Boot Time Test


Test system
CPU Intel Core-i7 4770K
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z87X-OC
Graphics MSI R7970 Black Edition
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro (2400MHz) CL10
HDD
– Kingston HyperX 3K Na’Vi 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 450 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO 750GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Toshiba 256GB THNSNH256GCST (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force GS 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA S510 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 520 480GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 830 Series 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung HD103SJ 1TB (Sata 3Gbps)
PSU Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit

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: 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.).



Benchmarks: CrystalDiskMark 3.0

CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software that analyses different types of hard drive. Giving sequential benchmark write and read statistics in MB/s. A simple program that is very useful.



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.


For the purpose of this test. The 4K 50%/50% read/write file will be under the examination with 100% Random Distribution – reporting back on IOPS and MBs per Second.



Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.



Benchmarks: Windows 7 Boot

Synthetic testing is valuable in the examination of Solid State Drives. But some of the tests may not mean all that much to some readers so the final test in this review is a real world test showing the Windows 7 boot time.

In order to perform this test (and indeed all other benchmarks), a fresh install of Windows 7 Professional was installed on the Vertex 450 – the image of this install with no additional applications or drivers was exported for importing onto each drive at the time of testing. This will provide a clean and fair environment for comparing the boot times on each of the drives. The times were monitored using a stopwatch.

Conclusion


Kingston’s new limited edition HyperX Na’Vi SSD series is essentially just a style re-hash.

Throughout our benchmark testing the 240GB version of this drive maintained similar results to both the 3K and original HyperX SSD for the simple reason that the controller used and other components are exactly the same. Kingston have continued working with SandForce SF-2281 and it offers good performance across a range of different platforms. Those who were expecting something new under the hood could well be in for disappointment.

The obvious aspect which has changed is the styling. Kingston’s sponsored gaming team Na’Vi have this drive centred around them with styling and colours working in conjunction with their branding.



The 240GB version being reviewed today is priced at £159.99 which is reasonable and deemed good value for a SATA 3 SSD. As with other drives we have recently reviewed, this Kingston drive will have the might of Samsung’s 840 EVO to contend with, which offers better performance at a lower cost.

The new HyperX 3K Na`Vi SSD offers good performance just like its HyperX counterparts and if you are looking to jump onto the SATA 3 SSD bandwagon and keep costs down then this drive is worth a look.

Pros
+ Good performance
+ 3 years warranty
+ Affordable

Cons
– Blister-pack packaging
– Write performance lacked in some benchmarks
– Colour is lurid and may not coordinate well with hardware



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