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Kingston HyperX Predator SSD Takes Gumstick M.2 PCIe Drives To 1.4GB/sec

Posted by timothy on from the sure-hope-those-drives-appreciated-it dept.

MojoKid writes Kingston recently launched their HyperX Predator PCIe SSD that is targeted at performance-minded PC enthusiasts but is much less expensive than enterprise-class PCIe offerings that are currently in market. Kits are available in a couple of capacities and form factors at 240GB and 480GB. All of the drives adhere to the 80mm M.2 2280 "gumstick" form factor and have PCIe 2.0 x4 connections, but are sold both with and without a half-height, half-length adapter card, if you'd like to drop it into a standard PCI Express slot. At the heart of the Kingston HyperX Predator is Marvell's latest 88SS9293 controller. The Marvell 88SS9293 is paired to a gigabyte of DDR3 memory and Toshiba A19 Toggle NAND. The drives are rated for read speeds up to 1.4GB/s and writes of 1GB/s and 130 – 160K random 4K IOPS. In the benchmarks, the 480GB model put up strong numbers. At roughly $1 per GiB, the HyperX Predator is about on par with Intel's faster SSD 750, but unlike Intel's new NVMe solution, the Kingston drive will work in all legacy platforms as well, not just Z97 and X99 boards with a compatible UEFI BIOS.

14 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Wow... by beelsebob · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most blatant slashvertisment I've ever seen.

    1. Re:Wow... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Indeed. Look through the submittor's history though: Similar stories about upcoming product releases of PCIe SSDs from HGST, Intel and Samsung. More interesting is that every story he submits is from hothardware.com - MojoKid is either a very loyal reader, or he works for them.

    2. Re:Wow... by NatasRevol · · Score: 2

      I need capacity far more than I need speed.

      Your needs are not their target. They target high IOPs environments, like VMware host caching, database transaction tables, etc.

      Go buy 10k/15k drives if you want capacity over speed, but with some speed.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    3. Re:Wow... by beelsebob · · Score: 2

      On the other hand, the smaller they make the nand, the more they can cram on a chip, and the more wear levelling they can do, so the more reliable it becomes.

    4. Re:Wow... by beelsebob · · Score: 2

      Well duh... Did you really think that the SSD makers were targeting 1.4GB/s random read/write devices at making backups?

    5. Re:Wow... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Hothotware.com reviews are pretty shitty too. Bog standard benchmark suite, and no mention of critical missing features like OPAL V2 (or eDrive as Microsoft calls it, basically proper encryption support) or how it handles unexpected loss of power in real world conditions.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:Wow... by beelsebob · · Score: 2

      That's odd, because Micron gives 1 year un-powered retention warranties on their TLC drives, even when worn.

  2. Yes, But Does The Logo Have Flames? by l0ungeb0y · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm sure it must be pretty damn good since it has "HyperX" and "Predator" in the name, which is always an indication of high quality and reliability. But I can't be absolutely sure it's the absolute best unless it has flames on the logo.

  3. Why trust them? by RelaxedTension · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After their bait and switch with SSD's, how can anyone trust them or the reviews?

    http://www.extremetech.com/ext...

    1. Re:Why trust them? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They also want proof of purchase to RMA devices with lifetime warranties, like flash memory. Up theirs. If I wanted theft protection I'd register ownership.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. I prefer the blatant ads by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If I can figure out it's an ad from the first sentence of TFS, or better yet from the headline, then that's a massive win. What's annoying is the slashvertisements which masquerade as articles.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. Holy crap, that marketing spin by gman003 · · Score: 2

    "unlike Intel's new NVMe solution, the Kingston drive will work in all legacy platforms as well, not just Z97 and X99 boards with a compatible UEFI BIOS."

    So it uses AHCI instead of NVMe, and tries to spin this off as a benefit over Intel's drive.

    Bull.

    Fucking.

    SHIT.

    AHCI dates back to 2006. It was an improvement over IDE, but it was still designed for spinning rust. No parallel queues, a paltry limit of 32 queued commands, and a design that puts a pretty substantial load on the CPU for each command used. It's something like 14,000 cycles spent in just the driver code for an AHCI command - compare 10,000 for the entire OS stack from fread() to actual bits going over the line for NVMe.

    Now, it is true that NVMe isn't fully supported on older motherboards. But that's only boot support - an NVMe drive will work as a data drive on anything running a current OS (Linux 3.3+, Windows 7+). And guess what? Most motherboards that have an M.2 slot* to begin with... are NVMe-compatible. So if you're buying an M.2 drive, you can probably use the NVMe drive. And if you're building a new computer, you'll be getting one that works with NVMe.

    Backwards compatibility is important. I'm not saying to discontinue SATA SSDs. But making an M.2 drive that still uses AHCI, then claiming the backwards compatibility as a benefit, is just pure marketing bullshit.

    * M.2 is a weird physical interface that can be connected to up to three different interfaces - PCIe, SATA and USB. The USB is only really used for wireless cards, so that leaves PCIe and SATA. Unfortunately motherboards don't have to wire both up to the slot. You can find some cheap motherboards with an M.2 slot that only works with SATA drives. I personally refuse to count those as full M.2 slots. And both Intel's 750 (the NVMe one) and Kingston's drive being advertized here would not work in such a drive, so my point about "if you can put this drive in your computer, you can put a 750 in there and have it work" stands.

  6. Puulease... Kingston? Really? by m.dillon · · Score: 2

    Author must not know the difference between the real the rebrand. I would never buy Kingston anything. They just slap random components into those boards. There are hundreds of rebranders in the SSD space but only a handful of real companies. Kingston isn't one of them.

    -Matt

  7. No by sexconker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Stop calling these things "gumstick". It's not going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen. They're considerably larger than a stick of gum, are not chewy or delicious, and you're a piece of shit for trying to make that term stick.
    Further, who cares? 1.4 GB/sec is nothing noteworthy. This is a /vertisement through and through.