With the HyperX 3K 120 GByte SSD, Kingston has a Solid State Drive in its portfolio which is based on the latest SandForce SF-2281 series SSD processor and it also comes with a competitive price tag. The drive also features SATA-III support and Kingston claims that the drive can reach throughput rates of more than 500 Megabyte per second. Also for the IOPS the manufacturer promises sky-high numbers. When writing 4 KByte blocks the drive should be able to hit a whopoing 60'000 IOPS and more. 
Specifications / Delivery
| Model | Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 120 GByte |
| Capacity | 120 GByte |
| Memory | ynchronous NAND Flash |
| Technology | SandForce SF-2281 |
| Throughput | up to 555 MB/s reading, up to 510 MB/s writing |
| Accesstime (read) | < 0.1 ms |
| Life expectance | 2'000'000 hours (MTBF) |
| Acoustics | no noise |
| Warranty | 3 Years |
Delivery
Kingston ships their HyperX 3K SSD with a lot of accessories. A first glance at the box is sufficient to see that Kingston tried to make this drive special. Thanks to the thick foam layer inside the box, the drive is very well protected during transportation. Included in the delivery there is a 3.5 inch adapter carriage, a screwdriver with two different bits, a CD, an external case, a SATA-III cable, a USB cable as well as some screws and the drive itself. With all this equipment you would well prepared for a possible system migration.
The reason that the HyperX 3K SSD is cheaper than the original HyperX (5K) can
be found in the NAND flash they're using. The first HyperX drive got NAND flash
memory that was specified for 5'000 PE cycles. The new HyperX 3K get memory
chips that endure 3'000 PE cycles. In fact, most of the SSD companies get the
3'000 PE cycle NAND flash memory.
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Impressions
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How do we test?
Testenvironment
We recommend that readers who aren't interested in test procedures jump over this page and head directly to the test results.| Models tested | ||
Testenvironment |
||
| Motherboard | ASUS P8P67 Deluxe B3 | |
| Chipset | Intel P67 | 1'333 MHz |
| CPU | Intel Core i7 2600k | 3.4 GHz |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX 2133 | 4 GByte |
| Graphics card | Gigabyte GeForce GTX 285 | |
| Storage (system) | Seagate Barracuda | 640 GByte |
| Operating systems | Ubuntu - most recent Kernel version Windows 7 64 Bit with caching drives |
|
| Filesystem | XFS | |
We think everybody reading this article can imagine the following scenario: You just bought a hard drive which according the specs sheet should transfer 120 MByte/s reading and writing. In the reviews you read about astonishing 110 MByte/s but after you put the drive into you system it feels much slower. The whole story gets even worse when you start a benchmark which does randomread/write of 4 KByte blocks. There you only get two to three MBytes/s.
Because of this we don't want to publish screenshots of standard programs like HD-Tach, HD-Tune, ... we want our tests to be
- reproducible,
- accurate
- meaningful and
- varied ...
... sind.
We test with activated caches and NCQ (Native Command Queueing) because they're also activated under daily use. But the data size tested is always at least twice the amount of the memory. In this there will be no intereference.
We noticed that the measuring error is constantly within ±2%. Therefore we mention it only here.
Additionally we evaluate the S.M.A.R.T. data to assess if there are already errors.
The following table give you a brief overview to which points we turn our centre of attention.
| Test | Observations |
| Sequential Read/Write Tests |
|
| Random Read/Write Tests |
|
iozone3
iozone3 is a benchmark suit for storage solutions which natively runs under Linux.
Therefore we are testing the throughput with different block sizes using the following commands:
KByte/s
- iozone -Rb test4k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 4k -s4g -t32
- iozone -Rb test16k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 16k -s4g -t32
- iozone -Rb test32k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 32k -s4g -t32
- iozone -Rb test64k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 64k -s4g -t32
- iozone -Rb test128k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 128k -s4g -t32
- iozone -Rb test256k.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 256k -s4g -t32
iops
- iozone -Rb test4ko.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 4k -s4g -t32 -O
- iozone -Rb test16ko.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 16k -s4g -t32 -O
- iozone -Rb test32ko.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 32k -s4g -t32 -O
- iozone -Rb test64ko.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 64k -s4g -t32 -O
- iozone -Rb test96ko.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 96k -s4g -t32 -O
- iozone -Rb test128ko.xls -i0 -i1 -i2 -+n -r 128k -s4g -t32 -O
Why do we test different block sizes?
It is important to reproduce scenarios of daily usage. Certain parameters need to be variable during the test to make a statement about the product. In our test the parameters are the different block sizes. It defines the size in KBytes which is written/read on the drive during a transaction.
With this method one can test the reading and writing of either small and big files. In a normal personal computer environment you usually don't find many files smaller than 16 KByte. The relative amount of small files is much bigger on a mail or database server. Therefore tests with small block sizes are of interest for database-based applications.
In bigger RAID arrays the hard disk cache is usually disabled and the RAID-Controller takes over the job of caching. Exactly in such setups hard drives need to be very fast when reading or writing small amounts of data. Sequential throughput isn't interesting in this case.
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Test results iozone KByte/s
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Conclusion
With its SandForce SF-2281 based HyperX 3K SSD, Kingston doesn't reach the performance values they advertise in the specifications by a small margin. We measured the following peaks: 512 MByte were possible when writing 128 KByte blocks randomly and 539 MByte/s were reached when reading 128 KByte blocks sequentially. Still, on average the 120 GByte HyperX 3K SSD is a very quick drive, especially compared to the other 120 Gigabyte drives available on the market. At this point we have to mention that 240 GByte drives in general are faster than smaller 120 GByte or even 60 GByte drives which is because of the wear levelling algorithm that works more efficient the bigger the drive is.
If we take a closer look at IOPS
performance Kingston promises sustained values of 60'000 IOPS for 4k writes and
20'000 IOPS for 4k reads. During our tests we measured almost 70'000 IOPS
regarding random writes. Concerning random reads you get as near as makes no difference 26'000 IOPS. These values are significantly higher then the numbers advertised.
We very much liked the delivery the Kingston HyperX 3K 120 GByte SSD comes with.
You'll find for
example a 2.5 inch to 3.5 inch adapter included. There even is an external
case in the delivery and a copy of Acronis Disk image. Therefore Kingston made a
possible transition from an HDD to an SSD much easier. Furthermore the
HyperX 3K got a very nice casing and it's a pity that, once in a computer, you
wont be able to see the drive anymore.
If you should be looking for a well performing 120 GByte SSD which comes with a
lot of accessories then the Kingston HyperX 120 GByte SSD will be the right
choice for you.
The Kingston HyperX 3K SSD gets five out of five stars.
The reason for this can be found in the superb delivery as well as in the
performance.
All the four models can be bought at Digitec:
All
Kingston HyperX SSD are also available at Steg Computer & Electronics, Brack Electronics AG
and ARP.
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Authors: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch