On paper, the HyperX Fury RGB SSD sounds like a really impressive little hard drive. Up to 550/440MB/s of sequential read/write, and lots of lovely, fully customisable onboard LEDs for those who like their desktop lit up like Dutch new year. In practice, however, it leaves quite a bit to be desired. The Fury RGB is quite expensive, the warranty only gets you three years down the road (a pittance when compared to even basic SSD’s with far fewer moving parts) and its file transfer performance didn’t live up to my expectations at all.
The Fury RGB comes in three flavours — 240GB, 480GB and 960GB. All three models are rated by HyperX parent company Kingston as sporting the advertised 550/440MB/s sequential read/write. Where Kingston have had less to say was on the topic of random performance specs. The package itself comes with a key for Acronis True Image HD so you can clone your existing hard drive and port everything to the Fury RGB with a minimum of hassle. if you’re feeling flush with cash, there’s a pricier version that includes a USB 3.0 enclosure, mounting brackets, screws and a SATA cable for connecting.
In order to get the most out of the drive’s customisable RGB lighting, you’ll need a motherboard that is either 12V RGB compatible or has a lighting controller onboard, and can be daisy chained to sync up with other RGB devices. Should you not have a lighting controller, don’t stress, the drive will still light up in the default HyperX red.
After running the PCMark 8 storage bench, the Fury RBG came in at around 4980 points. A quick Google search puts these results behind both Samsung’s 860 EVO and WD’s Blue 3D drives. It was able to pull an average of 265MB/s during this test, which does still put it in front of other competing drives from the likes of Intel.
Where things really started to break down was in the file transfer stage. While trying to copy a single 70GB file, I found that the drive topped out at around 110MB/s. For a solid state drive, this is surprisingly slow and will likely irritate any PC Master Racer used to their trusty old Samsung.
Should all the tech speak not be for you, I’ll break all the findings down here. The read speed is fast, the write speed could be better but isn’t the worst I’ve ever seen. Your mileage may vary, depending on how particular you are about drive speed. The way the drive integrates with RGB controllers is fluid and great. This is a solid drive with an extremely cool look, but its performance doesn’t cut it against some much stronger competition.
THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Highlights: Solid read speed; RBG is extremely cool
Lowlights: Average write speed; Bested by drives in the same price range
Manufacturer: Kingston
Price: $199
Available: Now
Review unit provided by manufacturer.
