Final Thoughts
The solid state drive market is continually growing and as prices keep on dropping more and more people are getting their hands on these incredibly fast drives. Kingston is now making this even easier with their HyperX 3K drive. Using the less expensive 3K rated NAND they are able to cut some cost which it turn brings the cost down to you the customer. It is great to see Kingston really trying to bring the cost down.
Don’t worry the 3K rated NAND is still going to last quite a while. As I stated earlier in the review the 3K stands for the number of program / erase cycles the NAND is rated for. 3000 may not seem like a lot but most users will use 1 program / erase cycle a day most likely even less. That works out to be over 8 years. I assume most people will upgrade within that 8 year period. The normal HyperX drive has NAND rated for 5000 program / erase cycles.
Just like the normal HyperX drive the 3K drive is powered by the SandForce SF-2281 chip and performs just the same. You can see that by our test results on the previous 4 pages.
Since this is a SandForce-based drive so you do get the added features that the SandForce SF-2200 controller offers. The drive will do real-time loss-less compression. This is why there is no need for a cache chip, but also means less writes to the data cells. RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) is a term we have heard a lot with these new drives. So on top of ECC for data protection RAISE adds another level of security. This drive also supports TRIM as almost all solid state drives do these days.
We received the upgrade kit that comes with a mounting adapter, external USB 2.0 enclosure, screwdriver set, SATA cable and hard drive software. You can also get the drive as a standalone drive. The drive features a 3-year warranty as well. Right now you can get the standalone 240GB drive for $279.99 at my favorite online retailer. For an extra $10 you can get get the upgrade kit. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB Solid State Drive a 10 out of 10 score and our Good Value Award!
Pros:
– Great performance
– Upgrade kit
– 3 year warranty
– Kingston made it more affordable
Cons:
– None that I found
