Hardware KINGSTON HYPERX 3K 120GB REVIEW

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/08/08/kingston-hyperx-3k-120gb-review/1

 

you can actually get this from ebuyer for under £50..... which , when compared to other drives , especially on the value metric makes it quite a good buy , since an SSD is faster than a HDD.


edit: let me get a coffee and retype that lol - the ones on ebuyer are V200`s

 

Picked this up for £65 from Scan back at the start of June.

As a boot drive and general use I haven't noticed much difference between this and my 256GB M4. Boot is maybe fractionally slower but still boots in under 30 seconds for me Day to day use it's fine.

The current price of around £90-£100 does seem steep though, compared with the competition.

 

Why didn't we have this review when Scan did their special on this a while ago - which prompted me to buy one! Oh well :/

 

Don't be disappointed in your purchase; instead, go to a website that does more than run two synthetic tests before calling it a day. Real-world tests (and even other synthetic tests) show the HyperX 3K to be one of the best values in the SSD world in addition to being one of the faster drives around.

Really, BT should be a bit embarrassed to publish this sort of "review" in light of the efforts being made by other websites. I'm not saying you need to be Anandtech and go out and develop your own storage targeted benchmark, but couldn't you do something as simple as measure OS boot times or application load times? You know, things that actually matter to the end user?

 

I got one of these for £60, I setup it up wrong at first in IDE instead of AHCI. But for £60 it was a hell of a steal and isn't as bad as you make it out to be after reading other reviews before I bought it.

 

I have to agree with the above users, I got 4 of these for £65 each from Scan when they were on special, I am running them in RAID0 and they are stupidly fast. 480GB of SSD fast storage for £260 is superb value! especially when I sold my 4 x OCZ Agility 60GB drives on ebay for £50 each lol oh and by the way the Agility 3's were only half the speed of these!!!
And yes I know, no Trim with RAID but no doubt ill be upgrading again in a few weeks like always or reinstall my OS, or something lol
Honestly these drives are not as bad as BT are making out, Scan have had these on special offer for £65 and £69 now, grab one! or four!

 

Well if you picked one up at £65 you got an amazing bargain and I do not blame you for patting yourself on the back.

However as the review correctly states, right here today they are considerably more expensive and indeed more expensive than other more desirable drives.

 

While for some hardware BTdishes out good quality reviews, like PC cases where it is only one of handful of other sites that test cooling efficiency, its SSD reviews are certainly lacking.

 

Glad you're happy with your purchase, and thanks for the vote of confidence

We've tried to do both of these things when testing SSDs in the past, but the simple fact was that real world tests are incredibly difficult to implement with Windows 7, thanks to its multifarious caching technologies.

We tried to implement real-world SSD testing and on Vista it was certainly viable. However, for Windows 7 we tried repeatedly to develop real-world tests, but they simply weren't consistent. A drive would boot windows in 30 seconds, then 25, then 27. We also tried creating testing using a RAM drive for real-world file copy tests, and again, were met by consistent issues caused by drive caching and the like. Even after disabling as many Windows services as we could, this still proved an issue.

In the end, the only tests in which we could produce reliable, repeatable performance were canned benchmarks such as those we use, which have the added benefit of readers being able to download them themselves and compare their own drives.

In the end though, all SSDs are 'fast' in comparison to HDDs, and in some real-world based circumstances, particularly those where response time is the factor such as booting Windows, there are minimal differences between drives. Your criticism is like saying "all cars are fast in comparison to walking, so even a rubbish slow car is good". Yes, in comparison to walking, not in comparison to a faster car. A similar anaology would be saying an HD 7850 is a great GPU. Sure it is in comparison to integrated GFX, but not in comparison to a GTX680.

As reviewers, we're tasked with tested a product and finding its strengths and weaknesses, something our two benchmarks both achieve, as seen in our results. In the same way , we then balance said results with the product's value. Here, the drive is (a) slower than an SSD 830 128GB in the majority of tests (b) £15 dearer and (c) offers lower formatted capacity. On what grounds then can we give it a positive review? Because it didn't explode and kill our PC? Some sites might hand out awards just for a manufacturer making a non-deadly product. We don't.

I know we don't test storage in the same depth as other sites, but then we try and strike a mix between different hardware, rather than going overboard on super-indepth reviews; that's where sites such as Storage Review and TFT central are great, and fair play to them, they provide awesome coverage. However, for bit-tech's readership the cost/time/benefit analysis simply is not there for a 20-page SSD review (would you seriously read it?) Our tests allow us to get a feel for the drive's relative performance and TRIM optimisations, and offer an at-a-glance comparison, which I think this review does pretty well.

While I guess that many have bought this drive due to it's cheapness, and yes, it works and is fast in comparison to an HDD, competing drives perform better, offer larger formatted capacity and (unless its on special offer it seems) better value too. Just because something's cheap and works, doesn't make it good.

 

Wow, that post was almost as long as the review. Bet no-one reads it.

 

I read it. Nice car analogy.

 

Another thing to point out is that CCL online has only 2 in stock, Ebuyer have 1 in stock, Aria and Scan are out of stock.... as I said I got all mine (and im sure others did too) for only £65 each with free delivery and not the £90+ as reviewed. Maybe these are going to plummet in price and the prices reviewed at were old stock prices??? i don't know.

QUOTE: 'Just because something's cheap and works, doesn't make it good.'

They are still twice as quick, twice the capacity and a fair bit cheaper than what I got my OCZ Agility 3's for late last year. Ok they are not the FASTEST but they are far from 'NOT VERY GOOD'. To be honest I have noticed very little difference in terms of loading times between the two drives.

 

I am not sure what point you are trying to make.

Post a link to this drive which is in stock today at £65 and you have made your point, other than that the review is correct at the time of writing (which is all anyone can ask).

 

Thats what I mean, nobody has these drives in stock either at the price you listed, except one or two drives. Scan had them for £65 but are now out of stock too.

 

Re: Real world testing: If you look at a site that does real-world testing of SSDs like The TechReport, the difference between best and worst boot times is 1.2 seconds. So, it's interesting the first time you look at the results but would you really base your purchase on differences of milliseconds? The same applies to Game Level loading times - in the real-world I don't think you would notice differences between the latest SSDs.

What I think might be useful is a storage bench (like Anandtech) so you can see how drives fare when carrying out a variety of everyday tasks (which a normal user might do).

And what I find useful when looking at SSDs are user reviews, reliability, warranties - stuff that it's harder for a review to cover but where comment threads like this come in useful.

 

£65 right now at Scan.

Have to now agree with the guys above - that is phenomenal value and changes the context of this review completely.

Other reviews have no hesitation recommending this drive - at this price it's very tempting.

http://www.storagereview.com/kingston_hyperx_3k_ssd_review

 

JimmyJJ beat me to it lol, Kingston going nuts again over at scan, heres prices...
http://www.scan.co.uk/shops/sitepage.aspx?SSPID=986

£28 for 2x4GB DDR3 1600MHz aint all that bad either.

 

What a lot of nonsense. Firstly you attack an argument the guy didn't even make about all SSDs being fast in comparison to HDDs. In fact you seem to make that argument yourself by saying there's minimal real world difference between SSDs, before turning back on it and rubbishing it with your car versus walking analogy.

Then you say you couldn't give the product a good review because it didn't perform well in your tests, but the precise criticism Goty made was that the tests you carried out were very basic and therefore likely to be flawed. That criticism is backed up by the fact that every other website, many of which carry out exhaustive, custom made tests, found this SSD to be one of the best performers on the market at present. It's obvious your SSD testing process is flawed.

But it also reflects badly on Bit-Tech's testing and review process in general that its technical editor would make such a ridiculous defence of an patently flawed testing process.