Final Thoughts

Kingston's HyperX came out of the gates swinging and delivered an impressive testify, gnawing on the Vertex three'south ankles every step of the way. The new arrival had fiddling trouble coming together, and occasionally exceeding the performance of OCZ's SF-2281-based flash bulldoze, which has stood equally the baseline for SSD performance since information technology landed earlier this yr.

Because its prideful sit-in, we take fiddling incertitude that Kingston worked overtime to milk every ounce of performance information technology could out of the SandForce SF-2281 controller. More importantly, that speed and stability remains after regular usage in my primary PC over the last few weeks. Kingston'southward drive hasn't skipped a beat out in that time frame.

Unfortunately, as with its competitors, the HyperX isn't priced depression enough to consider it a mainstream solution. The 240GB model is fetching $490 lone or $510 for the upgrade kit, while the 120GB version costs $240 to $260. It's probably worth mentioning that at that place are various $20 to $thirty rebates floating effectually, simply nosotros generally don't bank on those.

Equally pricey as that may seem, Kingston's figures are correct on target as the Vertex iii 240GB currently costs $490 and the Patriot Wildfire 240GB is around $495 as of writing. Meanwhile, Crucial'south m4 256GB resides in the budget realm of $395 and the Intel 510 Series 250GB is among the to the lowest degree affordable options, with pricing currently set at about $570.

Before investing your hard earned cash in whatsoever of the in a higher place, ensure that your motherboard has a quality SATA 6Gb/due south controller or the drive's performance will be severely hampered. Folks with new Intel Sandy Bridge-based machines tin can fully utilise the drive, equally will those with a motherboard that carries the recently updated Marvell 88SE9182 controller.

For those limited to SATA 3Gb/s, the Kingston SSDNow V+ 100 is nonetheless an fantabulous option providing strong existent-world operation. Even if you tin can tap into the speed of the new 6Gb/southward SandForce SF-2281-based drives, y'all might not notice the departure. After all, the SSDNow Five+ 100 delivers similar Windows boot time and multitasking execution.

Of course, that won't matter for true performance junkies. If you want rock-solid speed and stability, Kingston's HyperX series is well-nigh the best y'all'll detect in today'south market. For all intents and purposes, information technology's equally as fast as the Vertex 3 and Kingston'due south delayed entry should offer additional insurance against the firmware bugs that affected other SF-2281 drives.