The “RGB everything” trend has changed the design of almost every single computer component/peripheral in recent years. As a major PC gaming part manufacturer, Kingston/HyperX has introduced the Pulsefire Surge mouse (its review here), Alloy Elite RGB mechanical keyboard and more. Now, the new FURY RGB SATA SSD will be added to the existing lineup.
Specifications
The FURY RGB is using the 2.5-inch form factor. But it is slightly thicker and heavier than normal SSD at 9.5 mm and 165 grams, because of the added RGB LEDs.
The SSD is using the Marvell 88SS1074 controller and the Toshiba 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. There are three capacities to choose, including 240 GB, 480 GB and 960 GB. It has a rated MTBF at 1 million hours and TBW from 120 TB to 480 TB, depending on models.
Unboxing
The packaging of the FURY RGB has the clean design, with a mostly white background and sharp red accents. A photo of the SSD is shown on the front, as well as the RGB lighting and 3D NAND logos.
A small cutout at the back let users to see the stickers on the SSD, which has the model number, capacity and serial number printed.
The FURY RGB comes with a bit more accessories inside the box, in order to power and control the internal RGB LEDs. You get the usual HyperX’s Thank You card, an activation key of the Acronis True Image HD software and a quick start guide.
Not only that, an extra cable is included. On one end, there is a micro-USB connector, which is used to plug into the side of the SSD. On the other end, it has a male/female 4-pin RGB LED connector, which is either used to plug directly to a supported motherboard/controller or daisy-chain with another LED light strip. Bear in mind though, the FURY RGB is only compatible with a 12 V LED header.
HyperX FURY RGB SATA SSD
The FURY RGB SSD outer aluminium shell has a stealthy-looking gunmetal finish. A X-shaped metal painted in black is embedded in the center, with the “FURY” wordings. There are multiple cutouts on top, including the HyperX logo, which the RGB lighting can shine through them.
There is not much happening on the back. There are the aforementioned information sticker and a few screws that holds the casing together.
The SATA 3 connector at the bottom supports bandwidth up to 6 Gbps. The micro-USB port next to it is mainly used to adjust the built-in RGB lighting effects of the LEDs.
There are a thin metal layer with tiny holes in front of the LEDs, to give the lighting effect a unique dotted look/design.
Review
Testing Methodology
To test the performance of the solid-state drive, we use three well-established storage benchmarking software. They are CrystalDiskMark, ATTO Disk Benchmark, as well as AS SSD Benchmark.
CrystalDiskMark can measure both sequential and random 4KB read/write speeds with a queue depth of 32. ATTO Disk Benchmark can test how the drive performs across different transfer block sizes, mostly in a sequential environment. AS SSD Benchmark can provide both normal read/write speed and the IOPS performance of the drive.
We also recorded the time to transfer three files of 10 GB, 500 MB and 250 MB from a RAM disk to the SSD, which is used to simulate a real-world situation.
- CPU: Intel Core i5-8400 @ 2.9 GHz (65W TDP)
- Motherboard: ASRock Z370 Killer SLI
- RAM: HyperX Predator RGB DDR4-3600 16 GB kit (its review here)
Performance
The FURY RGB has advertised sequential read and write speeds of 550 MB/s and 480 MB/s. The SSD did really well in CrystalDiskMark, which reached up to 561 MB/s and 504 MB/s respectively, saturating the SATA 3 interface. For random 4K with queue depth 32, the FURY RGB could have read and write speed at 301 MB/s and 278 MB/s.
When testing in AS SSD Benchmark, the sequential performance of the FURY RGB dropped a tiny bit, at about 520 MB/s for read and 490 MB/s for write. Speeds climbed up to 309 MB/s and 319 MB/s respectively, when increasing the queue depth to 64 at 4K random operations.
IOPS number represents how well a drive handles random input and output operations. The FURY RGB scored 1063 in the test. It achieved a 79145 and 81791 IOPS in random 4K operations, which is in line with most of the SATA-based SSDs in the market.
Once the test file size increased to 16 KB, the read speeds stabilised at around 490 MB/s up to 560 MB/s, while the write speeds fluctuated between 480 MB/s and 520 MB/s.
The three files took a total of 41.28 seconds to copy from the RAM disk to the SSD. After the internal SLC cache was full, the speed decreased to around 200 MB/s.
Comparison
[visualizer id=”14404″ lazy=”no” class=””]
In CrystalDiskMark, the FURY RGB SSD performed similar to other SATA SSDs we tested in terms of sequential read and write. It did slightly worse in random 4K operations, but is still way better than a traditional hard disk drive.
[visualizer id=”14406″ lazy=”no” class=””]
We saw an identical picture in the AS SSD Benchmark, which the FURY RGB edged out slightly for sequential read and write speeds. Random 4K performances are similar across the board.
RGB Lighting
The RGB lighting effect is controlled via the 4-pin LED connector, which is only compatible with 12 V header. It supports most major motherboard vendors’ software, including ASUS Aura Sync, GIGABYTE RGB Fusion and MSI Mystic Light Sync.
The RGB lighting is diffused rather evenly and the colors are vibrant. The lighting is not dim, but can be slightly brighter. The number of lighting modes and effects will vary from different software.
Conclusion
The HyperX FURY RGB SSD is a decent performer with a eye-catching design on the outside. It has similar read and write performance, when compared with other SATA-based SSDs. It could reach up to 550 MB/s in sequential read speed and 500 MB/s in write.
The added RGB lighting looks awesome in person, and contributes in making the SSD’s unique appearance. The LEDs are bright enough and the colors are vivid.
The FURY RGB comes with a 3-year warranty, which is the industry standard. The inclusion of the RGB lighting does add a price premium to the SSD. It costs $105.99 USD at the time of the review, which is 15% cheaper than the MSRP at $124.99 USD (for 480 GB). For now, the FURY RGB is only $10 USD more expensive than the non-RGB Kingston UV500. Comparing to the TEAMGROUP T-Force Delta RGB, both have a very similar MSRP at around $120 USD, but the DELTA RGB is now on sale for around $80 USD to $90 USD (for 500 GB).
There are not many RGB SSDs in the market. Overall, if you like the design of the FURY RGB and don’t mind spending a little extra for the RGB lighting, I think you would not be disappointed by it.
You can purchase the SSD from your local/online resellers or the links below from Amazon and Newegg.
- Amazon US: HyperX FURY RGB SATA SSD
- Newegg US: HyperX FURY RGB SATA SSD
Thanks Kingston/HyperX for providing us the SSD for review. (Review Sample)
Feel free to leave comments below, if you have any opinion about this website. Share the website around if you enjoy reading it. Subscribe to our Newsletter or follow our Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
Support this website simply by shopping in Amazon. It will give us small kickbacks, if you use the above affiliate links to make any purchases, which will help us grow.