The Kingston HyperX Fury RGB SSD Review: Bright Idea, Dimmed Performance
by Billy Tallis on September 24, 2018 8:35 AM ESTRandom Read Performance
Our first test of random read performance uses very short bursts of operations issued one at a time with no queuing. The drives are given enough idle time between bursts to yield an overall duty cycle of 20%, so thermal throttling is impossible. Each burst consists of a total of 32MB of 4kB random reads, from a 16GB span of the disk. The total data read is 1GB.
The QD1 burst random read performance of the HyperX Fury RGB is about 18% slower than what the Plextor M8V manages with the same NAND flash, and 40% slower than the Crucial MX500.
Our sustained random read performance is similar to the random read test from our 2015 test suite: queue depths from 1 to 32 are tested, and the average performance and power efficiency across QD1, QD2 and QD4 are reported as the primary scores. Each queue depth is tested for one minute or 32GB of data transferred, whichever is shorter. After each queue depth is tested, the drive is given up to one minute to cool off so that the higher queue depths are unlikely to be affected by accumulated heat build-up. The individual read operations are again 4kB, and cover a 64GB span of the drive.
On the longer random read test with some higher queue depths involved, the Fury RGB manages to be clearly faster than the DRAMless SATA drives and is only a little bit slower than average for mainstream SATA drives.
 |
|||||||||
| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
When excluding the LEDs power draw, the Fury RGB has reasonable power efficiency during low queue depth random reads since the power draw and performance are both just a bit below average.
 |
|||||||||
The random read performance of the Fury RGB scales up with increasing queue depth better than the DRAMless drives, but most of the other mainstream drives show at least slightly better scaling.
Random Write Performance
Our test of random write burst performance is structured similarly to the random read burst test, but each burst is only 4MB and the total test length is 128MB. The 4kB random write operations are distributed over a 16GB span of the drive, and the operations are issued one at a time with no queuing.
The QD1 burst random write performance of the HyperX Fury RGB is slightly better than the DRAMless SATA SSDs but is almost 30% slower than a good mainstream SATA drive.
As with the sustained random read test, our sustained 4kB random write test runs for up to one minute or 32GB per queue depth, covering a 64GB span of the drive and giving the drive up to 1 minute of idle time between queue depths to allow for write caches to be flushed and for the drive to cool down.
The decent burst random write performance from the Fury RGB doesn't hold up during the longer sustained random write test. The Fury RGB outperforms the DRAMless SATA drives but it is closer to their level of performance than to the typical mainstream SATA SSDs.
 |
|||||||||
| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
With average power consumption but sub-par performance, the Fury RGB's power efficiency rating is very low even before the LED's power draw is included.
 |
|||||||||
The random write performance of the HyperX Fury RGB does scale up slightly with increasing queue depths, but it plateaus at a performance level that is only slightly faster than the Toshiba TR200 DRAMless SATA SSD.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
45 Comments
View All Comments
PeachNCream - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Form over function. All show and no go. - Those are the first things that pop into my mind after seeing the bottom drawer performance and high power consumption. We now have reached the point where there's a component that burns more electrical energy feeding pointless LEDs than it does actually fulfilling its duties as a component in a computer. Here's to enthusiasts and gamers! Good going people. You've really made the world a better place by making LEDs on everything marketable.rrinker - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
Most make me an old fogey, but I totally agree. I'm not sure why any gamer or enthusiast would even buy this thing, do the flashing lights actually make up for the reduced performance - considering it's supposedly 'performance' these people are after. Perhaps this may be the jump the shark moment for RGB on everything - it's now gone so far that is actually affects the performance of the peripheral the lights are supposed to be 'enhancing'.melgross - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
No, lighting is very important to a segment of that market. Lit DRAM, feet, strings of LEDs and neon inside, and out. Replacing the cover with a clear plastic one(violating the FCC protocols), is very important to them.Stupid cases such as the ones from Alienware, and others, show what these in the gaming community want. Not all of them are like that, but a big enough percentage are, and it’s a VERY big market. They get over 100,000 people to some of the ComicCons around the country.
rrinker - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
The difference being, this one actually reduces performance. At least with most anything else up til now, it was just added cost and some increased power consumption, but the LEDs on the RAM don;t make the actual chips hotter, or the LEDs controllers on the mobo don't make the VR modules or chipset run hotter and throttle. I could probably run a lot of LEDs and still use less power than my system was when it had a GTX480, which I replaced with a GTX970. But that's just power draw, even if my system wasn't half buried in a stand under my printer next to my desk, gaudy case lighting wouldn't cause my CPU or GPU to throttle. This thing - this is just all-around fail. I guess this does not apply to the serious performance nut - the ones who swear they can tell the difference between 1MHz differences in clock speeds to the CPU or RAM, because they probably wouldn't be running SATA SSDs anyway, but this is just beyond insane, reducing performance and increasing cost for the sake of a bunch of flashing lights. I have a bridge to sell the people that go for this, too. Oh wait, I better add lots of LED lights to it first.melgross - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
RAM runs hot as it is. Adding LEDs doesn’t help. Does it damage performance? I don’t know.qlum - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
DDR4 doesn't run that hot and adding leds on the edge of the memory sticks doesn't impact the temperature of the ram much. Heat from the top of the sticks is pretty easy to dissipate. Besides that this sdd uses way too much leds and blocks most of their light.dromoxen - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
The telling point is that you can use this without the data storage functionality (and excess cables) getting in the way of its true purpose, which is to light the way to the Promised LandTitanX - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
indeed..i want not a single light on my PC except for the HDD activity and power indicator. no glass..no view panels..just an inconspicuous black box.MrSpadge - Monday, September 24, 2018 - link
At least the naming is adequate: it makes you hyper furious while waiting for your data and wondering about your electricity bill!TitanX - Tuesday, September 25, 2018 - link
dude..its 2 watts...dont think that makes more than a nickel a year on the ole bill..