Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD Upgrade Kit

Kingston is the latest manufacturer to release an SSD (solid state disk, using memory for storage instead of moving parts) using Sandforce's second-generation of disk controllers.

The new HyperX drives come in capacities of 240GB and 120GB. We are reviewing the latter. Both use the Sandforce SF-2281 controller, which has a Sata 6Gbits/sec interface.

Kingston is one of the last companies to deliver a product using the new controller and as these new HyperX disks are the company's first that use the Sandforce hardware. The drives were subject to Kingston's own rigorous testing procedure's as well as Sandforce's own to ensure the reliability problems of some earlier Sandforce controllers were ironed out – hence the delay in bringing them to market.

We tested the disk with Futuremark's PC Mark Vantage disk benchmark suite and got an overall score of 42584 and the latest PCMark 7 storage benchmarking suite gave a score of 4071.

But then, synthetic benchmarks are all well and good but they don't really give you a feel for just how fast an SSD can be compared to a conventional hard disk, so with that in mind we did some real-world testing.

Starting from a cold boot (from hitting the computer's power button), Kingston's HyperX 120GB took 35 seconds to boot into Windows 7 Ultimate, load the motherboard drivers and be ready for use, compared to 50 seconds for a fast, high-performance (7,200rpm) standard notebook hard disk and a full minute for a mainstream (5,400rpm) notebook hard disk.

It's not only start-up times that are reduced. When it comes to files transfers the speed difference was remarkable. Copying a 5GB folder of mixed files from another SSD to the HyperX 120GB took a mere 35 seconds while transferring the same folder from a standard disk took 76 seconds. Transferring the same folder from the 7,200rpm drive to another conventional disk took 135 seconds while the mainstream drive took a seemingly eternal 240 seconds to do the same job.

The bundle that comes with the upgrade kit is impressive too. It includes a 2.5in-to-3.5in adaptor bracket to fit the disk to a desktop ‘tower' PC case and there is also a USB2 enclosure, should you want to use the disk as an external one. It also incluces Acronis data migration software, Sata and USB cables and a screwdriver.