Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

You won’t have to go far to find the Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB SSD, as it is available at almost any reseller. At the time of writing, NewEgg has it listed for $535.44 and Amazon for $503.88. UK readers can find it at Overclockers for £429.98 or at Amazon for £408.61. In Germany, the price starts at €490.44 plus postage at the cheapest shop via Geizhals. The M.2 model alone without the adapter package is a little cheaper and perfect for those who plan to build it directly into their system.

Conclusion

Kingston’s HyperX division is known to create not only great performing solid state drives, but also some of the best looking designs which is a great bonus for modders and people who just want to show off their great hardware. It is no different with their new Predator PCIe SSD that comes with a superb finish and a look that is worth showing off. Kingston used black PCBs all the way around from the PCIe adapter to the M2 modules that is placed upon it. The module itself has large bold Kingston sticker to give it the final touch and hide away the chips underneath.

The drive is powered by a Marvell 88SS9293 controller and paired with Toshiba’s A19nm Toggle NAND. This is a great combination especially when we loosen ourselves from the bonds of the SATA3 interface. Kingston also packed the drive with a gigabyte of their own DDR3 1600MHz memory for caching purposes and to keep up a steady performance under heavy loads. The result is a great performing drive as we’ve seen on the previous pages.

It is far from the cheapest drive on the market, in fact it’s one of the most expensive ones. But you also get a drive that delivers a performance you’ll otherwise only find with four SATA3 drives in RAID and there isn’t a drive that we’ve tested prior that comes in with the same kind of performance.

The drive is AHCI based so it can’t deliver the same amazing performance that the new NVMe drives can do, but in return we get a far better compatibility. The NVMe support is still spotty at best in the consumer market and that is where Kingston’s HyperX Predator hits the sweet spot. A great performing drive that you can use in your desktop or M.2 enabled notebook or SFF system.

Kingston’s Predator PCIe SSD had no trouble living up to its performance rating. We saw sequential speeds up to and over 1500MB/s when reading and 1020MB/s at writing. The drive also did well in the 4K random tests where it easily scored 100K IOPS reading and 90K IOPS writing.

The Kingston SSD Toolbox didn’t recognize the drive in my test system and it isn’t listed as download option either, but I’m sure that’s just a matter of a new version being released.

Pros

• Top-score performance
• Good reliability
• Looks great with black PCB
• Accessory bundle includes low-profile adapter and Acronis key.
• Availability

Cons

• Price

“If you want the fastest SSD drive we’ve tested to date that is compatible with almost any system, then Kingston’s HyperX Predator is just the right match. Unbeatable performance and it also looks great.”

Thank you Kingston for providing us with this sample.