INTRODUCTION

   Instead of individually testing solid state drives i mostly prefer to wait a while and conduct a thorough comparison between all the latest models in the market. Because of that a few months ago i gathered and compared 16 of the latest and fastest SATA III solid state drives to hit the market from most manufacturers in the field. However such massive comparisons is not something one can do very often not only because of time constraints but also because we rarely see similar products getting released by many manufacturers at the same time (graphics cards excluded) and so today we our review will be focused on a single solid state drive and more specifically the latest HyperX 3k 240GB model by Kingston.

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s independent memory leader. Founded in 1987 with a single product offering, Kingston® now offers more than 2,000 memory products that support nearly every device that uses memory, from computers, servers and printers to MP3 players, digital cameras and mobile phones. In 2009, the company's sales reached $4.1 billion. With global headquarters in Fountain Valley, California, Kingston employs more than 4,000 people worldwide. Regarded as one of the “Best Companies to Work for in America” by Fortune magazine, Kingston’s tenets of respect, loyalty, flexibility and integrity create an exemplary corporate culture. Kingston believes that investing in its people is essential, and each employee is a vital part of Kingston’s success. Kingston serves an international network of distributors, resellers, retailers and OEM customers on six continents. The company also provides contract manufacturing and supply chain management services for semiconductor manufacturers and system OEMs.

   This review ended up being quite different than most I’ve done up until today since i had to rebench every single one of the SATA III solid state drives i have here currently (used to have even more) with the latest and primary Intel X79 test rig since the performance results i had recorded in my database were almost 6 months old (from the last comparison). That automatically means that all drives were updated to their latest firmware (at least the ones that can be updated) and so mainly because of that and also because of the quite faster X79 system (compared to the X58) the results are quite different (most increased) than the ones from 6 months ago. However this review is about the latest HyperX 3k SSD by Kingston so let's see just how well it compares with its immediate competition.