INTRODUCTION

   Although solid state drives have reached a very low price point one which should allow pretty much everyone to finally have at least one installed in their systems no one can deny that the difference in price per GB compared to regular mechanical drives is still quite large and that's obviously not something that will change anytime soon. So in order to further cut down costs manufacturers focus their resources in shrinking the NAND flash module manufacturing process and launching new low-cost NAND flash controllers (or just by using old ones) aimed towards people who care not about performance levels but are rather after the best possible price/capacity ratio. Today on our test bench we have one such attempt by Kingston and more specifically their brand new HyperX FURY 240GB SSD model.

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Kingston designs, manufactures and distributes memory products for desktops, laptops, servers, printers, and Flash memory products for PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players. Through its global network of subsidiaries and affiliates, Kingston has manufacturing facilities in California, Taiwan, China and sales representatives in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, India, Taiwan, China, and Latin America.

   For the brand new HyperX FURY 240GB SSD model Kingston has chosen to go with the somewhat outdated SF-2281 NAND flash controller by LSI/Sandforce (now Avago) that features well known technologies like NCQ (Native Command Queuing), RAISE (error correction, RAID like protection and recovery) DuraClass (advanced wear leveling and monitoring algorithms) and DuraWrite technology (up to 20x or more the flash endurance compared to other controllers) along with TRIM and intelligent garbage collection. Silicon Power did the same with their S60 SSD model and judging by the fact that Kingston took that path to reduce costs we now know why. Kingston also decided to use their very own MLC NAND flash modules for the FURY line of SSDs which according to them are not the fastest ones in their inventory (obvious choice to cut down the cost). Honestly i don't really know what to expect from the FURY 240GB SSD so let's find out together.