Kingston Fury Renegade HS 2TB SSD Review - Gamer's Edge

TweakTown's Rating: 97%

The Bottom Line

It's Kingston crafted goodness through and through.

Pros

• + Gaming PC or console performance
• + PS5 heatsink
• + High TBW

Cons

• - None

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon

Introduction & Drive Details

When Kingston sets its mind to do something, they have a track record of doing it better than the rest. Kingston is rarely the first to dip its toes into the water. They sit back, take note of what they can do better than the rest, and then bring forth a more refined offering. This is exactly what Kingston did when it launched its first Phison E18-based SSD, the KC3000, one year ago.

The KC3000 proved itself significantly superior to the plethora of competing E18-based SSDs because of Kingston's long-established strategy of intentionally not rushing into something new just to be first. When Kingston sets out to do something, they do it right, making Kingston the world's leading fabless memory retailer.

Okay, so here we are today, one year after Kingston brought forth its first Phison E18-controlled SSD with a new iteration of Kingston's flagship performance offering, the Fury Renegade. The Fury Renegade is identical to the aforementioned KC3000 in terms of its base hardware components. Like the KC3000, the Fury Renegade is unique in the world of E18-controlled SSDs in that it has a custom PCB, Kingston's own specially binned B47R flash packages running at 1,600MT, and Kingston customized firmware. Where the Fury Renegade differs from its sibling is over-provisioning, resulting in a 20% higher TBW rating, and stated up to sequential throughput being 7,300 MB/s vs. 7,000 MB/s for the KC3000.

Now that we understand how the Fury Renegade and KC3000 are the same yet different, let's get straight to the subject of today's review, the Kingston Fury Renegade Heatsink Edition. This is Kingston's first SSD aimed specifically at the millions-strong PlayStation 5 user community. Now, as we've seen to this point, most purveyors of fast M.2 NVMe storage have already brought forth their own spin on fast PCIe Gen4 storage tailormade for the PS5 storage expansion slot. Now it's' Kingston's turn, and if history is any indicator, they will be doing so with superior results.

Drive Details

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Initial pricing seems on point as we see it. The Fury Renegade with heatsink is priced similarly to what we see from many lesser-performing SSDs without a PS5-tailored heatsink. PC or console, this is about as good as it gets for what it is.

Jon's Test System Specifications

Intel Test System

• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Z690 HERO
• CPU: Intel Core i9-13900K - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Alphacool Eissturm Hurricane Copper 45 - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: Sabrent Rocket DDR5 32GB - Buy from Amazon
• Graphics Card: MSI SUPRIM X RTX 3080 12GB - Buy from Amazon
• Case: PrimoChill's Praxis Wetbench - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 12 1200W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-bit - Buy from Amazon

AMD Test System

• Motherboard: GIGABYTE X670E AORUS Master
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Alphacool Eissturm Hurricane Copper 45 - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: Sabrent Rocket DDR5 32GB - Buy from Amazon
• Graphics Card: MSI SUPRIM X RTX 3080 12GB - Buy from Amazon
• Case: PrimoChill's Praxis Wetbench - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 12 1200W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-bit - Buy from Amazon

Because we at TweakTown like to be first at everything whenever we can, we will present our storage performance results for the test subject on both 13th Gen Intel and 7000 Series AMD platforms going forward for the foreseeable future. Because Intel still delivers the best real-world storage performance, (Look Here), our running chart will continue to be Intel-based until AMD can deliver better real-world storage performance than its rival.

Kingston Fury Renegade HS 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 M.2 SSD

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$199.45	$199.15	$199.15	$199.45	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 4/16/2024 at 2:08 am CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Sony PlayStation 5 - M.2 Storage Expansion

PS5 Read Performance

With Sony's wildly popular PlayStation 5 console now enabled for M.2 NVMe SSDs to be used as fast storage expansion, we include results for PS5 compatible SSDs we test as a part of our reviews going forward.

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We only chart SSDs that can deliver a minimum of 5,500 MB/s read, which is Sony's original recommendation.

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Anytime an SSD can do 6,500 MB/s here, it is right in there with the best of the best, which is why our test subject lands on the upper end of our chart. However, for better context and as it relates to Kingston being at the top of its game, we need to dissect it a little further. What jumps out at us? The Fury Renegade delivers the best PS5 result for any 2TB Phison E18-controlled SSD. Impressive.

Synthetic Benchmarks: CDM, Anvil, ATTO

CrystalDiskMark

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AMD continues to deliver the highest sequential throughput, so it's no surprise to see the lone AMD result at the top of our Intel-based chart. However, do keep in mind that sequential throughput is not a true measure of real-world performance in any way, shape, or form. This result compared with where the Fury Renegade lands on our Intel-based sequential read chart, tells us Kingston is using AMD-derived throughput numbers for its stated up to 7,300 MB/s.

Sequential write throughput is very impressive, and actually a new lab record for AMD as well as matching the current lab record for Intel. Looking at the all-important 4K Q1T1 performance metric, we see Kingston still maintains its 1% performance advantage over competing E18 solutions of the same capacity.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

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Seventh best total read score result we've gotten from a flash-based SSD. Impressive. MAX random read IOPS lands exactly as expected for an E18-controlled SSD.

ATTO

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More than anything else, ATTO gives us a clear picture of what transfer sizes a particular SSD favors in terms of sequential throughput. The 2TB Fury Renegade HS favors sequential transfers of 128 KB for both reading and writing data. This is the transfer size we prefer to see an SSD delivering the goods at. Excellent.

Real-World Testing: Transfers, 3DMark SSD Gaming Test, PCM10 Storage

Transfer Rates

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Our 100GB data transfer test is not your ordinary 100GB of data. Ours is a crushing mix composed of more than 62K files. Write performance random or sequential, is an infrequent operation, and as such, we do not consider it to be an important performance metric in the consumer space. An example being how many times is a game installed vs. how many times it's played. Sixth best for any flash-based SSD we've tested on this configuration and third best to date for an E18-controlled SSD. Excellent.

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Performance like this is exactly what we want to see when it comes to an all-important performance metric, like serving data to the host. It's what consumer SSDs are doing 80% of the time on average.

3DMark SSD Gaming Test

UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. We consider it superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs on the actual game itself. This test is in fact the same as running the actual game, just without the inconsistencies inherent to application testing.

In short, we believe that this is the world's best way to test an SSDs overall gaming prowess and accurately compare it against competing SSDs. The 3DMark SSD Gaming Test measures and scores the following:

• Loading Battlefield V from launch to the main menu.
• Loading Call of Duty Black Ops 4 from launch to the main menu.
• Loading Overwatch from launch to the main menu.
• Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch.
• Installing The Outer Worlds from the Epic Games Launcher.
• Saving game progress in The Outer Worlds.
• Copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike Global Offensive from an external SSD to the system drive.

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Gaming is a performance metric that matters to the majority of DIY consumers, especially to the enthusiast crowd that TweakTown caters to. As expected, Kingston's 2TB Fury Renegade delivers the goods exceptionally well as it relates to gaming-related storage activities. In fact, tops for an E18-controlled SSD. Outstanding.

PCM10 Storage Tests

PCMark 10 Storage Test is the most advanced and most accurate real-world consumer storage test ever made. There are four different tests you can choose from; we run two of them.

The Full System Drive Benchmark and the Quick System Drive Benchmark. The Full System Drive Benchmark writes 204 GB of data over the duration of the test. The Quick System Drive Benchmark writes 23 GB of data over the duration of the test. These tests directly correlate with mainstream user experience.

PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark

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This particular test writes 204GB data and covers a broad range of common consumer tasks, including booting Windows 10, file transfers, Adobe and Office applications, and startup times for games, including Battlefield V, COD Black Ops 4, and Overwatch. Unlike synthetic numbers, this is comprehensive real-world data which is why we use it to rank SSDs in terms of user experience.

As expected, the Fury Renegade delivers right in there with the best ever for an E18-controlled SSD.

PCMark 10 Quick System Drive Benchmark

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As it relates to E18-controlled SSDs, our test subject delivers the best we've recorded to date on our newest SSD test platform. It is good in that regard, but as it is with all Phison E18-controlled SSDs, it pretty much steps on a rake here, getting surpassed by a whole host of seemingly inferior-performing SSDs.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Kingston's newest performed exactly as expected. The 2TB Fury Renegade paralleled exactly what its older sibling, the KC3000 2TB, can deliver on the performance front, and that's a good thing because the KC3000 is the very best of what an E18 SSD is really all about.

Now taken as a whole, we would have to say the Fury Renegade Heatsink Model is even more desirable simply because it's perfectly suited for PS5 storage expansion as well as PC. We feel this is Kingston's best SSD to date and one of the most desirable enthusiast-grade SSDs available.

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We rank SSDs in terms of overall user experience (performance where it matters most) as expressed by PCMark 10 storage and 3DMark gaming storage tests. We consider a user experience score of 12K or more to verify an SSD as a TweakTown Elite performer. As it is with all E18 controlled SSDs, the Fury Renegade 2TB HS falls just short of being crowned 12K TweakTown Elite.

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Kingston's Fury Renegade 2TB HS represents the pinnacle of Phison E18 controller performance, earning it our highest award. Editor's Choice.